Keeping up appearances: interpretation of tangible artifact design

ABSTRACT

The design and interaction of physical game artifacts is becoming increasingly important for the design of digital tabletop games. In this paper a study is described investigating the differences in interpretations of realistic and abstract game artifacts comparing children and adults. A game was created on a digital tabletop as a carrier for the user evaluation presented in this paper. The appearance of the game artifacts was explored and a family of each of the artifacts was created. The interpretations of each of the individual artifacts and their different visual appearances were tested to determine whether children rank and interpret the functionalities of the artifacts differently than adults.

The results showed that overall the understanding of abstract artifacts compared to realistic ones was best for both children and adults. It also indicated there was no significant difference in the interpretations of the realistic and abstract artifacts between children and adults.

REFERENCES

• 1: Saskia Bakker , Debby Vorstenbosch , Elise van den Hoven , Gerard Hollemans , Tom Bergman, Tangible interaction in tabletop games: studying iconic and symbolic play pieces, Proceedings of the international conference on Advances in computer entertainment technology, June 13-15, 2007, Salzburg, Austria [doi>10.1145/1255047.1255081]
• 2: Pippin Barr , James Noble , Robert Biddle, Icons R icons, Proceedings of the Fourth Australasian user interface conference on User interfaces 2003, p.25-32, February 01, 2003, Adelaide, Australia
• 3: Chandler, D. 2002. Semiotics, the basics. Routledge, London.
• 4: Chris Crawford, Chris Crawford on Game Design, New Riders Publishing, Thousand Oaks, CA, 2003
• 5: Crilly, N., Moultrie, J. and Clarkson, P. J. 2004. Seeing Things: consumer response to the visual domain in product design. Design studies, Vol. 25, No. 6. 547--577.
• 6: Demirbilek, O. and Sener, B. 2003. Product Design, semantics and emotional response. Ergonomics, Vol. 46, No. 13. 1346--1360.
• 7: Tom Djajadiningrat , Stephan Wensveen , Joep Frens , Kees Overbeeke, Tangible products: redressing the balance between appearance and action, Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, v.8 n.5, p.294-309, September 2004 [doi>10.1007/s00779-004-0293-8]
• 8: Jennifer Ferreira , Pippin Barr , James Noble, The semiotics of user interface redesign, Proceedings of the Sixth Australasian conference on User interface, p.47-53, January 30-February 03, 2005, Newcastle, Australia
• 9: Jennifer Ferreira , James Noble , Robert Biddle, A case for iconic icons, Proceedings of the 7th Australasian User interface conference, p.97-100, January 16-19, 2006, Hobart, Australia
• 10: George W. Fitzmaurice , Hiroshi Ishii , William A. S. Buxton, Bricks: laying the foundations for graspable user interfaces, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, p.442-449, May 07-11, 1995, Denver, Colorado, United States [doi>10.1145/223904.223964]
• 11: Lars Hallnäs , Johan Redström, From use to presence: on the expressions and aesthetics of everyday computational things, ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI), v.9 n.2, p.106-124, June 2002 [doi>10.1145/513665.513668]
• 12: Eva Hornecker , Jacob Buur, Getting a grip on tangible interaction: a framework on physical space and social interaction, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human Factors in computing systems, April 22-27, 2006, Montréal, Québec, Canada [doi>10.1145/1124772.1124838]
• 13: Katherine Isbister, Better Game Characters by Design: A Psychological Approach (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Interactive 3D Technology), Morgan Kaufmann Publishers Inc., San Francisco, CA, 2006
• 14: Martin Kaltenbrunner , Ross Bencina, reacTIVision: a computer-vision framework for table-based tangible interaction, Proceedings of the 1st international conference on Tangible and embedded interaction, February 15-17, 2007, Baton Rouge, Louisiana [doi>10.1145/1226969.1226983]
• 15: Krippendorff, K. 2006. The semantic turn, a new foundation for design. Taylor & Francis Group, LLC, Boca Raton.
• 16: Russell Kruger , Sheelagh Carpendale , Stacey D. Scott , Saul Greenberg, How people use orientation on tables: comprehension, coordination and communication, Proceedings of the 2003 international ACM SIGGROUP conference on Supporting group work, November 09-12, 2003, Sanibel Island, Florida, USA [doi>10.1145/958160.958219]
• 17: Carsten Magerkurth , Adrian David Cheok , Regan L. Mandryk , Trond Nilsen, Pervasive games: bringing computer entertainment back to the real world, Computers in Entertainment (CIE), v.3 n.3, July 2005 [doi>10.1145/1077246.1077257]
• 18: Carsten Magerkurth , Timo Engelke , Maral Memisoglu, Augmenting the virtual domain with physical and social elements: towards a paradigm shift in computer entertainment technology, Computers in Entertainment (CIE), v.2 n.4, October 2004 [doi>10.1145/1037851.1037870]
• 19: Carsten Magerkurth , Maral Memisoglu , Timo Engelke , Norbert Streitz, Towards the next generation of tabletop gaming experiences, Proceedings of Graphics Interface 2004, p.73-80, May 17-19, 2004, London, Ontario, Canada
• 20: Regan L. Mandryk , Diego S. Maranan, False prophets: exploring hybrid board/video games, CHI '02 extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems, April 20-25, 2002, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA [doi>10.1145/506443.506523]
• 21: Aaron Marcus, Icons, symbols, and signs: visible languages to facilitate communication, interactions, v.10 n.3, May + June 2003 [doi>10.1145/769759.769774]
• 22: Meredith Ringel Morris , Anqi Huang , Andreas Paepcke , Terry Winograd, Cooperative gestures: multi-user gestural interactions for co-located groupware, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human Factors in computing systems, April 22-27, 2006, Montréal, Québec, Canada [doi>10.1145/1124772.1124952]
• 23: Oehlke, H. 1990. In search of the semantics of design objects. In Semantic Vision in Design, S. Vihma, Ed., University of Industrial Arts Helsinki (UIAH), e1-e12.
• 24: Petterson, G. 2001. Products as signs: An implication of semantic and three-dimensional visual analysis in product development. Last retrieved 16 Apr 2008, from: http://www.ivt.ntnu.no/ipd/forskning/artikler/2001/Petterso n_II.PDF
• 25: Pinho, M. S. and Dal-Sasso Freitas, C. M. 2001. Cooperative and Simultaneous Object Manipulation in Collaborative Virtual Environments. IEEE Workshop on the future of VR AR Interfaces. (Yokohama, Los Alamitos). 85--92.
• 26: Anne Marie Piper , Eileen O'Brien , Meredith Ringel Morris , Terry Winograd, SIDES: a cooperative tabletop computer game for social skills development, Proceedings of the 2006 20th anniversary conference on Computer supported cooperative work, November 04-08, 2006, Banff, Alberta, Canada [doi>10.1145/1180875.1180877]
• 27: Meredith Ringel , Kathy Ryall , Chia Shen , Clifton Forlines , Frederic Vernier, Release, relocate, reorient, resize: fluid techniques for document sharing on multi-user interactive tables, CHI '04 extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems, April 24-29, 2004, Vienna, Austria [doi>10.1145/985921.986085]
• 28: Rogers, Y. and Lindley, S. 2004. Collaborating around large interactive displays: which way is best to meet? Interacting with Computers 16. 1133--1152.
• 29: Scott, S. D., Mandryk, R. L. and Inkpen, K. M. 2003. Understanding children's collaborative interactions in shared environments. In Journal of Computer-Assisted Learning, Vol. 19, No. 2. 220--228.
• 30: Tse, E., Greenberg, S. and Shen, C. 2006. Motivating Multimodal Interaction Around Digital Tabletops. In Proceedings of Computer Supported Cooperative Work. (Banff, Canada). CSCW'06.
• 31: Tuan, Y. 1978. Sign and Metaphor. Annals of the association of American geographers, Vol. 68, No. 3. 363--372.
• 32: B. Ullmer , H. Ishii, Emerging frameworks for tangible user interfaces, IBM Systems Journal, v.39 n.3-4, p.915-931, July 2000
• 33: Väkevä, S. 1990. What doe we need semiotics for? In In Semantic Vision in Design, S. Vihma, Ed., University of Industrial Arts Helsinki (UIAH), g1--g9.
• 34: Vogt, P. and Ziemke, T. 2002. The physical symbol grounding problem. Cognitive Systems Research, Vol. 3, No. 3. 429--457.
• 35: Mike Wu , Ravin Balakrishnan, Multi-finger and whole hand gestural interaction techniques for multi-user tabletop displays, Proceedings of the 16th annual ACM symposium on User interface software and technology, p.193-202, November 02-05, 2003, Vancouver, Canada [doi>10.1145/964696.964718]
• 36: You, H. and Chen, K. 2007. Applications of affordance and semantics in product design. Design Studios, Vol. 28, No. 1. 23--28.

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.5 INFORMATION INTERFACES AND PRESENTATION (I.7)
      H.5.2 User Interfaces (D.2.2, H.1.2, I.3.6)
          Subjects: Input devices and strategies (e.g., mouse, touchscreen)

Additional Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.5 INFORMATION INTERFACES AND PRESENTATION (I.7)
      H.5.2 User Interfaces (D.2.2, H.1.2, I.3.6)
          Subjects: User-centered design

  K. Computing Milieux
  K.8 PERSONAL COMPUTING
      K.8.0 General
          Subjects: Games

General Terms:
Design, Human Factors

Keywords:
digital tabletop games, interaction design, semiotics, tangible interaction