Designing an interactive installation for children to experience abstract concepts

Parés, Narcís, 1966-; Carreras, Anna

doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-1-84882-352-5_4

Designing an interactive installation for children to experience abstract concepts

Citation

Carreras A, Parés N. Designing an interactive installation for children to experience abstract concepts. In: Macías JA, Granollers A, Latorre PM, editors. New trends on human-computer interaction: Research, development, new tools and methods. New York: Springer; 2009. p. 33-42. DOI: 10.1007/978-1-84882-352-5_4

Abstract

In this chapter we present the design process followed for an interactive experience in a museum installation for children of age 14 to 18. The experience wishes to communicate a set of abstract concepts through full-body interaction following the interaction-driven design strategy. We also present a design framework that we have derived from the design process of this and previous full-body interactive experiences, in an attempt to generalize the steps we have followed. This framework is based on five levels, namely: conceptual, symbolic, semantic, user attitude, and user action levels. We believe this will allow designers to achieve experiences that better communicate abstract concepts and notions through interaction itself by making the users “live” the experiences in their own flesh through full-body interaction.