Cycle 1 – Tomatoes – Min Liu
Posted: March 26, 2022 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a comment »My research interest is designing for joint and interactive educational experience for family visitors in informal learning environment like museums and zoos. In this project, I explored how physical and digital materials can work together to enhance sense-making, and how individual and collaborative interaction can motivate learning.
I chose tomato as the learning theme. In the default scene, participants will see a tomato garden with birds and some insects. They can wave their hands to get rid of the animals. A background music of nature winds, insects and chimes is on. A green tomato, a red tomato and two leaves (one is fresh, and one is dry) are controllers. I hope this can create a sense for participants that they are in a tomato garden holding tomatoes. When the participant holds the green tomato and a leave, he/she will see the growing process of tomatoes. When the participant holds the red tomato and a leave, there shows the rotting process. When two participants hold different tomatoes together, they will see microscopic structures of tomatoes.
In the test in class, players were surprised when they triggered different video clips about tomatoes. They thought these clips were interesting and well-chosen. One participant said that the rounded style of videos makes the experience intimate. Players needed to keep touching the tomatoes along their watching the video. I wished this setting could stimulate people to make some connections between the sense of touching physical materials and the digital contents on the screen. However, the feedback was that the connections were not strong there. Players just concentrated on the videos and separated the touch sense. So, how to design integral interactions with physical and virtual materialities needs further exploration.
I tested the system again with a ten-year-old kid at home. To be honest, I failed to act as a good guidance and companion. I couldn’t help telling him what to do to trigger things and explaining the system mechanism. During the experience, the boy told me that he had watched a similar video before at school. It’s about a seed growing into a big tree. When the boy and I held the two tomatoes and watched the video together, he asked me questions like which part of the tomato is observed under microscope. This system is successful in establishing conversations between children and adults.
In the next cycles, I will keep exploring: 1. How can participants interactive with the system autonomously without verbal or written instructions? 2. How to build the connection between physical and digital materials? 3. Other creative learning and collaborative interaction ways. 4. Installations in big space.