Designing for Children’s Physical Play€¦ · experiences by embedding sensors and actuators in...

Designing for Children’s Physical Play

Abstract

In this paper we describe preliminary results of our work

on designing innovative sport concepts to stimulate

children’s physical play. We are exploring how

embedding sensor and actuator technology in products

can stimulate children to practice sport related skills. It

incorporates ideas from game design, persuasive

technology and sport motivation theories. We illustrate

our approach with two case studies, in the context of

football and basketball and discuss our experiences with

embedding sensor technology to provide a motivating

play experience for children.

Keywords

Physical play, children, sport, computer games,

persuasion, exertion interface, motivation, challenge.

ACM Classification Keywords

H5.2. Information interfaces and presentation (e.g.,

HCI): User Interfaces, User-centered design

Introduction

How children spend their leisure time can be influenced

by the development of new technologies. There is a

trend to develop more computer games and interfaces

that require physical activity. Input devices such as

dance mats, Wii game controllers and eye-toy camera’s

[11,16,18] are examples of input devices that require

physical activity. We are interested in combining the

Copyright is held by the author/owner(s).

CHI 2008, April 5–10, 2008, Florence, Italy.

ACM 978-1-60558-012-8/08/04.

Tilde M. Bekker

TU Eindhoven, Department of

Industrial Design

P.O. Box 513

5600 MB Eindhoven

The Netherlands

[email protected]

Berry H. Eggen

TU Eindhoven, Department of

Industrial Design

P.O. Box 513

5600 MB Eindhoven

The Netherlands

[email protected]

CHI 2008 Proceedings · Works In Progress April 5-10, 2008 · Florence, Italy

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appeal of computer games with outside play, and have

started research on how to enhance children’s sport

experiences by embedding sensors and actuators in

mobile sport-like games.

Related work has been done by people who have

designed applications that use computer technology to

enhance physical exertion, social interaction, and

entertainment in sport and play. E.g. Ishii and colleagues

have designed an enhanced version of ping pong, called

PingPongPlus [10]. Mueller and colleagues have

designed various applications to play sports at a distance

[15]. These applications are mostly intended for adult

users. Other relevant work is on sensor-based systems

designed specifically for children. For example, Rogers

and Muller [17] have designed an adventure game for

children that requires physical interaction. The game’s

focus is on learning through exploration. Höysniemi has

designed vision-based action games for children [8]. Her

work on the role of physical movement in computer and

tangible games has led to initial requirements for such

applications, such as robustness, responsiveness,

intuitiveness and physical appropriateness [8]. Finally,

Tagaboo, is a children’s game using RFID technology,

combining physical and interpersonal characteristics as

main components of a game [12].

Many physical game designs have some drawbacks. Most

exertion interfaces, such as the Wii are attached to

computers, thus making them less portable. Projection

based solutions and sensor-based floors or walls, such as

the Lightspace Play floor [13] and the DigiWall [14], are

fixed to a specific location and often need extensive

equipment. Mobile GPS-based games, such as Uncle Roy

[5] are less suitable for children, because of safety

issues when children explore an a city on their own.

Design research on physical play

We follow a user-centred design research approach

which combines knowledge about sport and child

development, game design and persuasion.

Playing sports can help children develop many different

skills. Apart from working on their physical development,

e.g. strength, stamina, motor skills, etc.; they also

develop cognitive skills (e.g. learning about rules and

strategies), and social skills (e.g. negotiation and turn-

taking) [9]. Children practice sport because they think it

is fun to do, they enjoy making friends, want to become

fit and develop new skills. Reasons for children to stop

playing a sport are lack of fun, lack of affiliation, lack of

thrills and excitement, lack of exercise and fitness and

insufficient challenges [20]. Enhancing children’s sport

experiences can possibly increase some of the reasons

for children to play sports-like games.

One theme in our work is applying computer game

design heuristics [e.g. in 7] we can create a fun

experience that will make children enjoy practicing sport

more. This may have two effects: some children that are

hesitant to practice certain sport skills may take up a

sport, and some children that are considering quitting a

sport may continue playing the sport for a longer time.

Another theme, sport motivation theories, provides

insights into factors that influence why children start and

stop exercising. For example, the Theory of Planned

Behaviour [1] describes that actual behaviour is

influenced by perceived consequences of behaviour, by

motivations to comply with opinions of others and

perceived limitations of performing the behaviour. The

self efficacy theory [2] describes that people’s behaviour

is influenced by beliefs about their being able to do

certain activities and their outcome expectations. Such


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theories provide ideas about which perceptions to

influence through product use. For example, providing

positive experiences and motivating feedback can

contribute to children’s self efficacy and thus to their

intention to play a sport. Other inspiring theories can be

found in the literature on persuasion [6]. Fogg

describes how technology can be used to influence

people’s behaviour, e.g., how technology can function

as a tool to make keeping track of certain behaviour

easier. A final theme of our work is how sensors and

actuators can extend the physical play experience.

In our work we focus specifically on (non-professional)

sports-related contexts for children to explore the

following questions: How can practicing sport skills be

made more appealing and how can technology

contribute to creating a more fun sporting experience for

children? So far we have run design projects in the

context of playgrounds, football, basketball, skating,

running and hiking [3, 4, 19]. We will illustrate our

design approach with two recent cases conducted by

2nd year Industrial Design students during a 16 week

project. Both cases illustrate how the design of games

and sensor technology can be combined to increase

factors stimulating children to play sports, such as

having fun, having opportunities for social interactions,

experiencing challenges and doing exercises.

Case 1: Pinball Football

The aim of this project was to make football-like games

more fun and motivating to play. The concept designed

is an interactive ball with an embedded accelerometer.

Because of the direct feedback provided by coloured

LED’s (see Figure 1), children playing with it will

become more aware of their abilities and develop their

self-esteem.

The design team had frequent interaction with children

and a football trainer during the project. Early in the

project they explored what children liked and disliked

about football. They held brainstorm sessions using

computer game heuristics such as adaptive challenges,

unexpected behaviors, motivating feedback and

appealing goals, sport skill development and sensor

opportunities as inspiration sources. Based on the

brainstorm sessions they created ideas to practice

diverse soccer skills. Some ideas allowed practicing

scoring a goal, or passing the ball correctly and other

ideas focused on practicing tricks. They chose one of

their design ideas based on the children’s feedback.

The final concept is a ball which provides feedback by

changing colors displayed on the surface of the ball,

according to the quality of the action. This way,

children will be motivated to train and get to the

highest level. To adjust the challenge for different skill

levels, the ball will adjust its range to the level with

which it is being played. Three games were designed.

For example, for the Five Pass Game two teams of two

players each need to score in the same goal. The ball

measures the acceleration when it is kicked; this

enables the ball to count the number of passes. The

ball will light up a little bit more after each pass. After

five passes the ball will be fully lit and both of the

teams can use it to score a goal. After 10 seconds the

ball will turn off. The team which scored the most goals

will be the winner. Because players are both offenders

and defenders individual techniques are emphasized.

The design was tested with a working prototype by

children and a football trainer. This provided input

about whether the children understood how the games

work and whether they were motivating. The results

Figure 1. The football

prototype, that provides

feedback using coloured LED’s.


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inspired a number of changes to the ball and the

games. For example, the feedback should be more

visible, and the time that the ball will be lit to score a

goal can be shorter than originally implemented. The

football trainer liked the design, because children were

much more active in sessions with the sensor-enhanced

football than in the traditional training sessions.

Case 2: Virtual Basketball

The aim of this project was to make basketball-like

games more fun and motivating to play. The concept

designed is a set of gloves with infrared sensors and

receivers for practicing passing a virtual ball and an

accelerometer to track the user’s amount of exercise.

Figure 2. A scenario describing a game to be played with the gloves to practice passing skills.


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The student design team explored how to combine

components of playing basket-ball with creating

interesting games. They asked children what they liked

and disliked about sports in general and basketball in

particular. Some of the findings were that children liked

receiving feedback about their exercise behavior. They

created various concepts using sport, sensors, and

computer games characteristics as inspiration sources.

Based on the children’s input the team selected one

design idea that consisted of two important elements:

practicing basket ball skills and providing motivating

feedback.

The final concept allows children to practice diverse

skills required for playing basket ball using gloves with

infrared LED’s and receivers. One game consists of

passing a virtual ball, by passing an infrared beam from

one team member to the next. The other team’s

members try to intercept the infrared beams with their

gloves. The glove provides feedback about correct

behaviour. Another game allows children to practice

scoring in a virtual basket, by passing the infrared

beam from one member to another and finally passing

the beam to an infrared target which is attached to a

wall or tree. The settings of the infrared technology can

be changed to adapt the challenge of the game, e.g.

the distance the infrared beam can span.

The design was tested with 8 children using a low-fi

prototype. A tennis-ball with a piece of ribbon attached

was used to simulate the behaviour of the infra-red

beam. Two teams of three children played the games to

check whether they understood and enjoyed playing

them. The findings showed that the children liked

having individual objects in the form of gloves. At first

they had some trouble understanding the game rules.

They enjoyed the games, and started developing

diverse strategies for finishing the games. They also

liked the fact that they could practice passing and field-

positioning skills independently of ball control skills,

because no actual ball was required for playing the

games.

Conclusion and discussion

The two cases illustrate our design approach. They

show how measuring behavior with sensors can be

used to provide feedback about local goals with

appropriate challenge. In turn the feedback motivates

children to practice skills and enjoy games. The two

cases illustrate diverse opportunities of sensor

technology: while the football concept has enhanced

the properties of the ball, the basketball concept shows

that some skills can be practiced independently of using

a ball. The strength of the cases lies in the simple use

of sensor technology leading to mobile game solutions.

As a consequence, both concepts would have low start-

up costs for the users. The only example described in

the introduction section similar in this respect is the

Tagaboo game [12] that uses RFID technology: the

other examples provide much more complex solutions.

So far we have we have explored our design approach

through student projects. The next step will be to

develop one of the concepts further into a fully working

prototype. Our initial findings are very promising, but

we intend to use the prototype to do more formal

testing of the added value of the sensor technology and

to extend our knowledge about how to design mobile

physical games for children.

Figure 3. The glove prototype,

that provides feedback using

coloured LED’s.


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Acknowledgements

We thank Jop Japenga, Dripta Roy, Ralph Kooijman,

Stijn Weterings and Jeroen Verhoeven for creating the

football concept and Koen Verbruggen, Ruben Hekkens,

Tommaso Petillo, Rens Brankaert for creating the

basketball concept.

References [1] Ajzen, I. The theory of planned behavior, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 50 (1991), 179-211.

[2] Bandura, A. Self-efficacy: The exercise of control. New York: Freeman, 1997.

[3] Bekker, M.M. Hoven, van der E., Peters, Peter, and klein Hemmink, B. Stimulating Children’s Physical Play through Interactive Games: Two Exploratory Case Studies, In Interaction Design and Children proceedings, ACM Press (2007), 163- 164.

[4] Bekker, T., and Eggen, B. Designing exertion interfaces for children. Position paper for Exertion Interfaces Workshop, CHI 2008, April 5 –10, 2008, Florence, Italy.

[5] Benford, S., Flintham, M., Drozd, A., Anastasi, R., Rowland, D., Tandavanitj, N., Adams, M., Row Farr, J., Oldroyd, A., Sutton, J., Uncle Roy All Around You: Implicating the City in a Location-Based Performance, Proc Advanced Computer Entertainment, ACE 2004, ACM Press (2004).

[6] Fogg, B.J. Persuasive Technology: Using Computers to Change What We Think and Do. San Francisco: Morgan Kaufmann, 2003.

[7] Fullerton, T., Swain, C., and Hoffman, S. Game design Workshop, CMP Books, 2004.

[8] Höysniemi, J. Hämäläinen,P. Turkki,L., Rouvi , T. Children's intuitive gestures in vision-based action games, Communications of the ACM, 48, 1 (2005), 44-50.

[9] Humphrey, J.H. Child development through sports, Haworth Press, 2003.

[10] Ishii H., Wisneski C., Orbanes J., Chun B., Paradiso J. PingPongPlus: design of an athletic-tangible interface for computer-supported cooperative play. In: Proceedings of CHI ‘99, ACM Press (1999) 394–401.

[11] Konami of America – Dance Dance Revolution controllers, http://www.konami.com/Konami/ctl3810/

cp20114/cl0/accessories

[12] Konkel, M. , Leung, V. ,Ullmer, B., Hu, C., Tagaboo: a collaborative children's game based upon wearable RFID technology, Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, 8, 5 (2004), pp. 382-384.

[13] Lightspace Play. Retrieved at January 21, 2008 from

http://www.lightspacecorp.com/products/lightspaceplay

[14] Liljedahl, M. and Lindberg S. DigiWall – an audio mostly game. Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Auditory Display, June 20-23, 2006, London, UK.

[15] Mueller, F., Stevens, G., Thorogood, A., O’Brien, S., Wulf, V. Sports over a Distance. Journal of Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, 2006, 633-645.

[16] Nintendo Wii game controller: http://wii.com/

[17] Rogers, Y. and Muller, H., A framework for designing

sensor-based interactions to promote exploration and reflection in play, Int. J. of Human-Computer Studies, 64, 1 (2006), 1-14.

[18] Sony Playstation Eye Toy Camera,

http://www.us.playstation.com/PS2/Games/EyeToy_Play/OGS/

[19] Stienstra, J., Hopma, E. and Bekker, M. ‘Move it’- A persuasive game for 11-year old children, In adjunct proc. Persuasive 06, Springer (2006) , 21-25.

[20] Weinberg, R. S. & Gould, D. Foundations of Sport and Exercise Psychology, Human Kinetics, 2003.


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