Rob Tieben

Urban Computing and Mobile Devices

n this issues Works in Progress department, we have 12 urban computing and mobile device entries that span a wide range of computing and social areas. The first entry examines how an urban environment could operate as a large-scale, real-time control system. One project focuses on annotating public spaces and sharing the tags with others. Two projects tie together social networking in cyberspace with local urban communities. Two projects examine computing and social interactions in physical spaces. Two entries explore how to combine synthetic and physical views of urban environments. Four entries investigate how we explore urban spaces, interact with technology in those spaces, and create shared community histories.In this issues Works in Progress department, we have 12 urban computing and mobile device entries that span a wide range of computing and social areas. The first entry examines how an urban environment could operate as a large-scale, real-time control system. One project focuses on annotating public spaces and sharing the tags with others. Two projects tie together social networking in cyberspace with local urban communities. Two projects examine computing and social interactions in physical spaces. Two entries explore how to combine synthetic and physical views of urban environments. Four entries investigate how we explore urban spaces, interact with technology in those spaces, and create shared community histories.

Human Behavior Analysis in Ambient Gaming and Playful Interaction

Modern gaming has changed substantially through the use of speech, vision, and other modalities, which enhanced the more traditional input modalities like keyboard, mouse, joystick or other controllers. In addition, more actuators have become available to enrich the gaming experience, such as 3D visualization and tactile feedback. Last but not least, there is a trend in contemporary games to analyze the multimodal input and to provide the user with a more context-aware and personalized system. In this chapter we will provide the reader with an overview of modern gaming: games that use these multimodal technologies, the new experiences they create, and the usage of human behavior analysis.

Contact through canvas: an entertaining encounter

When meeting someone new, the first impression is often influenced by someone’s physical appearance and other types of prejudice. In this paper, we present TouchMeDare, an interactive canvas, which aims to provide an experience when meeting new people, while preventing visual prejudice and lowering potential thresholds. The focus of the designed experience was to stimulate people to get acquainted through the interactive canvas. TouchMeDare consists of a flexible, opaque canvas, which plays music when touched simultaneously from both sides. Dynamic variation of this bodily contact is reflected through real-time adaptations of the musical compositions. Two redesigns were qualitatively and quantitatively evaluated and a final version was placed in the Lowlands Festival as a case study. Evaluation results showed that some explanation was needed for the initial interaction with the installation. On the other hand, after this initial unfamiliarity passed, results showed that making bodily contact through the installation did help people to get acquainted with each other and increased their social interaction.

An Active Lifestyle for Youths through Ambient Persuasive Technology. Implementing Activating Concepts in a School Environment

The PlayFit project aims to design for a structural reduction in sedentary behavior throughout the day. The challenge is to engage teenagers by connecting to their mainly sedentary lifestyle by playful persuasion. Therefore we defined four design principles: (1) embedded in the context (2) trigger an intrinsic need to play, (3) adapt to a personal playing style and (4) facilitate open-ended and/or emergent play. In the past three years we have been exploring solutions through design research and applied these insights to three new concepts, each tying into a different aspect of a school day. In this paper we share the first insights in applying these design principles and implementing the concepts that help reducing sedentary behavior in schools for vocational education.

Shake up the schoolyard: iterative design research for public playful installations

Three different design research topics are presented in this article: how to design social and active play for teenagers, how to design for openended and emergent play, and how to evaluate interactive playful installations in situ. The Wiggle the Eye installation, five interactive wiggle benches and a central lamp, was iteratively developed and evaluated with more than 1000 users, at two high schools, one university and a design festival. The installation succeeded in inviting teenagers to play in a social way, yet the interaction design proved challenging: uncoordinated mass usage and a variety of external factors influenced the exploration and discovery process for the users. The presented insights serve as advice for everyone designing for teenagers, public spaces or playful interactions.

The look, the feel and the action: making sets of ActDresses for robotic movement

We present a series of design explorations for controlling autonomous robotic movement based on a metaphor of clothing and accessorising. From working with various sketches, scenarios and prototypes we identify a number of particular features of this form of interaction, as well potential challenges for designers of other systems based on this design concept. Finally we conclude with a few general implications, especially concerning the inert properties of visibility, physicality and modularity with respect to the particular case of interaction and robotic movement.

Playful Moments of Activity

In our design-research studies, we aim to persuade teenagers to engage in playful moments of casual activity. In this article, we present one explorative prototype: walk-of-fame, a multimedia installation that creates virtual avatars in a corridor, depending on the walking style of passers-by. We intend to create playful active moments throughout the day, independent of time or location, supported by mobile and ambient technologies.

actDresses: interacting with robotic devices - fashion and comics

Robotic devices, such as the Roomba vacuum cleaner, are customised and personalised by their users, using for example signs, stickers and clothes. The actDresses project explores how these metaphors from fashion and comics can be used in novel interactions with robotic devices. This movie shows one explorative prototype, where clothes and accessories are used to program the Roombas behaviour. The clothes influence personality characteristics of the Roomba; the accessories, iconic flags, determine movement characteristics. Combined, the clothes and flags allow the user to create different types of behaviour.