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User interfaces for tangible characters: can children connect remotely through toy perspectives?

Published: 09 June 2010 Publication History

Abstract

What if children's make-believe characters could keep in touch when the children were apart? We propose a novel concept for children's use of technology through imagination play: user interfaces designed to be used by children's character toys rather than directly by the children ("doll-computer interfaces"). We apply this model to the challenge of remote communication for children with an enhanced dollhouse containing small-scale interfaces for the dolls with a variety of fully functional multimodal communication functions. Using this interface as a technology probe, we explore a variety of design decisions with remote pairs of children. Our preliminary results suggest that toy-perspective and manipulable toy elements are particularly helpful in supporting play and successful use of communication technologies, while the "true-to-life" toy aspects are sensitive to individual frames of reference and more flexible interfaces that still fit within the toy context lead to creative communication strategies. We found that different communication channels offered interesting tradeoffs between uninterrupted play and rich verbal description. We also learned that the concept appeals to a wide age range but that the youngest children may need additional scaffolding for successful remote play.

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    cover image ACM Other conferences
    IDC '10: Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Interaction Design and Children
    June 2010
    389 pages
    ISBN:9781605589510
    DOI:10.1145/1810543
    Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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    Published: 09 June 2010

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    Author Tags

    1. children
    2. doll-computer interfaces
    3. remote play
    4. storytelling
    5. tangible interfaces

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    • (2024)Exploring Collaborative Storytelling Through Performative Avatars in Searching for Us: A Tangible Pervasive NarrativeInteractive Storytelling10.1007/978-3-031-78453-8_8(115-134)Online publication date: 2-Dec-2024
    • (2023)Play—An essential part of children’s lives and their computational empowermentFrontiers in Education10.3389/feduc.2022.10887167Online publication date: 21-Feb-2023
    • (2022)Can you please cover both the "smart" and the "home"? Exploring expectations on smart homes considering changing needsProceedings of the 21st International Conference on Mobile and Ubiquitous Multimedia10.1145/3568444.3568447(128-137)Online publication date: 27-Nov-2022
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    • (2018)Can I GetToyIn?Extended Abstracts of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3170427.3186472(1-4)Online publication date: 20-Apr-2018
    • (2018)Designing technology to empower children to communicate with non-residential parentsInternational Journal of Child-Computer Interaction10.1016/j.ijcci.2015.09.0013:C(1-13)Online publication date: 11-Dec-2018
    • (2012)Family and design in the IDC and CHI communitiesProceedings of the 11th International Conference on Interaction Design and Children10.1145/2307096.2307102(40-49)Online publication date: 12-Jun-2012
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