Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
2.3.1
Dancing with the Oriboo
The Dancing with the Oriboo workshop organized by Elena Márquez Segura, and
Annika Waern of Mobile Life at Stockholm University, and Jin Moen of Movinto
Fun, explored aspects of technology-supported movement-based and social play,
with two games designed for the Oriboo.
The Oriboo is a dance companion for children that feeds on movements detected
by a 3-axis accelerometer, and reacts upon these movements with light via its LED-
based eyes and small display, sound, and its own motion along a 60 cm leash. The
prototype has been developed by Jin Moen and recently commercialized by Movinto
Fun (Oriboo 2013 ). Different games have been designed and playtested over the last
couple of years in order to address different movement qualities and social experience
(Márquez Segura 2013a ).
The organizers had a twofold objective. On one hand, they wanted to provide
the children with a novel experience, a technology-based body game through which
they could explore their body, their motion, the motion of others and the space
that surrounds them. On the other hand, they wanted to use the workshop as an
opportunity to gather insights into the play, playful behavior, social interaction, and
movement qualities of the children, which would be used as a source of inspiration
for designing movement based interactions for the Oriboo and other motion based
game platforms.
To achieve this objective the organizers based the workshops around two games
they had developed for the Oriboo, “Dance it” and “Make my Sound”. They used
these games as a basis to build up new games that used not only the technology as
a design resource, but also the socio-spatial setting in which the games are played
(Márquez Segura 2013b ).
The first game “Dance it” is a goal-oriented single player game that keeps track
and scores the movement of the player. The Oriboo marks interval times in which
the child needs to perform a movement indicated by the Oriboo, of a repertoire of
eight simple movements. The instructions regarding what movement to perform are
provided both by the eyes of the Oriboo (pointing in different directions, e.g. right
for “tug right”, etc.) and by its small screen, where a small stick figure performing
the movement is displayed, together with the name of the movement.
Scoring is based on whether the movements are performed accurately or not.
The second game, “Make My Sound”, is purely exploratory with no predefined
rules or goals. In this game, the Oriboo reacts with different music loops mapped to
different movement qualities of the player.
Variations of the two games were played both individually and in groups. Individ-
ual play was meant to provide the children with their own time and space to discover
and explore the technology and its basic games. Group play added to the games with
new rules in terms of external restrictions and conditions (e.g. playing “Make My
Sound” blindfolded, trying to make groups of players with the same sound), and
different socio-spatial arrangements (e.g. playing a collaborative version of “Dance
it” with one Oriboo shared within a group of children forming a line, passing it from
the first on the line to the second. Or the competitive version of this, in which two
groups placed in parallel, competing with one another) (Figs. 2.3 and 2.4 ).
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