Research
PhD student: Marion Voillot
Supervisors: Frédéric Bevilacqua (IRCAM-STMS), Joël Chevrier (CRI Paris, University of Paris) Guillian Graves (Center for Research in Design ENS/ENSCI)
Faced with the massive arrival of mobile interfaces in the lives of very young children, families and early childhood professionals face difficulties and reduce digital tools to screen-based interfaces only. However, since the beginning of the 21st century, the field of child-computer interaction has seen the emergence of many projects based on tangible interaction. Through multimodal interactions, these interactive devices designed for early childhood promote the mobilization of body and mind. They enrich and establish the field of “embodied child-computer interaction” research supporting children to play, learn and interact.
In considering this knowledge about early childhood development, the following question can be asked : How to design technology interaction promoting holistic development of the child ? In a design research process, we develop tangible and digital interfaces, included in pedagogical scenarios, for young children (between 2 and 5 years old). These devices make it possible to place the body as a medium for interaction with technology by promoting multimodal interactions, i.e. the senses (hearing, sight, touch) as well as movement and gestures.
In collaboration with childhood specialists in health and education, as well as designers and engineers, we have developed 3 pedagogical scenarios :
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CoMo.education, an application for telling sound stories in motion (based on the technology developed by the Interaction Sound Music Movement team at IRCAM)
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Learning Matters, electronic textile devices promoting hand gesture interaction with electronic circuit components (in collaboration with Claire Eliot, e-textile designer, Motion Lab)
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egloo, an interactive and tangible space that invites the child to move, feel and interact with several manipulatives (supported by Lab Premiers Cris team).
In an ecological approach, all these scenarios are tested in several kindergartens in the Parisian region.
This PhD project is also part of the Lab Premiers Cris, an exploratory research lab on early childhood, at the interface between Science and Design.
Faced with the massive arrival of mobile interfaces in the lives of very young children, families and early childhood professionals face difficulties and reduce digital tools to screen-based interfaces only. However, since the beginning of the 21st century, the field of child-computer interaction has seen the emergence of many projects based on tangible interaction. Through multimodal interactions, these interactive devices designed for early childhood promote the mobilization of body and mind. They enrich and establish the field of “embodied child-computer interaction” research supporting children to play, learn and interact.
In considering this knowledge about early childhood development, the following question can be asked : How to design technology interaction promoting holistic development of the child ? In a design research process, we develop tangible and digital interfaces, included in pedagogical scenarios, for young children (between 2 and 5 years old). These devices make it possible to place the body as a medium for interaction with technology by promoting multimodal interactions, i.e. the senses (hearing, sight, touch) as well as movement and gestures.
In collaboration with childhood specialists in health and education, as well as designers and engineers, we have developed 3 pedagogical scenarios. In an ecological approach, all these scenarios are tested in several kindergartens.
-
CoMo.education, an application for telling sound stories in motion (based on the technology developed by the Interaction Sound Music Movement team at IRCAM)
-
Learning Matters, electronic textile devices promoting hand gesture interaction with electronic circuit components (in collaboration with Claire Eliot, e-textile designer, Motion Lab)
-
egloo, an interactive and tangible space that invites the child to move, feel and interact with several manipulatives (supported by Lab Premiers Cris team).
PhD student: Ana Phelippeau
Supervisors: Joël Chevrier (CRI Paris, University of Paris)
Regular pens provide a unique feedback to writers: the written trace.
Afterwards.
Not in real time.
Today, with ubiquitous digital technology, movement sensors with performance specifically adapted to human perception and actions are found in any Smartphones and Tablets.
Further this opens the possibility to access in real time (time acquisition is in the range 1ms-10ms) movements, vibrations and orientations of the pen.
Goals here are:
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improvements and adaptations of hardware, of software parameters,
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but also creation of specific user interfaces for both:
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researchers,
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practitioners
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and children:
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with in mind : flexibility of user scenarios, modularity of data acquisition, test of feedback (sounds, vibrations, lights…).
When we think about DCD children as suggested by Caroline Huron, our aim with Sensitive-Pen is to empower researchers and practitioners working with children affected by DCD, with these diagnostic and remediation tools.
DCD stands for Developmental co-ordination disorder.
PhD student: Gaëtan Guironnet E.D. 474 - I.3.S.P., Université de Paris.
Supervisors: Bernard Andrieu, Directeur de l’URP 3625 - I.3.S.P., Université de Paris.
Joël Chevrier, C.R.I. Paris, University of Paris.
The D.O.R.A. Digital Orienteering Race Application project is an open source device to help learn orienteering in a school context.
The hardware device is composed of a Movuino GPS sensor developed at C.R.I. by Kévin Lhoste.
The server and its autonomy in natural spaces are ensured by a Raspberry pi on battery.
The software interface was developed by Séverin Ferard, a student at C.R.I./école 42.
The design of the application and the information of the interface for students, teachers and researchers were introduced by Gaëtan Guironnet, teacher of E.P.S. and doctoral student in reference to the course of action (J. Theureau, 2014).
The challenge of the device is to use the digital to enacter (F. Varela, 1991) during the orienteering race, the affordances made meaningful by the attention produced by the digital interface, collection of the student's activity. In other words, the arrangement of data produced by the runner must make his activity and sources of progress meaningful. (D. Norman, 2013)
The digital thus makes the body capable of adapting to an ever-changing environment of its experiences. In a phenomenal vision (Merleau-Ponty, 1945), the body and its action becomes embodied in the environment (Embodied mind, Varela, 1996).
This personalisation is made visible thanks to the digital interface visible to the student at the end of the race. It is enhanced by the addition of personal commentary on his or her sensations and the activity felt over the course of the sessions by an objectifiable part of the activity in the third person and a subjective part in the first person.
This hybridization of the digital within a physical environment of movement aims to show the added value of a phygital device.