an entry from

Piotr's R&D blog

The Chisel group exhibited the Video Bench at UVic's Engineering open house. I only helped set up and break down (and debug!), but apparently it was a huge hit. A couple interesting things I was told (Peggy, where's your own blog?):

• Kids were sharing seats, so the app had up to four simultaneous independent users with only two distinct identities. Apparently, it held up fine, even though it was most definitely not designed for this eventuality. Moral: always expect your users to do the unexpected, kids doubly so. Code defensively.
• Kids picked up on the gestures and the "rhythm" required much faster than adults. The gestures, while not overly complex, do have some rather peculiar requirements (e.g. hand spread just so). Moreover, due to the relatively slow data feed, you can't move too fast, but for some gestures to be recognized, you can't move too slow. This speed fine-tuning was always the major problem when having adults try out the app at CASCON, but apparently kids just pick it up naturally. Moral: include children in any users tests for Diamond Touch apps.

For that matter, perhaps kids should be the target audience for these apps to begin with? I guess the hands-on interaction style appeals more to children anyway. Moreover, the tabletop's physical configuration promotes social and collaboration skills, two areas in which more traditional computer setups have been found lacking by parents and educators. So, Diamond Touch in kindergarten, anyone?