 |
TITLE: Creating a Tangible Game-Building Tabletop Environment
CLIENT:
Drs. Alissa Antle (SIAT), Magy Magy Seif El-Nasr (SIAT) & Alyssa Wise (EdTech)
CONTACT:
OVERVIEW:
This project is one part of the SSHRC funded research project investigating the effectiveness of using tangibles and computer game creation as a way to engage girls (age 9-16) in computer programming. The objective of the IAT 402/403 portion of the project is to design and implement a tangible game creation environment.
RESEARCH PROJECT GOALS:
The goal of the larger research project is to investigate how game programming using tangible user interfaces (TUIs) can help address the problem of the small percentage of woman pursuing career in computer-related fields. A tangible user interface (TUI) is a user interface in which a person interacts with digital information through the physical environment. TUIs facilitate different kinds of physical and social interactions than traditional computer environments (e.g. Klemmer 2006; Antle 2007) and have been used successfully to teach children programming skills through an approach called physical programming (McNerney 2004; Montemayor et al. 2004; Fernaeus 2007). Based on these successes, we aim to investigate whether the use of TUI game creation environments can make computing more accessible to girls and facilitate their learning. For example, physical objects (e.g., using physical objects to represent computer abstractions) and social interaction (e.g., face-to-face interaction) may enhance motivation, interest and making learning easier.
PROJECT DESCRIPTION:
The focus of this project is to design and implement a robust, functional tangible game creation environment which supports learning of programming skills through the process of computer game creation in a tangible environment. The tangible game creation environment may be based on an existing tangible tabletop technology (EventTable) developed by Dr. Antle. The EventTable tangible tabletop system is a camera-vision based system that recognizes objects marked with amoeba fiducial patterns that are placed on the underside of physical objects (e.g., tools, game pieces). EventTable is based on the successful reacTIVision approach which tracks visual markers, initially introduced by Bencina et al (2005).
The basic functionality of the Tangible Game Environment will be based on Game Maker which is an easy to use commercial program that individuals or small groups can use to create their own computer games. Game Maker is used in the Great Northern Way Digital Media Summer program for teens. Game Maker uses an object-based interface where, users identify objects for their game, attach a sprite to it, and then add events to the object. The codes for how the object behaves are all expressed through events. The Tangible Game Maker Environment using EventTable will also be object and event based. The requirements for the game will be taken from basic Game Maker functionality and refined in conjunction with the client.
DELIVERABLES:
The main focus of the project is a working prototype that can be used in pilot studies with girls (aged 9-12) in the late spring and early summer of 2009. Deliverables will include: weekly or bi-weekly meeting status reports, design requirements document, functional specification document, concept design document, design mock-ups, initial and final versions of prototype and well as final prototype and code documentation.
SKILLS REQUIRED:
A well rounded team with members from media arts, design and programming is required for this project. See key roles required:
- Project management (e.g., scheduling, documentation, resource allocation)
- Graphic and interface design (e.g., design and coding of digital input and output displays)
- Industrial design and materials (e.g., design and creation of tangible objects)
- Tools for computer game design (e.g., design of game design environment)
- Programming (Java, PureData or Processing can be used with reacTIVision engine and API)
- Quality assurance (iterative user-centred design including formative user testing)
RESOURCES:
Antle, A.N. (2007). The CTI framework: Informing the design of tangible and spatial interactive systems for children, in Proc. Tangible and Embedded Interaction 2007, pp. 195-202.
Antle, A.N., Motamedi, N., Tanenbaum, K. EventTable: An Event-based digital tabletop prototyping platform, IEEE Workshop on Tabletops and Interactive Surfaces, 2008, (submitted – available from author).
Klemmer, S., Hartmann, B, and Takayama, L. How bodies matter: Five themes for interaction design. In Proc. DIS 2006, ACM Press (2006), 140-149.
Fernaeus, Y. and Tholander, J. (2006) Finding design qualities in a tangible programming space. Proceedings of SIGCHI conference on Human Factors in computing systems (Montréal, Québec, Canada) ACM Press New York, NY, USA, pp. 447-456.
McNerney, T. (2004) From turtles to Tangible Programming Bricks: explorations in physical language design. Proceedings of Personal and Ubiquitous Computing Springer, pp. 326-337.
Montemayor, J., Druin, A., Farber, A., Simms, S., Churaman, W. and D'Amour, A. (2002) Physical programming: designing tools for children to create physical interactive environments. Proceedings of SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems: Changing our world, changing ourselves (Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA) ACM Press New York, NY, USA, pp. 299-306.
R. Bencina, M. Kaltenbrunner, and S. Jorda, "Improved Topological Fiducial Tracking in the reacTIVision System", IEEE Computer Society Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Workshops, 2005.
Kaltenbrunner, M. and Bencina, R. reacTIVision: A Computer-Vision Framework for Table-Based Tangible Interaction Proceedings of the first international conference on Tangible and Embedded Interaction (TEI07), Baton Rouge, Louisiana, 2007.
Castle Fortress Floor game http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9UTlov9Xgns
Tangible Public Map http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4bz9shk8UU
Game Maker User Guide http://www.yoyogames.com/downloads/docs/gmaker.pdf
For more information , contact Alissa Antle aantle@sfu.ca