This paper describes the design of Camelot, a mobile outdoor game for small groups of children aged 7-9. The game was designed with the aim to encourage social interaction between the players and to encourage physical activity. The paper extends the research literature on design methodology for children, by recording and reflecting upon the lessons learnt by applying a range of techniques for involving children in the design of interactive systems.
Current pervasive games are mostly locationaware applications, played on handheld computing devices. Considering pervasive games for children, it is argued that the interaction paradigm existing games support limits essential aspects of outdoor play like spontaneous social interaction, physical movement, and rich face-to-face communication. We present a new genre of pervasive games conceived to address this problem, that we call ''Head Up Games'' (HUGs) to underline that they liberate players from facing down to attend to screen-based interactions. The article discusses characteristics of HUG and relates them to existing genres of pervasive games. We present lessons learned during the design and evaluation of three HUG and chart future challenges.
As tangible and embodied systems are making the transition from the labs to everyday life, there is a growth in the applications related research and design work in this field. We argue that the potential of these technologies can be even further leveraged by enabling domain experts such as teachers, therapists and home owners to act as end-user developers in order to modify and create content for their tangible interactive systems. However, there are important issues that need to be addressed if we want to enable these end users to act as developers. In this paper we identify five key challenges for meta-designers in enabling end-users to develop for tangible and embodied interaction.
This paper reflects on the design process of games that are played by multiple players, involving high pace activity and embodied interaction. More specifically it argues that user testing with low fidelity prototypes, which is recommended in mainstream literature on methodology in the fields of human computer interaction and game design, is not appropriate when designing these kind of games. Designers should instead, as early as possible in the design process, experiment with technology and expose working prototypes to play test with children. A case study, in which we designed several games and tested in three iterations, is also presented. The games were designed for and tested with RaPIDO, a specially designed platform for prototyping mobile and interactive technology. Finally, we argue that our hypothesis regarding technology-rich prototyping is confirmed, since the feedback from the children concerned the realized interaction, and aspects of play and social interaction were experienced in real context, instead of an imagined way as a mockup would have allowed. General Terms Design KeywordsChildren, prototyping INTRODUCTIONMethodological research in the field of Interaction and Children (IDC) has focused mostly on how to involve children in design processes, and on ways that children can provide input to interaction design. Prominent examples of the former include participatory approaches to design [5], early design methods (e.g., KidReporter[2], Mission from Mars [4]), or methods for involving children in evaluating interactive products [16]. IDC as a research community has paid much less attention to prototyping tools and methods, and on how these impact the design process, which are core topics in methodological research for the parent discipline of Human Computer Interaction (HCI).This paper considers the role of prototyping in the design of games for children that support embodied interaction, especially those that can be played outdoors by many children together. The paper summarizes related methodological research in the broader HCI field, discusses how game design literature approaches this topic, and points at some limitations of current design approaches when designing the type of games described above.The core argument made is that especially for games using innovative and non-standard embodied interactions, technology should be included from early stages of prototyping and paper prototyping can be a digression. The main contribution of this paper is twofold: first, we present a detailed case study of an iterative design process using hi-fi prototypes that involved children, and we reflect on the suitability of this process. Simultaneously, we explore the design space of appropriate technology to support the design of outdoor games for children.The remainder of this paper first discusses how methodology in the fields of HCI and Game Design largely favor formative user tests with paper or other low fidelity prototypes as a means to explore a design space. We argue why this may not be suitable for t...
Abstract. With the emergence of pervasive technology, pervasive games came into existence. Most are location-aware applications, played with a PDA or mobile phone. We argue that the interaction paradigm these games support, limits outdoor play that often involves spontaneous social interaction. This paper introduces a new genre of pervasive games we call Head Up Games. The paper describes these games and how they differ from current research prototypes of pervasive games. Also, it outlines their characteristics and illustrates our vision with Camelot, an outdoor game for children.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.