Youth Mental Health: Virtual Reality Prototypes
(2021 – ongoing)
Funders: NSERC Discovery Grant (Antle), NSERC Post-doctoral Fellowship (Kitson), UKRI (Slovak).
The VR Youth mental health project involves the creation of new co-design methods for involving youth, therapists and teachers in research creation of VR prototypes. The end goal is to investigate how VR can be used by youth for emotion regulation skills training in their everyday lives, homes and schools.
Critical Making (Bio)Wearables
(2020 – 2022)
Funders: SFU Innovates, NSERC Discovery
The Maker Kit serves as a research instrument to investigate how we can use critical making + computational thinking to support youth (aged 11-14) to explore and reflect on potential impacts of (bio)wearables (e.g. smart watches, fitbits) on their developing identity, and senses of autonomy, agency and authenticity. The kit is customizable and each decision point provides a scaffolded opportunity for critical reflection. The kit comes unassembled and includes a breath-sensing wearable, tangible pinwheel and reflection cards.
Critical Making Reflection Card Set
(2020 – 2022)
Funders: SFU Innovates, NSERC Discovery The Critical Making Biowearable Workshop project investigates how to design and deploy a participatory computational thinking workshop in which students explore and reflect on potential impacts of biowearables during maker activities using a bespoke tangible-biowearable maker kit and reflection cards.
PhonoBlocks: Augmented Reality Reading Systems (iOS, Android)
(2018 – 2020)
Funders: SSHRC Insight AR PhonoBlocks was an exploration of technical variations using everyday technologies (e.g. iPad + fridge magnets) in order to make the effective tangible-PhonoBlocks system (see PhonoBlocks: Tangible System Windows) more accessible for broader deployment into schools and families. We created three AR versions of the system using different technical approaches to sense physical letters and provide digital visual overlays that can provide colour cues, including: 1) camera sensing of fiducial markers using Vuforial and AR Toolkit; 2) custom-created machine learning for optical character recognition via a trained convolutional neural network; and 3) capacitive sensing of custom letters with 3D laser printed metal pin patterns.
Mind-Full and Mind-View: Neurofeedback Self-Regulation Training System (Android)
(2014 – 2019)
Funders: Microsoft Research, GRAND NCE, NSERC Discovery and NSERC Accelerator Supplement The Mind-Full system uses an EEG headset and tablet-based neurofeedback games to help children learn to self-regulate their anxiety and attention. After finding positive evidence of effectiveness, transfer and maintenance in a controlled field study in Nepal, we decided to design, build and study six new games, three for Indigenous and three for diverse urban children. Mind-View is an extension that works with all our Mind-Full game apps. It enables an adult to view a child’s level of anxiety/relaxation and attention in real time and adjust EEG sensing and game settings as the child is playing, providing real time customization.
PhonoBlocks: Tangible Reading System (Windows)
(2016 – 2017)
Funders: SSHRC InsightPhonoBlocks is a custom tangible-touch laptop reading application. The tangible letters have embedded dynamic colours that draw children’s attention to the moment when the addition of letters changes word sounds. Tangible letters also enabled letter tracing and epistemic strategies that simplified learning to read and spell.
ʔeləw̓k̓ʷ | Belongings: Tangible Tabletop Museum Exhibition
(2014 – 2015)
Funders: GRAND NCE, NSERC, and SSHRCʔeləw̓k ̓ʷ Belongings enables museum visitors to explore the continuity of Musqueam culture through interactions with replicas of “belongings" excavated from c̓əsnaʔəm, as well as contemporary objects that are a part of everyday Musqueam life. Through tangible interaction, visitors are presented opportunities to directly experience intangible elements of Indigenous culture, such as values, as well as access information about the long history of salmon fishing and the continuity of related knowledge at c̓əsnaʔəm. ʔeləw̓k ̓ ʷ Belongings was on exhibition for a year at the Museum of Anthropology, UBC, Vancouver, Canada.
Youtopia: Tangible Tabletop App for Sustainability Education
(2012 – 2015)
Funders: GRAND NCE, Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions (PICS), SSHRC Insight and NSERC DiscoveryYoutopia is a collaborative land-use planning activity for children implemented on a digital tabletop. Youtopia was developed to investigate issues surrounding how to design and evaluate to support children’s collaborative learning about value-laden domains such as land-use planning. The application runs using a digital tabletop. A key design strategy is to support children’s emergent dialogue around the role values play in sustainable development. Our analysis examined how interaction design supported value-based discussion, negotiation and conflict resolution between pairs of children around issues in sustainable development.
Developmentally Situated Design Cards: Designer Tools
(2011 – 2013)
Funders: SSHRC Collaboration Grant and GRAND NCEThere is a wealth of theoretical knowledge about the developmental abilities and skills of children. However, this knowledge is not readily accessible to designers of interactive products. In this project, we developed and evaluated developmentally situated design (DSD) cards. DSD cards are a design tool that makes age specific information about children’s developing cognitive, physical, social, and emotional abilities readily accessible for designers. a wealth of theoretical knowledge about the developmental abilities and skills of children. However, this knowledge is not readily accessible to designers of interactive products. In this project, we developed and evaluated developmentally situated design (DSD) cards. DSD cards are a design tool that makes age specific information about children’s developing cognitive, physical, social, and emotional abilities readily accessible for designers.
Futura: Sustainable Land Use Planning Exhibition
(2009 – 2012)
Funders: NSERC RTI, NSERC Discovery, GRAND NCE and PICS.Futura is collaborative land-use planning activity designed for children and the public. Futura was showcased to thousands of users at the Vancouver 2010 Olympics Surrey Celebration site. Using Futura we investigated how to design effective games for learning/serious games, how to design to support collaborative interaction, comparisons of multi-touch and tangible interaction, and how simulation games could support value-laden topics in sustainability education.
Springboard: Embodied Metaphor-based Design for a Social Justice Exhibition
(2009 – 2012)
Funders: NSERC RTI, NSERC Discovery and SFU Small SSHRCSpringboard is whole body interactive environment where users move their bodies in and out of balance to explore images and sounds that represent balance and imbalance in social justice (e.g., shelter, food, community safety). Results from experiments with whole body or handheld devices as input indicated that when users move their bodies in and out of balance they more deeply experience issues in social justice related to balance. This prototype extended work on embodied metaphor based design begun with SoundMaker into a full multimedia environment representing abstract concepts (balance in justice) vs percepts (sounds).
Butterfly Tent: Immersive Biofeedback Self-Regulation System
(2008 – 2009)
Funders: NSERC DiscoveryThe Butterfly Tent is an immersive bio-computing game for children. A player controls the butterfly net by modifying their affective and physiological states (e.g. calm vs excited). In turn the player’s physiology is affected by changes in the environment (e.g. chasing butterflies). The Butterfly game was developed to explore how to help school aged children learn self-regulation by better understanding the connection between their physical bodies and mental-emotional states in a game-based immersive environment.
Pinwheel: Tangible Biofeedback Self-regulation System
(2008 – 2009)
Funders: NSERC DiscoveryIn pinwheel one or two players either cooperate or compete to control the physical pinwheel rotation by regulating their breath. This biosensing application enabled us to explore how we can design tangible systems using biosignals to create playful activities that may support the development of children’s mind-body awareness and self-regulation skills.
Puzzles: Tangible Tabletop Exhibition
(2007 – 2008)
Funders: NSERC RTI and NSERC DiscoveryEventTable is a tangible tabletop prototyping platform which we used to investigate a variety of topics in hands-on interaction design. The tangible jigsaw puzzle prototype was used in comparative studies of the way children think with their hands during spatial puzzle solving using physical, graphical, tangible interfaces.
SoundMaker: Embodied Metaphor Design Exploration and Exhibition
(2007 – 2008)
Funders: NSERC RTI and NSERC Discovery RTISoundMaker is an interactive floor interface to a percussive music creation system. Players can imitate and compose musical patterns by modifying the quality of their movements based on image schemata, which are mapped through embodied metaphors to changes in sound percepts (e.g. volume, tempo, pitch and rhythm). Deployed at Telus World of Science.