Cooperative Design, Visualization, and Engineering

Abstract

Owing to its character of virtual reality situation, Interactive Installation Storytelling System with Cooperative Play (IISSCP) provides children an immersive environment and situation awareness (SA) to interact with digital content more directly, intuitively, psychically and mentally. SA improves the interactivity between children and digital content. Through the interaction of play, children participate in learning willingly, give feedback quickly and enjoy peer learning. By integrating virtual computer vision applications with stage props as physical user interface, this system aims to create a natural immersive situation to attain four setting goals which are memory training, imagination of shape, music creation and training of physical strength and reaction. The target users are children aged 8 to 12. However, the cognitive differences of peers cause some problems during cooperative play. Based on findings from this research, we discuss the problems causing cooperation failure during play which are: (1) the cognitive differences when using icons of user interface corresponding to physical user interface, (2) the situation design affects role play during integrating the virtual and physical user interface into a mental gestalt and (3) the interaction complexity and difficulty affect children ability of situation awareness. © 2010 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.