Narcis Pares

Towards methods for evaluating and communicating participatory design

Participatory Design (PD) has been proposed as a useful strategy to address pitfalls in the design of serious games for children with special needs. Nonetheless, methodological weaknesses in the analysis of the results of PD workshops may hinder its effectiveness in providing useful and robust design contributions and facilitating communication in multidisciplinary teams. To address this issue we propose the use of multimodal analysis to evaluate participants contributions during PD workshops. We present an analysis that was applied in an informant workshop with autistic children, aimed at refining the design of a serious game based on Full-Body Interaction. Results show that multimodal analysis constitutes an effective and coherent method to capture and analyze users contributions across a wide range of semiotic resources, thus extending the richness of insights that can be derived from a PD workshop and communicated to the rest of the team. Furthermore, the analysis allowed the identification of fundamental design questions, thus offering a robust empirical ground for supporting dialogue and reflection between multiple stakeholders. Use of Multimodal Analysis to analyze users contributions in Participatory Design.Case study with 4 children in Autistic Spectrum Disorder.Multimodal analysis effectively grasped contributions across different resources.Usefulness for guiding design of Serious Games in interdisciplinary teams.

Lands of Fog: Helping Children with Autism in Social Interaction through a Full-Body Interactive Experience

Autism Spectrum Disorder is characterized by impaired social communication capacities which can prevent the formation of social relationships with peers. In recent years, potential programs for people with ASD have increasingly used Information and Communication Technologies mainly motivated by the affinity that people with ASD show towards technology-supported tasks. We present the design of a full-body interaction experience called Lands of Fog, in which a child with ASD plays together with a typically developed child. The system is aimed towards fostering social interaction behaviors and collaboration. We have undertaken user trials with 34 ASD children through which Lands of Fog has proven to be a useful tool to foster social interaction. In this paper, we focus on the description of the interaction design process, methods and criteria that support the final experience. We then provide preliminary results from the user trials which provide a first hint of the efficacy of the system in fostering users engagement and making socialization attitudes emerge.

Experience as an Object to Think with: from Sensing-in-action to Making-Sense of action in Full-Body Interaction Learning Environments

We present a qualitative, idiographic study aimed at exploring how children create bridges between embodied experience and meaning construction while interacting with a Full-Body Interaction Learning Environment. Starting from the analysis of four case studies, we illustrate different possible paths through which children can transform embodied experience into an object--to-think-with and delineate the different resources for meaning making that they employed. These outcomes contribute to expand the current understanding around embodied learning with interactive technologies, as well as suggest a set of qualities to think about interaction design and future research.

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.

Quality of physical activity of children in exergames

Exergames are videogames based on full-body interaction that foster physical exercise during gameplay. Much research has focused on whether exergames foster sufficient physical activity and with which intensity they do so. This is usually measured through energy expenditure and compared to traditional physical activities such as sports or physical education exercises. However, little research has been undertaken on the quality of the physical activity, understood not as how well the movement is done, but as the richness and diversity of physical activity defined by experts, such as diverse types of motor skills (jumps, turns, pivots, manipulative actions, etc) and diverse types of conditioning capabilities (endurance, stretch, general strength, coordination, etc.). Hence, exergames typically address only aerobic (cardiovascular) activity and other types tend to be ignored. In this paper we propose a method for analyzing the types of physical activity (quality) that an exertion interface elicits. We propose this method as an analytical tool which can provide key information to categorize exergames, aid to their design and help designers make sure they achieve game mechanics that elicit the desired types of physical activity. We describe the method through the analysis of two exergames that we developed in the past for our exertion interface for children, called the Interactive Slide. We present the results of a systematic observational method, until now used mainly in sports analysis, which is based on applying sequential body movement analysis to obtain the play characteristics of 48 children. These results -action events and time-based patterns- typify the movement found in the two aforementioned exergames for this platform. We have found significant movement differences between the two, as well as some differences associated to age. Moreover, we show that sequential body movement analysis, which has already been successfully used in the past to analyze sports, can also be effective in analyzing exergames and hence allow grounded discussion on health issues related to their use. We present the results of a systematic observational method to obtain the play characteristics.We give an interaction design strategy to improve the quality of physical activity with exergames.We show that sequential body movement analysis can be effective in analyzing exergames.

Sketching through the body: child-generated gestures in full-body interaction design

The aim of this paper is to explore techniques to design specific gestures with children to improve the interaction design of a Full-Body Interaction Learning Environment. This exploratory case study is part of the EcoSystem Project, a learning environment aimed at supporting childrens understanding of environmental issues related to air-pollution. In order to involve children in the design of the physical interaction with the system, we used two different techniques to facilitate the design of gestures: sketching through the body and sketching with puppets. The results indicate that children adopted different strategies to design gestures for each technique. Within them, the most effective approach was related to the switch between performing gestures with their own bodies and simulating those gestures with puppets. This finding indicates the potential of those Participatory Design methods which combine multi-modal resources as instruments to allow children to reflect upon their own knowledge and express it more precisely.

Impact of Interaction Paradigms on Full-Body Interaction Collocated Experiences for Promoting Social Initiation and Collaboration

This article addresses the design and study of novel interaction settings and systems supporting collocated interaction. More specifically, we aim to analyze the implications of two different interaction approaches, namely first-person and third-person interaction paradigms, and the corresponding theoretical approaches when designing and developing collocated experiences for children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASDs). This analysis is supported by the outcomes of several examples of full-body interaction collocated experiences aimed at promoting social initiation and collaboration. Moreover, we present a series of goal-driven guidelines to consider when designing with various interaction paradigms. Finally, we discuss future work to better understand the implications of constructing paradigms for the intuitive use of these full-body interaction systems.

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.

An Autoethnographic Approach to Guide Situated Ethical Decisions in Participatory Design with Teenagers

Participatory Design (PD) methods have become a widespread practice in the development of digital technologies. Even if PD is grounded on a critical and reflective tradition, often the presence of implicit assumptions may have relevant methodological and ethical consequences, since they may unintentionally shape our way of considering or behaving with participants. To tackle this issue, we suggest that the assumptions and expectations of designers must be carefully examined. To guide this process, we propose using a self-reflexive critical practice based on autoethnography as a tool to reflect and construct knowledge out of our subjective experience of designers involved in PD. Grounded on our experience of PD with teenagers, we report how autoethnography allowed gaining a deeper understanding of one’s own positions, assumptions and contradictions on aspects related to our standpoint on participatory practices, the images that we have of participants and our role in the design process. This awareness allowed taking into account emotions, personal stories and values in ethical choices, hence guiding situated decision-making on ethical and methodological aspects. Furthermore, we suggest that this approach not only contributes to unveil incongruences and strengthens the validity of the research, but also facilitates conditions for enabling a suitable space for creation and support novel forms of reporting PD experiences.