Kieran Ferris
ABSTRACT
This paper documents the design process for an augmented children's play environment centred on that most ubiquitous and simple of objects, the cardboard box. The purpose of the exercise is to show how computer technology can be used in innovative ways to stimulate discovery, play and adventure among children. Our starting point was a dissatisfaction with current computer technology as it is presented to children, which, all to often in our view, focuses inappropriately on the computer per se as a fetishized object. Shifting the focus of attention from the Graphical User Interface (GUI) to familiar objects, and children's interactions around and through these augmented objects, results in the computer becoming a facilitator of exploration and learning. The paper documents the journey from initial design concept, through a number of prototype implementations, to the final implementation. Each design iteration was triggered by observation of use of the prototypes, and reflection on that use, and on new design possibilities. By augmenting an everyday artefact, namely the standard cardboard box, we have created a simple yet powerful interactive environment that, judging from the experience of our "users", has achieved its goal of stirring children's imagination.
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Index Terms
- "...a load of ould boxology!"
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Reviews
Robert McLean Aiken
Motivating young children to learn is the important topic of this paper. As the authors state in their abstract: [T]his paper documents the design process for an augmented children's play environment centered on that most ubiquitous and simple of objects, the cardboard box. The purpose of the exercise is to show how computer technology can be used in innovative ways to stimulate discovery, play and adventure among children...The paper documents the journey from initial design concept, through a number of prototype implementations, to the final implementation (page 41). Ferris and Bannon are successful in explaining how and why they built and tested a series of prototypes that led to their final implementation. They also provide a vision of how students used and enjoyed the environments (combinations of cardboard boxes) they created. However, they do not fulfill one of the main goals of the paper, since they do not demonstrate how what they have done relates to using computer technology in innovative ways. In fact, there is very little discussion of how the ideas in this project could be transferred to a computer, rather than a cardboard box garden (CBG), environment. Thus, the impact of the authors' approach is minimized, and could only be replicated by teachers creating a similar CBG. There were several minor points that made the paper a bit difficult to read. For example, some of the drawings were not clear. Also, the significance of the figures on page 46 was not discussed. Finally, it would be useful to know what the MAX software environment is (page 46), and this was not explained. In summary, the authors discuss a series of interesting experiments, but do not show how this relates to their goal of demonstrating their environment's applicability in a computer environment.
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