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Designing StoryRooms: Interactive Storytelling Spaces for Children. Houman Alborzi. Allison Druin. Jaime Montemayor. Lisa Sherman. Gustav Taxn. Jack Best. Joe Hammer. Alex Kruskal. Abby Lal. Thomas Plaisant Schwenn. Lauren Sumida. Rebecca Wagner. Jim Hendler. February 2000.
Limited access to space, costly props, and complicated authoring technologies are among the many reasons why children can rarely enjoy the experience of authoring room-sized interactive stories. Typically in these kinds of environments, children are restricted to being story participants, rather than story authors. Therefore, we have begun the development of "StoryRooms," room-sized immersive storytelling experiences for children. With the use of low-tech and high-tech storytelling elements, children can author physical storytelling experiences to share with other children. In the paper that follows, we will describe our design philosophy, design process with children, the current technology implementation and example StoryRooms. (Also cross-referenced as UMIACS-TR-2000-06) University of Maryland Institute for Advanced Computer Studies, Department of Computer Science, University of Maryland, Human-Computer Interaction Laboratory,
Designing Storytelling Technologies to Encourage Collabortion Between. Steve Benford. Benjamin B. Bederson. Karl-Petter Åkesson. Victor Bayon. Allison Druin. Pär Hansson. Juan Pablo Hourcade. Rob Ingram. Helen Neale. Claire O’Malle. Kristian T. Simsarian. Danaë Stanton. Yngve Sundblad. Gustav Taxén. November 1999.
We describe the iterative design of two collaborative storytelling technologies for young children, KidPad and the Klump. We focus on the idea of designing interfaces to subtly encourage collaboration so that children are invited to discover the added benefits of working together. This idea has been motivated by our experiences of using early versions of our technologies in schools in Sweden and the UK. We compare the approach of encouraging collaboration with other approaches to synchronizing shared interfaces. We describe how we have revised the technologies to encourage collaboration and to reflect design suggestions made by the children themselves. (Also cross-referenced as UMIACS-TR-99-76) University of Maryland Institute for Advanced Computer Studies, Department of Computer Science, University of Maryland,
Single Display Groupware. Benjamin B. Bederson. Jason Stewart. Allison Druin. November 1999.
We discuss a model for supporting collaborative work between people that are physically close to each other. We call this model Single Display Groupware (SDG). In this paper, we describe the model, comparing it to more traditional remote collaboration. We describe the requirements that SDG places on computer technology, and our understanding of the benefits and costs of SDG systems. Finally, we describe a prototype SDG system that we built and the results of a usability test we ran with 60 elementary school children. Through participant observation, video analysis, program instrumentation, and an informal survey, we discovered that the SDG approach to collaboration has strong potential. Children overwhelmingly prefer two mice to one mouse when collaborating with other children. We identified several collaborative styles including a dominant partner, independent simultaneous use, a mentor/mentee relationship, and active collaboration. (Also cross-referenced as UMIACS-TR-99-75) University of Maryland Institute for Advanced Computer Studies, Department of Computer Science, University of Maryland,
PETS: A Personal Teller of Stories. Jaime Montemayor. Allison Druin. Jim Hendler. November 1999.
Let us start by reading a story written by a seven year old child, entitled Michelle. "There once was a robot named Michelle. She was new in the neighborhood. She was HAPPY when she first came, thinking she would make friends. But it was the opposite. Other robots threw rocks and sticks. She was SAD. Now no one liked her. One day she was walking down a street, a huge busy one, when another robot named Rob came up and ask [sic] if she wanted to have a friend. She was SCARED at first but then realized that she was HAPPY. The other robots were ANGRY but knew that they had learned their lesson. Michelle and Rob lived HAPPILY ever after. No one noticed the dents from rocks that stayed on Michelle." (Druin, Research notes, August 1998) This is just one of many stories that children have written with the help of PETS (Druin et al. 1999a). The author of Michelle did not just write this moving story; she is also an integral member of the team that built our robots. As you read on, PETS will be further described. Our motivations behind building such an interactive robotic pet will also be discussed. In addition, the process of how we made this robotic technology with our team of adults and six children will be introduced. And with this, we will present cooperative inquiry (Druin 1999a), the methodology that we embrace as we discover insights about technology, education, science, engineering, and art. Finally, this chapter will close with reflections on what was learned from on-going research effort. (Also cross-referenced as UMIACS-TR-99-67) University of Maryland Institute for Advanced Computer Studies, Department of Computer Science, University of Maryland,
The Role of Children in the Design Technology. Allison Druin. September 1999.
Children play games, chat with friends, tell stories, study history or math, and today this can all be done supported by new technologies. From the Internet to multimedia authoring tools, technology is changing the way children live and learn. As these new technologies become ever more critical to our children's lives, we need to be sure these technologies support children in ways that make sense for them as young learners, explorers, and avid technology users. This may seem of obvious importance, because for almost 20 years the HCI community has pursued new ways to understand users of technology. However, with children as users, it has been difficult to bring them into the design process. Children go to school for most of their days; there are existing power structures, biases, and assumptions between adults and children to get beyond; and children, especially young ones have difficulty in verbalizing their thoughts. For all of these reasons, a child's role in the design of new technology has historically been minimized. Based upon a survey of the literature and my own research experiences with children, this paper defines a framework for understanding the various roles children can have in the design process, and how these roles can impact technologies that are created. (Also cross-referenced as UMIACS-TR-99-53) University of Maryland Institute for Advanced Computer Studies, Department of Computer Science, University of Maryland,
Single Display Groupware: A Model for Co-present Collaboration. Jason Stewart. Benjamin B. Bederson. Allison Druin. December 1998.
We introduce a model for supporting collaborative work between people that are physically close to each other. We call this model Single Display Groupware (SDG). In this paper, we describe this model, comparing it to more traditional remote collaboration. We describe the requirements that SDG places on computer technology, and our understanding of the benefits and costs of SDG systems. Finally, we describe a prototype SDG system that we built and the results of a usability test we ran with 60 elementary school children. (Also cross-referenced as UMIACS-TR-98-75) University of Maryland Instsitute for Advacned Computer Studies, Department of Computer Science, University of Maryland,
Chapter 3: Children as Our Technology Design Partners+. Allison Druin. Ben Bederson. Angela Boltman. Adrian Miura. Debby Knotts-Callahan. Mark Platt. March 1998.
"That's silly!" "I'm bored!" "I like that!" "Why do I have to do this?" "What is this for?" These are all important responses and questions that come from children. As our design partners in developing new technologies, children can offer bluntly honest views of their world. They have their own likes, dislikes, and needs that are not the same as adults' (Druin, Stewart, Proft, Bederson, & Hollan, 1997). As the development of new technologies for children becomes commonplace in industry and university research labs, children's input into the design and development process is critical. We need to establish new development methodologies that enable us to stop and listen, and learn to collaborate with children of all ages. In the chapter that follows, a discussion of new research methodologies will be presented. (Also cross-referenced as UMIACS-TR-98-20) University of Maryland Institute for Advanced Computer Studies, Department of Computer Science, University of Maryland,
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