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What do we need to do to design interactive systems to make them compatible with people’s natural , joyful and ecologically-sustainable acquisition and use of information in the world?
I subscribe to understanding people’s situated use of spatial context from an “embodied interaction” perspective of Human-Computer-Interaction and designing technologies for “felt-life” . One foci in my work refers to the meaning of people's experience in natural places and another to the information people acquire, use and communicate about when they wayfind in physical and computer-mediated environments. I explore the complex couplings between people, the environment, their activities and the meaning of their experiences as people move through physical worlds and computer gameworlds. This leads to developing applications that support fluid and joyful interactions between people and assistive devices during mobile activities; and, other people during distributed computer supported collaboration.
Couplings between people, natural environments and visualisation pose interesting interaction design problems for an embodied perspective on place. David Browning, Ian Atkinson and I are addressing some of these problems in the Visualisation, e-Research and Grid Lab (VeRG) in the School of IT (JCU). David has developed a mobile head mounted panormic camera system to capture people's egocentric experiences in natural places.
With Peta Standley and the Kuku Thaypan Elders who developed the Traditional knowledge Recording Project I have been thinking ways designers can learn from Indigenous people in designing interactions that support ecologically sustainable interactions. the Elders and the community create their own deeply insightful documentaries about their country.
The emerging field of mobile guides requires developing ways to explore in situ how people wayfind unfamiliar physical environments and communicate information about their environments to each other. Methods to learn about people’s wayfinding in situ are often great fun. For example, (assisted by Jeff Axup, University of Queensland and Christopher Lueg .University of Tasmania) I've used paradigms of “technology probes” and phenomenological games and sent participants around natural and urban environments armed with mobile phones or photographic images. More recently, we've been thinking about how reflective interactions with places help people to wayfind and have been inspired by how insects turn-back and look!
Jason Holdsworth (JCU) and I have used a location-based-game (lbg) as a teaching paradigm in our courses this semester. Second and third year student designers are working together to design and implement an innovative LBG on a mobile game platform.
Connor Graham (University of Melbourne) and I have been exploring a trajectory perspective to assist designing a mobile guide for visitors “in the wild”. This approach enables describing the multi-faceted mosaic of information situated in people’s momentary and cumulative wayfinding experiences.
I am currently using metaphors, derived from wayfinding field experiments, to interpret a diversity of data collected by Joan Bentrupperbaumer and Joseph Reser (James Cook University) about informational and affective aspects of wayfinding experiences in the Wet Tropics World Heritage Area.
With Christopher Lueg (University of Tasmania) I am pursuing ways that understanding embodied interactions in wayfinding through physical environments may inform information acquisition when searching for documents.
Understanding wayfinding interactions in physical worlds can help to improve the design of computer mediated worlds. I am testing design recommendations for unfamiliar large scale gameworlds which I derived from “games” in physical terrain. Early results from studies of Guildwars suggest that gameworlds can be improved by accommodating player’s “natural” strategies in a rhetoric for place and wayfinding by supporting a appropriate induction of a Point of View (POV).
Michael Fryer (JCU) has recently designed a large scale simulated environments in which we can explore exploring the effect of different drawing systems on wayfinding behaviour.
‘Serious games’ can represent complexity and engage people in “wicked problems”. I am contributing to Ben Guy (Urban Circus) concept and design of a prototype to manage, inform and support collaboration around wicked problems arising in Town Planning. GamePlan™ achieves a balance between exploratory freedom and game-based restriction by simulating city design problems spatio-visually and shaping ludic structure using established urban design patterns.
With Margot Brereton (Information Environments, University of Queensland) I explored relations between human recognition and manipulation of physical objects and their gestural communication of information.
With Mandyam “Srini” Srinivasan (Australian National University) I investigatated the system underlying honey bee distance measurement during wayfinding. With Dave O'Caroll (now, University of Adelaide) and Simon Laughlin (University of Cambridge) I compared insects flight speed measurement systems using contrast sensitivity functions.With Tom Collett (University of Sussex: Insect Vision Group) I explored the honey bee’s flight speed measurement system. With Randolph Menzel (Frie Universitat Berlin) I investigated the honeybee’s optomotor system.
With Simon Kaplan (University of Queensland) I developed a scenario based framework for salient learning experiences in IT. For LSDA Raising Quality & Achievement I identified issues effecting retention & achievement in education. For Department of Trade of Industry/Office of Science & Technology, Association for Women in Science & Engineering, Sopheon plc, and University of Brighton's Setpoint project I consulted or co-ordinated ovarious projects for research scientists and wider participation in science and technology.