This paper reports on the design and evaluation of a cocreative drawing partner called the Drawing Apprentice, which was designed to improvise and collaborate on abstract sketches with users in real time. The system qualifies as a new genre of creative technologies termed "casual creators" that are meant to creatively engage users and provide enjoyable creative experiences rather than necessarily helping users make a higher quality creative product. We introduce the conceptual framework of participatory sense-making and describe how it can help model and understand open-ended collaboration. We report the results of a user study comparing human-human collaboration to human-computer collaboration using the Drawing Apprentice system. Based on insights from the user study, we present a set of design recommendations for co-creative agents.

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This paper presents the results of an empirical study of 32 adult dyads (i.e. groups of two people) engaged in pretend play. Our analysis indicates that participatory sense-making plays a key role in the success of pretend play sessions. We use the cognitive science theory of enaction as a theoretical lens to analyze the empirical data given its robust conceptual framework for describing participatory sensemaking. We present here five enactive characteristics of pretend play that appear to be necessary and sufficient for the emergence and maintenance of successful pretend play -mental preparation, meaning building, narrative enaction, narrative deepening, and flow maintenance. This enactive formalization is used to propose a computational model of pretend play that can be used to inform the design of an agent capable of playing in real time with human users.

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The Digital Box and Block Test (DBBT) is a post-stroke rehabilitation assessment apparatus for in-home use. It is based on the clinically validated Box and Block Test used to measure unilateral gross manual dexterity. We show that the automated DBBT scoring algorithms achieve at least 90% accuracy on a scoring procedure that is traditionally labor intensive and subjective. Furthermore, we propose a tangible gaming system based on DBBT to increase patient motivation and make rehabilitation exercises more enjoyable.