Marie-Monique Schaper

Participatory design methods to define educational goals for full-body interaction

The paper presents an exploratory study aimed toward including children in the design of an Interactive Learning Environment based on Full-Body Interaction. The study proposes a method based on using Participatory Design techniques to analyze core meanings and misconceptions of children. The aim is to identify appropriate learning goals and to define concepts capable of bridging between childrens knowledge and novel contents. Furthermore, it explores a novel approach aimed at fostering design methods suitable for a Full-Body Interaction experience. The results show the benefits of the method in defining guidelines for a first design proposal of a Learning Environment based on environmental education.

The World-as-Support: Embodied Exploration, Understanding and Meaning-Making of the Augmented World

Current technical capabilities of mobile technologies are consolidating the interest in developing context-aware Augmented/Mixed Reality applications. Most of these applications are designed based on the Window-on-the-World (WoW) interaction paradigm. A significant decrease in cost of projection technology and advances in pico-sized projectors have spurred applications of Projective Augmented Reality. This research has focused mainly on technological development. However, there is still a need to fully understand its communicational and expressive potential. Hence, we define a conceptual paradigm that we call World-as-Support (WaS). We compare the WaS and WoW paradigms by contrasting their assumptions and cultural values, as well as through a study of an application aimed at supporting the collaborative improvisation of site-specific narratives by children. Our analysis of childrens understanding of the physical and social environment and of their imaginative play allowed us to identify the affordances, strengths and weaknesses of these two paradigms.

Learning about the past through situatedness, embodied exploration and digital augmentation of cultural heritage sites

Abstract The design of interactive experiences for archaeological sites entails the consideration of the particular characteristics and constraints of the exhibition space. Our aim is to address these challenges by exploring the potential of a recently emerging interaction paradigm called World-as-Support, which is based on projective Augmented Reality (AR). In this study, we present the design process of a virtual heritage experience for a bomb shelter built during the Spanish Civil War that currently belongs to the Barcelona History Museum. The goal of this study was twofold. First, we aimed to define the requirements for the design of a first prototype based on the World-as-Support interaction paradigm. Second, we carried out a study with a local school to evaluate the benefits of an educational experience based on this paradigm. Our results indicate benefits to complement the guided visit: (1) by using projective AR to explore different layers of the learning experience; and (2) by including collaborative activities based on embodied enactments to foster the understanding of historical contents that require emotional engagement and critical thinking.

Towards the Design of a Virtual Heritage Experience based on the World-as-Support Interaction Paradigm

We present the initial design stage of a Virtual Heritage experience for a bomb shelter built during the Spanish Civil War, namely Refugi 307. The shelter currently belongs to the History Museum of Barcelona which provides guided tours through the cultural heritage site for schools and the general public. The aim of the study was to define the requirements for the design of a first prototype based on the World-as-Support interaction paradigm. We conducted an ethnographic study and Participatory Design workshop to analyze different aspects of the requirements and to include multiple needs and viewpoints of the involved stakeholders. Based on the outcomes, we outline the potential for activities to foster (1) contextual-awareness between the learning content and the cultural heritage site, (2) environment-awareness in relation to missing objects in the physical space and (3) social-awareness to embody feelings related to solidarity and empathy.

Making Sense of Body and Space through Full-Body Interaction Design: A Case Study

Research based on the embodied cognition framework proposes the use of physicality and spatiality to promote learning. Nevertheless, methods to include children in the design of Full-Body Interaction Learning Environments often neglect to properly integrate the notion of body and space. In this paper, we describe a participatory design process in which we focused on how children can be encouraged to pay attention to their own body, to proxemics and to embodied constraints of the environment. We explored how this awareness may inform childrens design choices for a Full-Body Interaction Learning Environment for public spaces. Our findings indicate that our approach promoted childrens awareness towards bodily and spatial aspects of their proposals. Our work contributes to the reflection upon the use of bodystorming and theater-based techniques in two contexts: (1) in a simulated environment of the experience and (2) in physical spaces in situ.

Moving through the past: design and evaluation of a full-body interaction learning environment for a public space

This paper presents a brief overview of the design and evaluation process of a Virtual Heritage (VH) experience for children in the context of Refugi 307, a bomb shelter built during the Spanish Civil War. The shelter currently belongs to the History Museum of Barcelona, which provides guided tours through the cultural heritage site for schools and the general public. The goal of the study is to evaluate suitable design methods to define the requirements for the design of a first prototype grounded on the World-as-Support (WaS) interaction paradigm, which is based on projective Augmented Reality (AR). We conducted an ethnographic study and Participatory Design (PD) workshops in order to analyse different aspects of the requirements and to include multiple needs and viewpoints of the involved children.