What is the background of this project?

In the context of the Envisionment and Discovery Collaboratory (EDC), an environment supporting collaboration and participation, we are working to create an action space that supports direct interaction of a group of individuals in a face-to-face environment with computational simulations.

The Envisionment and Discovery Collaboratory

Why is it being developed?

Participation requires more than just access to information—it requires engagement. Much of recent work on collaborative technologies has focused on support for individual devices that are networked together, in many ways dispersing the physical focus of attention. For settings where members of a small group are collocated, an alternate paradigm is to think of how to create focused collaborative interaction with the problem being addressed among members of the group.

Initial prototypes of the EDC were based on a touch-screen technology (SmartTech’s SmartBoard) placed in a horizontal orientation. This afforded insights into important aspects of the around-the-table interaction; however, several limitations became apparent, such as the lack of simultaneous interactions and a limited repertoire of interaction techniques rather than the ability to create interaction behaviors more closely tailored to the objects being manipulated.

The PitA-Board

As a result, we have developed an interactive work surface (based on technology created for use in electronic chessboards by DGT Projects, NL) that allows several objects (with embedded transponders) to be tracked simultaneously, thereby allowing us to experiment with different forms of interaction than those supported previously.

We are working with domain experts in areas such as urban design, transportation planning, and emergency management training to develop ways to utilize this technology in support of participatory design and learning.

NSF grants CDA-9529549, REC-9631396, and REC-0106976 and the Coleman Family Initiative have supported this research

Center for LifeLong Learning & Design

University of Colorado at Boulder

http://www.cs.colorado.edu/~l3d

Social Creativity and Meta-Design

in Lifelong Learning Communities

http://www.cs.colorado.edu/~l3d/entwine