>
ing and the children were very aware of this. In the drawing however the bag remains the locus of the interaction and thus the bag must be where the sparkling sound is coming from. The two sources of the sound do not seem mutually exclusive; they simply coexist. The sound comes from both the bag and the speakers in the ceiling. The bag is fitted with two light sensors. Through playing, the children have developed new interaction models and high levels of control. The bag was designed to be played by opening and closing it, but the children played it in two unexpected ways: Turning the open bag towards the light caused the sound to crescendo towards a high pitch or making shadows with your fingers over the open bag. The distance between hand and bag determines the density of the shadow and thus the quality of the “notes” being produced. In this way it is possible to “pick a specific note out of the air” with surprising precision. By playing on the threshold between the ordinary and the unexpected, we find ourselves in a “make-believe” situation where we can explore and investigate the impact of prototypes and generate new insights in the design process. As the children’s experience of the workshop spontaneously evolves from autonomous play through unexpected discoveries, to serious testing of interface and control, we can find inspiration and ideas in touchable interfaces that informs our use of analogue objects. Through their intuition and enthusiasm we are given the opportunity to rethink our instruments and hopefully create more intuitive and insightful sensor interfaces to sound. On the basis of our experience in these workshops we have decided to not only play with the children in an investigative role in workshops, but move one step further in the next stage and involve them as our co-developers within new playful frameworks. © ACM 1072-5220/04/0900 $5.00
i n t e r a c t i o n s
Taking Fun Seriously By Alan Dix
[email protected] Have you watched a child at play? Small hands carefully pile blocks one upon another, tongue tip protruding between clenched teeth, lost totally, concentrating. Children know how to take play seriously. Often people feel that play, fun, and aesthetic experience should not be analyzed too deeply; by dissecting them, subjecting them to formal reasoning, even just talking about them, they are somehow diminished. There can be a playfulness and a pleasure in understanding the patternings of experience, but for most this is different from being in the “flow” of that experience. Many feel a sense that trying to uncover the “whys” and “hows” of human experience will (like some sort of Heisenberg observer effect) dissolve those experiences in the watching. In contrast, the producers of artworks often feel less constrained. Some compose or construct in the heat of focused passion, but most craft and recraft their
ideas and inspirations. The poet Stephen Spender, in his essay “the making of a poem” reflects on this long, often tortuous process and quotes Paul Valéry “une ligne donnée” (the poet is given one line from God, the rest is human graft (Spender 1946). Some years ago, I was one of the directors of aQtive, a dotcom Internet c o m p a n y. I t w a s a p p ro a c h i n g Christmas and we wanted to send something seasonal to our registered u s e r s a n d c o m m e rc i a l c o n t a c t s . Electronic greetings cards seemed both passé and boring; everybody does those...and they hardly reflecting the s p i r i t o f “ a Q t i v e ” ( p ro n o u n c e d “active”!). Somehow the idea came...why not electronic Christmas crackers? Une ligne donnée! Now for those readers without some British connection I will probably need to explain the Christmas cracker. It is party time! Around the Christmas dinner table at each place is a “cracker”(a brightly colored paper and cardboard tube with the ends pinched so that the contents do not fall out. As the food arrives you take your cracker and offer it to someone else. You each take an end and pull. The paper breaks and a small strip of gunpowder-coated card makes a loud bang as the cracker tears apart and
REAL CRACKER
VIRTUAL CRACKER
Design
cheap and cheerful
simple page/graphics
Play
plastic toy and joke
Web toy and joke
dressing up
paper hat
mask to cut out
shared
offered to another
sent by email message
co-experience
pulled together
Surface elements
Experienced effects
sender can’t see content until opened by recipient
excitement
cultural connotations
Recruited expectation
hiddenness
contents inside
first page—no contents
suspense
pulling cracker
slow...page change
surprise
bang (when it works)
WAV file (when it works)
Table 1. Elements of the cracker experience.
/
s e p t e m b e r
+
o c t o b e r
2 0 0 4
: / 63
