Peter Fikar

Interactive and Open-Ended Sensory Toys: Designing with Therapists and Children for Tangible and Visual Interaction

Treating neurological conditions like cerebral visual impairment (CVI) and related disabilities is a complex challenge where the needs of the affected persons have to be considered individually. It is also commonly agreed that stimulating the bodys senses, as part of early intervention programs, is a crucial activity in therapy. With this paper, we add to the literature on how tangible and embodied interaction can facilitate such stimulation of the body and provide engaging experiences for children with (multiple) disabilities. Our report entails a detailed description of a co-design process involving early intervention specialists and affected children over the course of six months and multiple prototype iterations. According to our participants, the strengths of the resulting products or therapeutic toys are their open-endedness and versatile applicability, meeting individual needs and making therapeutic sessions both enriching and fun for the children.

Immersivedeck: a large-scale wireless VR system for multiple users

We present preliminary results of work on a low-cost multi-user immersive Virtual Reality system that enables collaborative experiences in large virtual environments. In the proposed setup at least three users can walk and interact freely and untethered in a 200 m2 area. The required equipment is worn on the body and rendering is performed locally on each user to minimize latency. Inside-out optical head tracking is coupled with a low-cost motion capture suit to track the full body and the head. Movements of users, 3D interactions and the positions of selected real world objects are distributed over a wireless network in a server-client architecture. As a result, users see the effect of their interactions with objects and other users in real time. We describe the architecture of our implemented proof-of-concept system.

LightSight: A Dice to Meet the Eyes

This paper introduces LightSight, a new interactive toy for children with cerebral visual impairment (CVI). Since affected children face different challenges in their perception and processing of information, it is important to provide them with appropriate tools to train their vision skills and related competencies. To address this need, we designed a tangible and illuminated dice, which wirelessly communicates with a game running on a tablet (dice and game together form LightSight). This concept should provide a playful way for the children to train their vision and a range of related motor and cognitive skills (e.g. manipulating the device with their hands, learning shapes etc.). Understanding this interactive toy is simple enough for children who are below the age of 6 years. The paper concludes by discussing the systems design motivations and observations from field deployments.

The Use(fulness) of Therapeutic Toys: Practice-derived Design Lenses for Toy Design

Early Intervention Services support children with disabilities in their development from early age on. To this end, therapeutic toys are regularly employed within training sessions. These toys often draw on interactive elements to make exercising more appealing, and hence, to motivate the children. While there is some research about interactive therapeutic toys in HCI, these works are often standalone design deployments, exploring specific health or rehabilitation applications. In contrast, this paper offers different lenses for investigating qualities of therapeutic toys to highlight the following aspects: therapeutic and playful/motivational efforts, the potential of technology in supporting suitable affordances, ease of use, flexibility and improvisation. The lenses enable guided explorations of existing toys or novel design proposals, resulting from a thematic analysis of a) in-situ observations of therapeutic exercises (n=18), b) in-depth/informal interviews with Early Intervention Specialists (combined n=16), and c) demonstrations of their favorite toys (n=21).

Pick, Place, And Follow: A Ball Run for Visually Impaired Children

Conventional ball runs are usually made from wood and used with marbles. Their easy handling and comprehensible principle of action and reaction -- a marble placed into it will run down the slope -- make them a popular therapeutic toy among occupational therapists and related professionals when exercising with impaired children. However, traditional ball runs are often too fast paced and not perceivable for children with low vision, making it impossible to fixate the moving ball with their eyes. We created a virtual ball run with tangible elements to extend it with properties only the digital can afford, for example, magnification of the marbles or change of color or physical behavior of the ball run in order to support visually impaired children in tracking them with their eyes. We report how we conceived the concept in a participatory design process involving four therapists, three children with visual impairment, and one ophthalmologist.

Vibrette: Aiding Smoke Cessation with Tangible Game Devices

Smoking is a serious health problem and there exists a number of different aids to quit this habit. However, nicotine dependency is a complex addiction and not all means of cessation suit every smoker. In this work we present Vibrette, a mobile tangible device designed to ease the smoking craving by offering a distractive game. We illustrate the design process, show different design alternatives and discuss the decisions made. Furthermore, we give an overview about an ongoing user study and reflect on the insights we gathered during the field-test. Finally, we show our conclusions and how these will influence the future work and next design iterations of the prototype.

Islander: Informing Leverage Points for Design of a Location-based Mobile Game promoting Physical Activity

Health issues, due to a sedentary lifestyle and a decrease of physical activity are a raising issue in todays society. In order to provide incentives to stay physically active the potential of digital games gets evaluated in a scientific context towards their motivational effects. Games or game related applications offer a range of opportunities regarding the integration of physical activities replacing traditional controller input with bodily exertion, such as location-based mobile games. However, game design is a complex process and integrating physical activities in a meaningful way makes it even a greater challenge. With this work, we aim to provide a design case describing how this challenge can be approached. We illustrate how formal recommendations for physical activity by the World Health Organization and principals of meaningful play can inform the blueprint for the design of a location-based mobile game using a user-centered approach.