Observation Findings, 2010 March 03

At a high level, the discovery aspect of the tiles project is its strongest foundation. We found that children who approached the blank board with little or no preconception of what the application afforded were the most interesting to observe. As they grasped the basics of turning tiles, it was easy to observe the connection they made with the musical feedback the application gave. The implementation of the magic tile also instilled and encouraged a curiosity that resulted in an alternate avenue of play. Ultimately, there were two types of players--those who, upon recognizing the objective-based play the magic tile represented, spent their efforts chasing after it, and those who were content to explore the application in other ways.

In both cases, some observations that were the most salient was the lack of observation on the part of the participants. Most children did not figure out the correlation between tile height and musical tone. In fact, the question entered few of the children's minds at all in post-mortem questioning. in the build that displayed a timer to when the game ended, no player was able to recognize the connection between the timer and the magic tiles (which, when hit, extended the time remaining). Finally, the game over screen displayed when the timer depleted proved to be a downer on the experience; the "game over" term is universally understood, it would appear. Another feature tried out was that of face capture, which proved to be less popular than theorized because of the necessity to insert breaks in the tile-playing flow in order to snap photos. Also, because the photos appear when a magic tile is hit, attention lingering on the face captured photo was sparse at best, since the magic tile implementation encourages immediate redirection of attention to where the magic tile will next appear.

Finally, there seemed to be a disparity of behavior between males and females. The former group tended to be more physically active toward chasing the magic tile, and more possessive of the game as well. The most iconic example of this observation came when two girls stood by and watched quietly as two boys, each with two IR pens in hand, failed to offer either of the new girls a chance to play. In contrast, the girls were considerably more open to sharing, and it was only in the instance when the players were comprised entirely of females that a full four (actually six) participants were at the board together simultaneously. Fortunately, in most cases, we found that children were more than adequate as teachers to newcomers with regard to how the application is used. Ideally, come demonstration night, we will only have to instruct the first players on the mechanics of the tile board, and let them in turn pass on their knowledge and experience to others as the night wears on.

With respect to the final demonstration, there is some concern that the DLP set's display is higher than of that used in observations at Nueva--this may result in parts of the display being too high to reach. Also, some children were more violent with the pens than was ideal; hopefully the DLP will still be intact at the end of the final demonstration.

It is recognized that the basic advantage of abstraction and free-form is engaging to casual observers--from a distance, an approximate comprehension of the application's appeal can be gained via intuitive interpretation of how the application is being used. From here on, the primary focus of added implementation will focus on external feedback, in the interest of leaving the interface as seamless and simple as possible. The primary addition to be implemented will be a physical fan that will blow gusts of wind at the audience as the board periodically reshuffles its tiles. This event, we hope, will indicate in a subtle manner that it is time to let a new group of children approach the board.