Dave sent me an email saying I got on to the Backstage and I thought Ian had posted the Second Life project but actually my Anomalous prototype got published:
http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/prototypes/archives/2007/06/anomalous.html
Cool! Next stop...Siggraph...I hope!
Just thought I'd link some interesting papers I found today. The first one is from SAFT, containing a report on young peoples use of the internet, using it as research for my dolls house...some interesting bits...click on the link "Onliners":
http://www.saftonline.org/Research_/
The second is from Ofcom, just an interesting collection of essays about online culture and some other bits and pieces:
Well I have edited and uploaded the video of the whole thing being put together and working, its on the website linked below:
http://www.danread.net/blendedplay
There are also some pictures on there of it being put together.
Well I have completed the construction of the dolls house...and it works! Apparantly tin foil makes an excellent insuulator in this case! It does seem to have had some effect on the range of the readers but it does not proove to be a big problem!
I have some video of it going together and working nicely so I will encode it and upload it tomorrow with some more pictures.
11 days to go!
I have been working on my dolls house, building one to try and house my lovely new characters. Here's some news on the project:
Characters
I have decided that instead of trying to implement a single style of character, why not just let the user choose what ever style of avatar they wish. So I have designed a few, a cute puppy, a 'cool guy' with a hoody and a pokemon-esque flowery character. I have also come up with this half girl half flower (think Bill & Ben but a little more trendy) because I like the whole idea of the characters growing, developing and dieing, which flowers then allow rebirth and reproduction which addresses some of the things in the last post.
The House
I have been working on the house, I got MAX to read multiple readers but it has issues when the readers are too close together, so some sort of shieling is required...bring on the kitchen utensils! (see link below)
www.danread.net/dollshouse/construction
The Virtual House
I have the same feelings here as I do for the characters, eventually, the user will have the ability to build, create, design or buy any space they like. So for now I've built a lovely two-up two-down with a mezzanine and some big windows!
The only issue I'm having at the moment is what sort of state the characters take on when they leave the house for any period of time, I think it seems odd for them to leave the system altogether so they need to go into some sort of "state", which is on my list of things to do!
Well its been a very productive weekend. I spent Friday with Christian and we talked through the project and came up with a plan. I was debating whether or not to use mobile phones and bluetooth as the transmission interface but I wanted to stay away from having an application on a phone because I feel it would go against the ethic of the project.
So I decided to stick with the RFID, and although I'm looking for one that will read multiple tags (anti-collision) I am making this prototype with the ability to only have one doll in any one room at the same time.
Conceptual Developments
One key thing is that I've chosen a target age group of 4-10 years.
I have decided that the hardest part of the model is the physical and digital representation of the characters. The thing is that the virtual avatars will grow with time and change appearance, which means the physical "doll" would be stuck in an out dated appearance.
- This means that the physical "doll" would have to be an abstract item.
- If the virtual avatar will grow with time...should it die? Or...
- It could be organic, and grow and wilt and spread like a flower.
- It could be something that comes to visit, and leaves at a certain time.
- If it grows and socialises, should it be allowed to reproduce. This could be seen as preparing the child for the risks of teenage activity...don't get pregnant or you'll have a moaning child like this...or that could be seen as giving "socialising with friends" bad press!
- If the child has knowledge of the avatars condition, should the avatar have knowledge of the childs condition? I.e. if the child has not been to play in the house for two days, should the avatar txt the parent to make sure they're OK? This could develop into an understanding of the two personnas.
Not only that, but as the user could txt food to the doll, the doll could txt the child to tell them they're bored, or what they read in the news this morning that they thought they might find interesting?
Technical Developments
I have been working on a model in MAX and Flash which I think will be the quickest way to mock this up. I have it working to the point where any activity is sent to an SQL with the reader it came from (the room in the house) and the ID of the chip (the name of the Doll), this in MAX is then editing the attributes of the character (i.e. hunger, exhaustion) and feeding that back to the SQL. In flash this is then moving the characters around the screen, display ing their "physical" states.
Its coming along quite nicely, and the way I've developed it, I think that if I were to find a multi-tag reader it should just fit right in.
One thing I've been thinking about is whether or not I'll need some sort of faraday shielding with the tags and readers, the reader I have at the moment is fairly low range so it should be OK, but I expect that any anti-collision reader would be a bit better?
General Ideas
I've come up with some general bits and pieces, like linking the dolls house to your iTunes, so when you play music, it makes the charactrs in the living room more content, if you don't play any music...they will get up and turn on the radio!
I will propose the concept that as the day goes on, if the doll is away from the house or the child away from the doll, the doll will get hungry, so you can feed it sandwiches by sending them via SMS, or keep it entertained and content by sending texts or calls etc. By implementing a mobile phone element within the doll, you could also send SMS messages to your doll or your friend doll which could be tranlated into voiceclips with a speaker.
There are probably some other bits I've missed but there's some food for thought.
I have been working on my Dolls House concept,
I have been fiddling with both the theory and the implementation so here's a bit of an update:
Theory
I have decided to focus the concept on the networking idea. Using the dolls house as an interface for the maintenance of the character and their emotional state, and really pushing this emotional dependency that is formed between young children and their toys.
This way, the project can concentrate on promoting play and social skills in a boundry somewhere between the real world and the virtual one, addressing the issue of children using the 'computer' to socialise but not removing them from the potentials of the digital world.
This leads on to the possible addition of elements like the education and the creativity, using the social networking as a hub.
Implementation
I have experimented with an RFID reader and some tags, and although I got it feeding into MAX and reading individual tags, I couldn't get it to work with multiple tags, which I later found out is because most readers only have the protocol to read one at a time...so...
I had an idea earlier in the project of using a mobile phone as the host for the virtual doll, as it has the physical interface for control built in and comes equiped with its plethora of connections. So instead of using the RFID, I am now trying to find a way of using Bluetooth and maybe a simple Flash Lite application for a prototype model, just having some issues with the Blueteeth at the moment!
So there it is in a nutshell right now, I'm also working on my major project report so any links to interesting resources or references on the subject would be great!
My Level 3 Interaction colleague Natasha has decided to start using her blog! Now this girl is the queen of research so there should be some interesting stuff going up soon so keep an eye on it!
The Idea:
I wanted to develop a dolls house, that would appear to be completely empty, and by moving a representational item around the different rooms, a virtul character would be augmented into a virtual, Sims style space. This way the character could have emotions and needs and the user would have to maintain the character by feeding it, sleeping it etc. Also, the user could personalise the virtual space by placing more representational items in the space to be furniture and fittings.
The idea is to remove the interactivity of play out of the computer away from the keyboard and mouse, and make the interface more literal, tangible and physical and also more traditional.
Development:
Now I have been thinking about social networking also, and how children could link their virtual dolls house to their friends and play together in their spaces, building friendships between their avatars and working on social skills and this has resonance with the users of the new Nintendo game consoles; the DS and the Wii where games are not about single player self involved experiences, but they are shared and social and can be rejigged and replayed over and over.
I was also thinking about how this play environment could be beneficial to the children, maybe it could be linked to their education. So maybe the "representational object" in the house is also an independent item. So taken away from the house, it can still function and could be taken to school. This way the virtual avatar could learn with you, storing notes and information, but also allowing you to share and network this information with your friends, again having a literal "thirst" for information and knowledge, without it...your character suffers. So then, when you get home, into your social dolls house and your knowledge bank of what you have learned is updated, and you can share it and show off with your friends, in your dolls house.
Maybe the avatar is less of a personal representation, and more of a pet. So you can have multiple pets in your dolls house, each one with its own characteristics, knowledge and social circles. This again links back to the gaming element of Tamagotchi or Pokemon, collecting pets and levels but instead of winning battles to earn points, you learn and gather and trade knowledge and information.
Implementation:
..would be fairly straight forward, you rig the house with small range RFID readers in each room, and each element you introduce would be tagged, allowing the space to triangulate their position and augment them into the virtual space.
More:
The good thing about using RFID is that it is going to become increasingly cheap to produce, you could go online and design a piece of furniture, and have it mailed to you in the post, you could then also trade them with friends and I quite like this idea of giving something virtual a physical presence.
The idea is still very blurry around the edge and it needs to be focussed, any feedback or input would be great.
This is summarised from Bill Moggridge's book, Design For Interactions, page 328-329:
Preadolescents
Kids who are not yet adolescents are looking for muscle, and freedom from their authority figures.
When they play computer games, they enjoy it because in the game, they are the boss. Their mums, their brothers and sisters, their teachers have no control.
And when they play action games, they want to be the big guy with the muscles and all the attitude, they want to be the big American Football player burying the other players in the ground, they want to be able to experiment with all the power and they want the ability to earn the virtual power with the hands on the joypad.
Teenagers
What teenagers really want is the ability to explore themselves and their identity so they like to play story games. They want the ability to experiment with possible routes for themselves and directions for their lives because society says that you have to have a direction picked out by the time you’re 20.
The computers ability to start and stop different possible life styles and do it all quickly gives teenagers the chance to try not only different pathways, but a specific pathway in multiple different styles.
Adults
As the generations that originally embraced console games are becoming adults, the demographic limitations of gaming is getting bigger. Adults like the ability to justify their leisure time by achieving something from it. By getting some form of self improvement from a game they can justify spending time playing computer games.
When kids play flight simulators, they’re looking for the power and freedom, when adults play flight sims they think; “I was going to have to pay $2500 for flight school, but with just $25 I have a flight rating of…” and they play football games not to bury people in the ground, but to improve their knowledge of the game and managing techniques.
This extension of their knowledge means that they can justify their free time playing games.
I just saw a talk by Cameron Sinclair on TED Talks (which if you don't know what it is, shame on you and watch them all here or on iTunes) and Cameron is the founder of an organisation called Architecture For Humanity.
Definately watch his TED Wish talk and check out the website:
This is an interesting alternative to traditional solar energy, using ETFE; the same plastic used to construct the Eden Project:
http://images.businessweek.com/ss/07/04/0423_efte/source/7.htm
I have just found this paper which is a reputal to a book entitled Spychips, which attempts to expose the dangers and flaws of RFID companies and technologies. This paper, written by the director of an RFID production and development company makes some interesting points:
I just found this project by Apple which I've been thinking about for a while and it looks like a great idea, I was thinking about developing a hybrid between iTunes, Amazon and Moodle, and this is a step in that direction.
http://www.apple.com/education/products/ipod/itunes_u.html
If you think about the number of students that use Moodle on a regular basis and those that use iTunes on a regular basis, it would be an excellent way of reaching students and drawing them into other models like Moodle.
I have done some more work on my Flourish project, and have some videos online of the project developing including the latest video shwing the app working pretty well.
www.danread.net/flourish/#development
