Unknown: This journal article is about how we can engage children
in the co-design for Full-Body interactive experiences. We
represent an approach which is based on physical theatre
practice. This article has been co-authored by myself
Marie-Monique Schaper and Narcis Pares.
The concept of Full-Body Interaction describes how the
relation of the user's body moving in space with a computer
control system promotes the generation of meaning.
Our research focuses on the exploration of novel design
strategies in Full-Body Interaction specifically for
children and also in the aspects of learning.
In this regard, we have identified three challenges that
need further exploration. First, the need to make sure that
Full-Body Interaction is an adequate type of interaction for
the contents that wish to be communicated. Second, the need
for carefully align the design features and contents of the
embodied activities with children's comprehension level.
And third, the need to develop methods that facilitate
designing for and with the body.
To do so, we focus specifically on children as codesigners in
the process. Childhood is a specific life period in which
children have a very strong connection to their bodies. They
make sense by moving around by connecting to others, or by
meanings of a situated environment. These skills and
knowledge help them to be experts of embodied interaction
experiences.
The research question of this study was how can we develop
embodied design techniques for children.
We specifically focused on two aspects. So the first how to
promote awareness on the body, and then the second how we can
help them to translate this knowledge into concrete design
ideas for Full-Body Interaction. In this project, we collaborated
with experts from the theatre school Plàudite. The case study
was carried out during eight codesign workshops over three
years. In total 19 children were involved in the project and two
theatre teachers.
We focused on the content of the theatre play A Midsummer Night's
Dream from William Shakespeare.
In our study, we focused on five different embodied design
techniques that had been developed together with the
theatre experts.
The Signifying Space Technique is based on the documentation of
the physical space, through photos to gain insights into
aspect that children find interesting and engaging in the
environment.
As you can see here in the picture that the children used
cameras, and we encourage them to think about situated
narratives related to the play. We expected that this would help
children to draw their attention towards the features of the
physical environment. And also we observed what kind of
meanings they assigned to different aspects on spaces in
the studied location.
The Small-Scale Prototyping Technique is based on the
production of representations of the physical space, in a reduced
size, and also they used self-constructed puppets.
Here in the video, you can see an example where the children
used different materials to construct a scenario of the play
in small scale, and then acted different interactions with the
puppets within the small scale scenario that they created. We
expected that this would help to strengthen their notion of
spatial awareness. Also, we wanted to train them to
incorporate this knowledge in their design ideas, and in
relation to users bodies actions.
The Situated Performance Technique is based on the
principles of the theatre exercise called the machine of
rhythms. This exercise works by one actor performing simple
repetative movements of their choice related to the
environment, and an idea they chose. The other actors join in
the exercise one by one with a complementary movement. In our
study, we used this technique as an exercise for the children to
translate the cocreated ideas which the previously did in the
small-scale prototypes into human full body actions. We also
wanted to awaken children's body awareness in relation to their
own felt-experience, situatedness and proxemics.
The Body Shadows Technique is a variation of bodystorming based
on physical theatre practice.
The children used their full bodies to create the visual
effects of shadows on a projection role.
In our research, we used the technique to offer the children
a different way of expressing visual ideas. So, we asked them
previously to make a drawing of a specific scenario of the play
and then to act them with their bodies.
The Group Environment Technique is also a variation of
bodystorming based on physical theatre practice.
It consists of the performance and improvisation of sequence of
physical actions in accordance with an imagined environment.
So, each actor performs individually in front of the
audience and adds a new physical action in this sequence. The
general goal for this exercise for us in our research was to
define interaction design ideas that could be implemented in the
prototype of the Full-Body interactive experience. We used
the technique also to make children think about physical
objects that could be part of the interactive experience, and
how they would interact with them.
For the evaluation of the five embodied design techniques, we
used the Think4EmCoDe framework, which also developed by us and
consists of 10 different qualities. You can see more
details in the paper. What we would like to highlight here is
that the sequence and combination of the first three
techniques Signifying Space, Small-Scale Prototyping and
Situated Performance were very useful to awake children's
felt-experience, which is quality number nine "embodied
awareness". Whereas in the first two, the children still
presented some limitations about the understanding towards the
notion of embodied knowledge, they managed to fully apply it
in the Situated Performance Technique that took place in the
last session of the first workshop series.
Summarising, we had three main take-aways in our research. The
first one is that the techniques also revealed worldviews of the
children. And this helped us to define not only interaction
design ideas, but also content and visual ideas. Then, the way
how we implemented the embodied design techniques helped us to
gradually introduce the children to the notion of body, space and
proxemics. And then finally, the order of the techniques used
allow the children to move from an abstract external
perspective, which we still observed when we had the
Small-Scale Prototyping to a concrete subjective perspective,
when you look at the Situated Performance.
In future research, we will evaluate these codesign
techniques with with non-performers or non-experts in
theatre practice.
Thank you very much for listening to our presentation.
For more details on this study, we invite you to read our
journal article.