ReacTickles are autonomous experiential interfaces, by this we suggest that they are independent of meaning until the player gives them life, and as a consequence of interaction they provoke freedom of expression and interpretation.
The new website reactickles.org is being developed as a way to move the research forward and to reconceptualise the online ReacTickles Gallery as a more compelling, socially constructed model that can support the ongoing development of the original concept.
We see this as a starting point to migrate ReacTickles onto new platforms, specifically through mobile devices and a dynamic online “collectors” gallery. Simplicity remains a consistent feature that will guide ReacTickles developments. Ideas, concepts and prototypes will continue to evolve through a continuous discourse between researchers, the open source interaction design and programming community and young people.
This process of design and development is open and exploratory in order to provide room for the contribution of participating communities.
Our vision is that ReacTickles could act as a conduit for playful experiences, which assist the player, adult and/or child the and the designer in learning more about how curiosity, enchantment, imagination and engagement forms the basis for a positive interactive experience. The reactickles.org network is conceived as both and online and offline opportunity to inspire communities to collaborate, and to draw attention to the creative and communicative abilities of all people, where diverse and meaningful interpretations can be generated and the distinction between user and developer is blurred through a sustainable ecology of networked participation.
Guiding principles for design:
These guiding principles are suggested as a method of provoking thoughts and ideas, they are not rules. The main objective is to trigger curiosity, to maintain interaction and support inclusion by making design so simple that anything is possible and open to interpretation in the mind of the user. This means designing elements that are naturally stimulating but that do not overburden the player with complex features that require an unnecessary level of cognitive processing and compliance.
On this basis of anecdotal feedback and observational studies, the following guiding principles for design are offered, each will be illustrated in more detail through case studies in Guiding principles in practice.
1. Design concepts should arise from a participatory design ethic. Participation should be understood in the context of individual experience and should democratically respond to conditions that lead to proper and legitimate participation. The ultimate goal is not for a child to become a designer, but for the child’s tacit knowledge to come into play and form the design process. Our previous participatory activities and workshops have provided the foundations of ReacTickles and will continue to inspire new work.
2. Interfaces should be conceptualised as physical forms with clear affordances and phenomenological distinctions. When the properties of the technology input and output, as well as the nature of interaction, for example pressure, movement, location, are interrelated and co-dependent, increased self-worth and intrinsic motivation is supported.
3. Interfaces should provide a rich playground for sensory exploration, where the child can attune to his or her own interest. Colour, light, texture and sound can specifically condition the experience and afford both an aesthetic and metaphoric surface for imaginative and narrative engagement.
4. Context should emerge through experimentation. Contexts will be dependent on many factors, for example, prior knowledge, setting, relationship with others, but should principally flow from playful interest in the environment, and maximize on communicative aspects of movement, such as repetition, rhythm, choreography, performance and improvisation.
These ideas follow Dewey's perspective that we come into every situation with personal interests, ideologies and cultures. Rather than think of interaction as something that we do because there are rules and information that give us a purpose, we need to find ways to make technology enchanting, so that it can “evoke the transformative openness and the capacious potential of imagination to power holistic engagement by bringing the past or future meanings into present action – making the mundane creative” (Funology, Overbeeke et al., p82).
Some of Ed's iPhone ReacTickles and some screenshots from the original ReacTickles are on flickr
