PLAY’N’CREATE - AN INTERACTIVE INSTALLATION

ABSTRACT Play’n’Create is an interactive installation for children, which facilitate a way of creative self expression through playful interaction. It is a tool for creative development and is furthermore an installation, which affords playful interaction between children in the form of gamification and spontaneously made up games. The main goal of Play’n’Create is to engage user participation with the installation and between children. The key components are colourful thrust surfaces that potential users can interact with. As they touch them, they create a visualisation on a screen and leave a digital fingerprint. Beside the installations components, testing and verification, this paper will provide a theoretical perspective and a section regarding related work.

AUTHOR KEYWORDS Play’n’Create; Interaction design; creative tool and interaction; gamification.

ACM Classification Keywords Design; Technology; Processing; MaKeyMaKey.

INTRODUCTION Children's daily lives are in western societies characterised by screen activities and their lives are getting more intertwined with computers [1,2]. This

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Lise Maj Jørgensen University of Aarhus Nordre Ringgade 1 8000 Aarhus C, DK lisemaj1@gmail.com Jacob Løfdahl University of Aarhus Nordre Ringgade 1 8000 Aarhus C, DK j.loefdahl@gmail.com

Jane Lindberg University of Aarhus Nordre Ringgade 1 8000 Aarhus C, DK lindberg.jane@gmail.com Kirstine Madsen University of Aarhus Nordre Ringgade 1 8000 Aarhus C, DK mail.kirstinemadsen@gmail.com

became our wicked problem and our solution is Play’n’Create (see Figure 1). Play’n’Create facilitates physical movement and social interaction between children through a digital installation. The purpose of the installation is to create a digital space where children can interact physically and create through playing. The Installations placement is indented to be in a public space, the local library in Aarhus, Denmark, became our primary setting. The new public library, DOKK1, was created on design-thinking principles and the children’s area was created with gamification and interactive activities in mind [3,4]. These principles were the theoretical base for this design project as well. Play’n’Create combine the domain; children's creative capabilities and the tools; play and colour, because the purpose was to transform this domain and these tools into a hybrid interactive installation. This will be elaborated later on in this paper. We chose to combine play, colour, creativity and social interaction. Play’n’Create is a creativity tool because it facilitates a creative game where children can compete and work together in creating a visual expression.

In today’s world the designers tend to focus on creating interesting playgrounds where the creative childhood is a paradigm, which influences innovative playground designs [5]. The awareness of children’s innovative and creative development and the playground space’s ability to facilitate such development with the right design is becoming the focus in urban development and public spaces. Szekely rethink the playground as a location where children can perform and expand artistically and socially through play. Playground installations can contribute to children’s sense of wonder and creativity which hopefully gives them a meaningful exploration of themselves, others and their

creativity [6]. Kahn reasoned that “play must be free and uninhibited in spaces with interesting shapes” [7]. A journey to a playground can and should be a meaningful exploration of the space, surfaces, forms and colours [6]. Play’n’Create is an installation that combine different kinds of visual expressions, both analogue and digital, to insure creative, social and meaningful interaction between children.

THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVE The Play’n’Create-project takes roots in ground theories of embodied interaction, intuitive design, games and gamification. These theories will hereby shortly be explained to illustrate the foundation of the project.

Embodied interaction and embodiment is terms, which integrates and combines the fields of tangible computing and social computing. Embodied computing can be seen as a medium, which additionally is assumed to be the creation, manipulation, and sharing of meaning through engaged interaction with artefacts [8]. Embodied design strives to be intuitive, so the user can access the design without any pre-existing knowledge. Knowledge that is performed intuitively is called tacit knowledge [9].

During the process we have discovered that Play’n’Create presents itself as a gamification and as a competitive game tool. A game is not only determined by its designer [10]. The designer determines the game elements, but not how the elements are used. It is rather the player who, in his experience of the game, defines the definitive even though the designer supplies the design with affordances, constraints and a set of rules [11]. The game is excitement, joy and amusement [12]. The game components are essential

Figure 1: This image illustrates the installation from a two-day testing during the design- and technology DIY (do-it-yourself) exhibition Aarhus Mini Maker Faire, in the intended environment at DOKK1. It is a family event on innovation, creativity and ingenuity with more than 50 exhibitors. Learn more about the exhibition on www.makerfaireaarhus.dk. Photo by WeCreate on www.vvecre8.wordpress.com.

Link to Play’n’Create concept video: https://youtu.be/DG3TOIFxJ0M

for the understanding of the game, when the game is open it will be interchangeable within the environment and culture in which it occurs [13].

Gamification as a concept emerged around 2010 [14]. However, there is a consensus about how the term gamification, with basis in game design, can be defined. To understand the nature of gamification, Deterding et. al. defines it as the use of game design elements in non-game contexts, furthermore as being the use of game attributes to drive a game-like player behaviour in a non-game context [10]. Zichermann and Cunningham state that the process of game thinking and game mechanics is to engage users and solve problems [15]. Gamification is therefore fundamentally different from games in certain ways; Gamification is not a game, but more like a ludic activity.

THE INSTALLATION The following section is about the conceptual design behind the installation Play’n’Create. To explain the conceptual design, we will examine some related work to extract insights that could help us create the best possible design (see Figure 2 and Figure 3). Related Work The presented related works, The Obliteration Room and Formen - Farven - Fladen, has brought this installation into a bigger perspective and are examples of installations that uses creativity, colour and user involvement as key elements which are the same parameters that are used in Play’n’Create.

The interactive, and analogue, exhibition project The Obliteration Room created by the Japanese artist Kusama [16,17]. The installation consists of a room

where everything, the walls, the furniture and everything in between, is white. The visitors are then invited to place coloured dot stickers wherever they want inside this white room and thereby leave their mark. An interesting aspect of this artwork is that it never has a constant visual state of mind, but is on the contrary developing as time goes and with visitors passing by. Every visitor is a part on the visualisation and the project is like a blank canvas without people passing by interacting with the installation. The user involvement of the installation is important parts of the concept behind The Obliteration Room, which are similar to elements of Play’n’Create, with the curiosity and creativity of children in focus [18]. The artwork called Formen - Farven - Fladen (The shape - The colour - The surface) includes an interactive room consisting of projectors and sensors that supplies the visitors the possibility of creating figures on the walls by using their hands. When touching the walls, circles and squares appears, these can be stretched and coloured The man behind the project, Eliasson, claims that our individual way of understanding things has an impact on the way we are forming things [17]. The thinking behind Play’n’Create relies on this mind-set too, that the objects and colours can and will be understood in different ways depending on who is experiences it, and that this makes us want to set our individual fingerprint [18]. Design Concept As pointed out, Play’n’Create focuses on children’s curiosity and creativity and in continuation hereof their urge to play. The target group is primarily children and people with a childlike nature. The goal is to use the natural curiosity and playfulness of children to inspire

Figure 2: This image illustrates the installations technical components: Inside material of thrust surfaces, MaKey MaKey and Processing. Photo by WeCreate on www.vvecre8.wordpress.com.

Figure 3: This image illustrates mending of thrust surfaces. Photo by WeCreate on www.vvecre8.wordpress.com.

them into expressing themselves creatively through physical social activity. Play’n’Create is a creative toy where tactile thrust surfaces combined with a visualisation that can decorate the walls inside of a public space. The users can step on, sit on, press, hop, dance or crawl on the colourful round plates, and every time one of these is touched, an exponentially growing circle with the same colour as the plate appears on a screen [18]. The purpose is to facilitate physical activity, creativity and social interaction between children through a digital installation by which the children can create a visualisation [20,22].

TESTING AND VERIFICATION This section will deal with the testing and verification of Play’n’Create in order to reach proof of concept. In order to show this, we will present the most relevant findings. Furthermore we will take a closer look at the user involvement that has taken place during the testing and verification of the installation. Initially the concept was to create joy in the setting of the citizen service, because the atmosphere in this setting typically can be tense. Through observations, interviews and user testing, we came to the conclusion that a reframing was needed [22,23], due to the insight where it became obvious that the main user group ought to be children [20]. The reframing consisted of a change in user focus and the setting was changed to a more open public place. The reframing required an additional test of concept and user test (see Figure 4 and Figure 5). In the additional testing we used the method of bodystorming [24], where the testing took place in the exact environment as the concept was intended for and therefore also the intended users [18]. We were thus able to get immediate feedback on the

prototype, allowing us to acquire a better understanding of the contextual factors at play. Through these tests and studies we found that our design concept proved to be both intuitive and self-explanatory to its users [25,26]. Furthermore we discovered that our goal for the free interpretation of the prototype was achieved through observations of people interacting with the prototype in diverse ways. All users created a visual expression, some users were more aware of the visualization than others [18]. For some users, the main goal was to compete with other children in a colour battle, while others focused on creating a colourful display. Most of the users were drawn by the forms, shapes and colours of the thrust surfaces and how they could interact with these. It became clear that children could entertain themselves with the installation itself and also through social interaction, which consisted of jumping around, pressing and playing with the thrust surfaces together. From this behaviour we interpreted that the users unfolded their creativity. Play’n’Create engage the users in a fun way with no constraints and indirectly translate their physical interaction into a digital representation [27]. DISCUSSION Children possess a curious and playful nature, but this is challenged by sedentary activities. They are full time professionals in playing and evolving their personalities through different kinds of social relations and interactions. Therefore children can live up to the definition as a creative domain and the tools for this domain consists of play, exploration and creation. Play’n’Create is a creative tool that combines these elements in a hybrid installation, which activates

Figure 4: This image illustrates user testing at Aarhus Mini Maker Faire, DOKK1. Photo by WeCreate on www.vvecre8.wordpress.com.

Figure 5: This image likewise illustrates user testing at Aarhus Mini Maker Faire, DOKK1. Photo by WeCreate on www.vvecre8.wordpress.com.

children’s exploration, creative and social skills in a playful setting.

The installation, offers a great deal of randomness, due in part to the programming behind it, which in term offers the opportunity for exploration and free interpretation for its user. Every time a user interacts with the thrust surfaces, the screen will respond with a unique feedback, which consists of a coloured growing dot that appears at a random place on the screen. This appeals and encourages curiosity and invites the user to reflect on his or her actions, and thus explore other possible levels of interaction the installation offers.

A tangible user interface consists of touchable objects that the users can manipulate, which causes a reaction in the digital universe [28]. This part of the installation allows the user to explore it physically, and enables the users to interact with the installation in a freely interpreted way. By giving a wide range of different interaction options, Play'n'Create let’s physical creativity enhance digital creativity. Through physical and digital creativity elements of gamification becomes present, and gamification is tied to game based training and development of one's competencies. If Play’n’Create succeeds in its purpose, it will support the expansion of children’s creative and social skills through the gamification that it involves. Nonetheless the installation cannot with certainty fulfil these aspects, but they would be a beneficial by-product. The main purpose of Play’n’Create will thus be a creative gamification that encourage physical activity and creative playing, while it will expectantly stimulate children’s curiosity, creativity and urge to play with other children, and in that way make Play’n’Create a way of social training and development of their creativity.

CONCLUSION The design process has consisted of various new beginnings and breakdowns before reaching the final design product of a hybrid tool for creativity. After ethnographic studies and user tests of the prototype resulted in a clear indication that children were drawn to the installation and its core elements: Bright colours, a tangible user interface and instantly visual feedback. The installation turned out to be a meaningful tool for children at DOKK1. For a glimpse at the future initiatives for Play’n’Create see the information box to the left. Play'n'Create facilitates physical activity, gamification and interaction between children through the user’s individual and co-interpretation of the installations possibilities. The design is aimed to be a preliminary answer to solve our hypothesis concerning the fact that children's everyday lives are characterized by sedentary activities and often in front of a screen alone. The foundation for the hypothesis and Play’n’Create is to encourage physical movement, creation of visualisations and playful interaction among children with a digital installation. The installation ought to be an interactive floor with thrust surfaces in different forms, colours and sounds where children can play and create.

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FUTURE INITIATIVES Play’n’Create is a working prototype, but improvement can thus be made. Opposed to the setup in the video, the screen is intended to be a projector, so the visualisation can cover a wall. After the user involvement, ways for enhancement in the installation has been discovered. For future development, another possibility for the installation is to connect a printer, or a share button for either smartphones or social media, to make it possible to share their visual expression. This potential became obvious, because the last user tests showed that the users often took a picture of their final visualisation or even said, that they would like to keep a snapshot of their own visualisation. To further engage children, the next step is to improve the concept with sound effects.

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