Summary of my papers

p201-jacob: Not really related to what we are doing but would be an interesting read for Novel anyway. It deals with 3 case studies related to Reality-Based Interaction (RBI), Body & Environment awareness and Naïve Physics, and explains the RBI Themes and Tradeoffs for each case.

p781-apted: Not related to our project but is a pretty interesting read. It describes the design of SharePic – a multiuser, multi-touch, gestural, collaborative digital photograph sharing application for a tabletop, specifically designed for the elderly.

p369-jorda: this seems like it could have been a promising document as it starts off with an abstract that explains that four approaches will be explored one of them being “the Reactable: a musical tabletop, and its companion fiducial tracking system reacTIVision” – unfortunately, this paper was only talking about a studio that was going to be held and acted only as a program for the studio in question. It also provides links to a website http://tangible.media.mit.edu/projects.php which is apparently “closed for repair”.

Virtual Farm: a 3D farm game for Kindergarten children. Although it is not exactly what we are working on, there some similar elements as well as some design considerations that we can adopt from it. Below are a few points:

• Physical technologies are well suited to children, especially if they are designed to include aspects that are relevant to the child’s development: social experiences, expressive tools and control
• Tangible and tabletop applications for children are not only for fun, but also have an educational aspect and, if designed optimally, they can help children in their motor-skill and cognitive development.
• The design of this prototype has been based on the observation of children using the technology, letting them freely play with the application during three play sessions.
• They used physical toys as tangible bits (by sticking the fiducials at their base). They also discuss more complex forms of augmented toys that have cameras and sensors hidden inside them
• The design of the underlying platform focuses on robustness and simplicity in a hardware configuration that does not require high cost technology. The result is a low cost tabletop design, portable, easy to replicate and install, suitable for using in schools, or children’s homes.
• Prototype achieved by implementing a tangible system through the adaptation of existing technology rather than developing innovative tangible technologies.
• They also talk about a study that evaluated children between 3 and 4 years old and showed many difficulties with the interaction including frustration by the child when playing with the tabletop game when the system didn’t respond to their “little finger” interaction.

As regards to the hardware used:

• The table surface is made of translucent material and a USB video camera is located under the table in order to read the toys the child places and manipulates on the table.
• Unlike other tabletop configurations, this design does not show a computational image on the tabletop surface, but on a monitor disposed in front of the child.
• There is no limit on the number of toys that can be placed and moved over the desktop (as long as there is free space on the table) This enables more than one child to play on the desktop at the same time, and opens the application space to social activities

Tangible Interaction: This is the same like ours with the moving and rotating of fiducials. They also add a function to prevent the animals from disappearing from the screen when the child makes the animal “jump” !

Quote: María Montessori: “Children build their mental image of the world, through the action and motor responses; and, with physical handling, they become conscious of reality”.