In creating our Help the Penguin product, we took inspiration from similar products and projects that others had created. We then made sure that the interaction we created was provided was unique and had not been done before.
The sections of this page are:
The key difference between our project and the ones presented above is that we target kids with our application. This led us to our three core values, which in combination makes our interaction unique to everything we have seen so.
Because we target younger kids with our device, and as we want them to be able to use it on their own, it is paramount for our interface to be extremely simple. The simplicity we aimed for originally comes close to the use of natural gestures seen in the RFID Healthcare Glove project above, however in the end ended up relying heavily on voice interaction. This made our interaction more complex, but also added necessary depth. Our device also differs from all digital devices in that we don't require any particularly fine motor control, which young kids might be lacking.
Whereas all the above mentioned products are mobile to some degree, neither of them really supports the kind of behaviour we see when kids play - to run from place to place, and to let their imagination and curiosity of the exterior world lead their interaction. Heavy, fragile, sharp and possibly even stationary things are not suited for children to play with - our device is neither of these things.
All technology mentioned above is designed by adults, for adults, with little to minimal attention payed to providing an engaging interaction. This is partially because most adult devices cannot expect to even compete for an adults full attention, especially mobile devices. With our built in rewards, and support for kids to use their curiosity to lead the interaction, the fun experience we have created, tailored for kids, is the first of the kind we have seen using this kind of technology.
Here are the other parts of submission generated by me and my group during this project course. Please note that our group during this project was referred to as group 'Point and Ask', and not 'Help the Penguin'.
This is an essay I wrote on touch user interfaces. I include it here because touch user interfaces are often grouped together with speech interfaces under the label of 'natural' interfaces, as they both share many properties. Much of what I said in this article is relevant for this project as well.