The Research Reports can be found on Project Txoom User Research Report Nat and Project Txoom User Research Report Pam
Main Areas of Research and Key Issues
We are interested – as multi-disciplinary practitioners working in mixed media/responsive environments – to examine how “creative user research” can teach us more about how players (users) adapt to an environment (or not), where the main problems of interaction on a technical and social level occur, how people play/participate and what this play/participation constitutes on a creative level. From a design end and further development of the project we are exploring which methodologies to utilise in order to integrate proper user feed-back into the system.
Issues of (informal)learning and the acquirement of skills/embodied knowledge in an intuitive environment are focal points. As is the case with many ethnographic studies, the notion of reactivity (the influence of prior knowledge on the respondents) is to be taken into account. For example, how much do you/should you tell a player about the system during a briefing session before s/he enters the environment? What prior knowledge is necessary in order to maximise the experience? When have you said too much? In addition the contextual sensitivity of the environment towards the players is also something to be investigated. For example, can txOom accommodate a wide range of players coming from diverse socio-cultural strata? (for more on context see further).
The 3 professional (artistic) focus groups that can help us with different components of the system are:
The 3 community focus groups selected in collaboration with Seachange from Great Yarmouth:
The 3 artists groups should be briefed about the possibility to test the txOom system in its early stages of development, so that their input can be substantially incorporated in the environment.
The communication about the project needs to target the 3 community groups in different ways.
The workshops will be structured in the same manner for all three focus groups. Each group should consist of 14 people, 7 going through the workshop in the morning (11.00 - 13.30), the other 7 in the afternoon (14.00 - 16.30). In each group, there should be 4 people who are not afraid of heights, as 4 costumes are suspended in the air from security ropes and bungee cords.
The profiles for the 3 artistic groups are very flexible. The can be of any age group, preferably mixed genders, mixed cultural backgrounds. They should be interested in working with responsive environments for their own practice, and willing to share their experiences in the txOom environment from a professional and experiential point of view.
The exact profiles of the people in the 3 community groups should be decided in collaboration with FoAM, Future Physical and Seachange. In this document we want to provide a very general profile that needs further specification, that can be better handled by Seachange and community workers who know the groups and individuals on a personal level.
The txOom responsive space in the Hippodrome exists of several physical and media components that the groups can experience. The exact 'journey' through the environment can not be described, as the goal of the project is not to prescribe behaviours, but allow the participants to improvise. If the interaction is successful, the participants should be able to 'grow their own worlds' within the framework of txOom's action landscape. Therefore in this document the 'adventure' is described only in terms of phases that the participants go through, rather than attempting to describe the phenomenological experience in the space.
The first space the participants enter is the waiting room, where they can see the history of the project visualised in text, image and possibly sound. The second stage involves going into the dressing rooms, depositing bags, coats and other items of clothing, as well as removing the shoes. Here the participants will be handed white overalls or lab plastic coats and protective slippers. The reasoning behind this phase is that the participants should not have cumbersome clothing, and should be free to assume new identities by putting on new garments. The white 'uniforms' function as aesthetically unifying elements (where the participants can blend into the environment when their uniforms reflect light), as well as giving the individuals a sense of going into the environment as a group.
The first four people will be lead to the space, put in safety harnesses, and lifted up in two different types of costumes, that function as projection and reflection screens: two people will be lifted sitting down on two swings, the other two will hang on bungee cords, strapped in comfortable paragliding harnesses. After the four people are lifted up in the air, the remaining 3 people will be guided in the space, where they can play with the objects on the ground and with the hanging parts of the costumes of the people in the air. All costumes and objects have motion sensors (accelerometers) embedded in them, together with a wearable computer and a wireless transmitter, that will allow the media to respond to the movements of the 7 people in the space. The visual media consist of a visually evolving artificial life world projected onto the swing-garments and the floor, lights creating the overall atmosphere in the space, electroluminescent wire in one of the objects on the ground. The sound is designed to surround the people in the air and on the ground in a mix of electronic-organic landscapes.
The experience lasts approximately 20 minutes, after which the participants are taken back to their dressing rooms, where they remove the overalls/lab coats and slippers, take their belongings and head back into the waiting room - which becomes an interesting social space where the experiences are compared and exchanged.
group 1
11.00 - 11.30 Arrivals and brief introduction to the project
11.30 - 12.00 Experience of the txOom environment, without detailed instructions
12.00 - 12.30 Group feedback sessionabout the experience Detailed explanation of the txOom environment
12.30 - 13.00 Instructed experience in the txOom environment
13.00 - 13.30 Individual feedback sessions focused on the issues of:
13.30 - 14.00 break group 2
14.00 - 14.30 Arrivals and brief introduction to the project
14.30 - 15.00 Experience of the txOom environment, without detailed instructions
15.00 - 15.30 Group feedback sessionabout the experience Detailed explanation of the txOom environment
15.30 - 16.00 Instructed experience in the txOom environment
16.00 - 16.30 Individual feedback sessions focused on the issues of:
Methodologies and Frameworks
Research for the local community groups will focus on issues of learning, creativity, play, (social) interaction. User testing on skilled professional artists will be aimed at looking closer the same issues as the community groups as well as at the usability of the system and its components. Two major research strategies are employed to further these goals: interviews and observation. The approach taken will consist of a hybrid between ethnomethodology (where the main interest is in how people DO things, rather than how they see things) and several cognitive psychological models (activity theory/situated action models). See further in this document for an overview of the latter. As befitting to ethnographers we will generate our theory as we go along, and produce our own – what Geertz has called - “thick descriptions” (distinctive forms of knowledge) as the research progresses. In observation the main emphasis is on analysing the players actions and behaviour.
1. Briefing
2. Experiment in the txOom space
3. Feedback Sessions
4. On site (live) and off site (recorded) observation of the participants in the space
5. Multi angle recording syncronised with the visualisation of the sensor data and direct media output
6. Developers feedback
The questions drafted address the topic of interaction in 4 ways:
The questionnaires are mainly set up as open questions, so respondents can formulate answers on their own terms, and hence allow an opening to articulate the discovery of unexpected things. In that respect the interviews serve triple purposes:
Questionnaire Session 1 (group feedback) for Skills Group and Local Community Group: Addressing Attitudes and Immediate Responses to the tXoom experience. To be conducted in collective feed-back sessions of min.2 groups.
1. How would you describe your experience in txOom, and did it live up to your expectations? )
Questionnaire Session 2 (individual feedback) for Skills Group and Local Community Group: Addressing Usability of tXoom, Learning, Multi-levelled Interaction (contextual, physical/technical, conceptual) To be conducted as individual session, or max. 2 respondents.
1. How did this experience differ from the previous one, did you feel you were performing different actions (which)/exploring the environment on a different level (how)? Were you paying more attention to specific things (which)? )
6. What would you like to experience in the next version of TxOom ?
Questionnaire for Open Public Tests
To be conducted as individual sessions or max. 2 respondents.
1. How would you describe your experience in txOom, and did it live up to your expectations?
2. Was the environment responding to your actions? Which actions in particular? Did this make you change your movements/actions?
3. Could you distinguish the sound/image that you were influencing? Was it important to know what exactly you were controlling?
4. Did you move freely or have to think about what you were 'supposed“ to do?
5. Which changes would you make in the costumes, hardware, sounds or visuals? Why?
6. What would you like to experience in the next version of tXoom?
For a selection of audience responses see Project Txoom Interviews
Word Association Games
General:
1. What is a circus?
2. What is play?
3. What is a world?
4. What is evolution?
5. What is a pattern?
6. Associations to “intrude”
7. Associations to “feed”
8. Associations to “spawn”
9. Associations to “reveal”
10. Associations to “morph”
11. Associations to “sludgily”
12. Associations to “turbulently”
13. Associations to “skin”
14. Associations to “bloom”
Education Groups:
Young Single Mothers:
1. What is magical?
2. What is play?
3. What is a role?
4. What is a circus?
5. Associations to “grow”.
6. Associations to “feed”
7. Associations to “bloom”
8. Associations to “other-worldly”
Young Offenders
1. What is a world?
2. What is navigation?
3. What is a circus?
4. Associations to “game”
5. Associations to “intrude”
6. Associations to “generate”.
7. Associations to “turbulently”.
8. Associations to “spiky”.
Adults with Communication / Social Disabilities.
1. What is a circus?
2. What is a journey?
3. What is exploration?
4. What is weightlessness?
5. Associations to “reveal”
6. Associations to “play”
7. Associations to “skin”
8. Associations to “bloom”
9. Associations to “participation”
Observation 1: Social Interaction within Specified Context (Nat): Framework for Fieldwork
Studies have pointed out that HCI design benefits from explicit study of the context(s) in which users/players work/play. My personal interest in the observation part centres on examining social interaction on several levels:
Observations from session 1 and 2 will be compared – methodology for drafting fieldwork notes is yet to be determined.
Dip into “Situated Action Models”, which “emphasize the emergent, contingent nature of human activity, the way activity grows directly out of the particularities of a given situation. Concentrates on situated activity or practice. Analysts must pay attention to the flux of ongoing activity…situated action emphasizes responsiveness to the environment and the improvisatory nature of human activity.” Or “Activity Theory”: wherein an activity is something composed from a subject (the person/group engaged in activity), object (motivates the activity, objective, goal), actions (goal-directed processes to fulfil the object, tasks) and operations (routinised practice). All these constituents are dynamic and in flux. A key notion is the mediation by artefacts. The activity itself constitutes the context in activity theory. Context is both internal to people (their own objects) as it is external (artefacts, other people). In activity theory the object/goal is the point of departure for analysis, in situated action models it is the way people orient to changing conditions. In the latter the researcher observes the response to a stimulus.
1. Summary of the Research results
2. Three critical reports from observers (Pam, Steve, Nat) focusing on three different components of the environment:
These reports will be developed based on on site and off site observation of the participants in the txOom space, conducting and analysis of the feedback sessions (interviews), correlating the systems response to the activities in the physical space. cfr.Project Txoom User Research Report Nat
3. Developers feedback and conclusions
4. Contextualisation in the field od responsive environments and interactive objects/spaces
5. Evaluation of methodology and results
6. DVD consisting of:
[note that due to the lack of funds only a small section of the DVD was included in the txOom project overview DVD)