ACMI OBSERVATIONS:
Location
ACMI (Australian Centre for the Moving Image)
Description
Walk through of ACMI’s interactive gallery space, taking field notes along the way.
Aim: To note the demographics represented within the space; how people were acting in the space; and the physical space itself. In particular we were looking at how people were moving through and around the venue, and physical traits common to this kind of location that may be useful when considering the design of interaction.
Conclusion
The foyer is a well light clean space. The open space is inviting yet not overly exciting. There are some brochure stands, light box style displays, plenty of wall and floor space, escalators and an information desk. The floors and walls (which are typical of other venues of similar purpose around the world) rarely meet square the floor not a constant level. ACMI’s interactive gallery space is basically a long thin room with dividing walls placed through out depending on what the current exhibition requires. The space is dark with low lighting, this helps with all the projection works that a regularly held at ACMI.
The only lighting is on works or information signs, although the space does have lights to light the whole room if needed. All the walls and roof are painted black to aid with this, and the carpet on the floor is also very dark.
People that stand around in the foyer are in general waiting for friends or waiting to speak to one of the staff at the information desk. Some flip thought the available brochures, but nothing engaging occurs in this space. (A space with opportunity to be activated) The more formal downstairs space of ACMI is explored in general silence; very little chatter or socialising in general was observed. The “Correspondence” exhibition that was on show was a more serious show, it’s audience left to observe the pieces than interact. “Correspondence” was, for the most part, a film exhibition. The exhibition used partitioned walls, this stopped the audio from each film mixing and becoming a blurred mess of sound. Overall the space is a very adaptable space that could cater just about any type of interactive exhibition or activity.
People’s actions ranged from walking around by themselves, reading blurbs and skimming through film exhibits, to sitting and embracing as much of the short films as possible, to simply looking at the most visually enticing pieces. Families with children especially tended to skim the exhibition, stopping primarily for the more visually enticing and bizarre pieces.
When designing our interface this will need to be taken into consideration. Allowing for varying levels of involvement and time commitment to getting something out of the interface. As one would expect of such a venue the people within represent a broad array of demographics. There were older adults, younger adults, and children of both sexes. A few of trends emerged however. There was predominance in males as well as young parents with they children. Excluding one baby in a pram, the children range in age from around 6 – 12. When comparing a weekday to a weekend we see that the common factor is children. The parents get replaced with teachers or other carers however the 2 common factors are children (primary school age) and young adults aged 18 – 30 (predominance male).
Upstairs in the “Memory Grid” the general ambience is a lot more fun and tended to have much more children. Families sat in the small cubicles watching short films, roamed around, sat on the computers and played games, generally for no more than 5 minutes. There is no particular sequence to the exhibition so people just wandered to whatever stimulated them (or their children) first. The Fed Square styled architecture flows through into this room and has many angled walls and doorways. This is purely to keep it consistent with the rest of the building and is not a requirement for an interactive space.
ARCADE OBSERVATIONS:
Location
Galactic Circus
Description
Galactic Circus is an indoor interactive theme park mainly consisting of video games and other interactive entertainment. This environment is primarily aimed at children but does also attract an older crowd. In order to reach the best interface for our environment, we have done some observation of time based interface systems.
Aim
The aim of the observation at Galactic Circus was to observe which interactive device was the most attractive to people and how they were interacting with the device. This includes environment, visual aspects, interactivity and sound.
Conclusion
The environment was very colourful and bright with lots of flashing lights, with each device competing to grab people’s attention. There was lots of music playing in this environment; again this music was competing with music and sound effects from other devices. In particular we focused on a game at Galactic City, “Mega Mega Dance Dance Extreme”. Watching how people interacted with this dance machine reinforced the idea of our interface needing to be for varying levels of proficiency. While some were extremely skillful at responding to the on screen prompts others were a lot slower. When compared with what we are proposing we see that an interface that responds to peoples involvement rather that compares them with predetermined sequences will give the user far greater control and empower them to be creative and improvise.
Also watching people use this device we noticed that they didn’t watch what they were doing with the floor control, but they’re on screen instructions and responses. By using a floor controlled system we enhance the opportunity for people to look at and therefore interact with their fellow players, rather than faced by a simple screen display. From this we gained the knowledge that the most popular are the games that gave users the sense that they were really involved in the game through body moments and unique interaction controls.
KORG ELECTRIBE SEQUENCER
OBSERVATIONS
Description: Observing and filming people attempting to use a commercially available Korg musical sequencer with which they have no prior knowledge of how to use. To simplify matters and make it actually possible we informed each of the three users that they should concentrate on the bottom half of the unit (the dials and buttons on the top half are all concerned with sound modulation effects, delays, reverb etc), reduced the measure of the sequence to one bar – removing the need to figure out how to change bars and we also informed the users where the 8 sounds available to make a rhythm from were located on the machine.
Aim:
To identify how well people can identify and interpret the concept of a virtual gridded step sequencer from the Korg module’s interface which, it was expected, would prove to be difficult to quickly make sense of, even though it is known in the marketplace as one of the easiest to use.
Results:
User 1 – Steven, 18yo male
Steven quickly identified the play button and within 2 minutes through pressing of random buttons figured out how to assign the sounds to a place on the grid. However we distinctly got the impression that Steven didn’t really understand quite what he was doing, very unlikely that he had the virtual image of a grid in his head.
User 2 – Sarah 20yo female
Although initially intimidated by the amount of buttons and knobs, Sarah also noticed the play button fairly quickly, however it took a while longer to figure out how to assign the sounds to a place on the grid as it cycled through. Her final rhythm was very simple with only 3 of the sounds being assigned a place on the grid.
User 3 – Karen 48yo female
Karen was taken aback by the amount of options displayed on the Korg module and took an amount of time to simply start experimenting. Several times she indicated she was opposed to continuing as she felt she couldn’t accomplish anything. Eventually Karen accomplished a simple beat but really had no idea how she accomplished it.
Conclusion
We were actually surprised at the relative successes of the users in creating a musical sequence; its possible that the information provided to them before the users began was too specific for an accurate test of the interface. However upon questioning after the testing none of the users successfully explained how they were actually creating the sequence and since we are interested in making the grid of sequencing more tangible and an easily identifiable concept, the experiment was successful in proving that the interface of such a device could be improved. Steven seemed to quite enjoy making rhythms and we got the impression he would have been happy to sit and play with the module for some time.
PAPER PROTOTYPING
Description
To take our proposed interface solutions further we have engaged in series of paper prototyping exercises.
Testing the accessibility of floor based interfaces, we have used a com¬bination of black and various coloured paper arranged on the floor. The initial state of the display is black tessellating shapes filling the floor. On the reverse side of each black shape is a coloured alternative. Asking a range of people to enter into the space with no instructions on how to act. Wall graphics will provide all other information about how to use the interface as well as display reaction. As participants move through the space we will flip the black shapes they stand on to simulate an initial response to their actions. In addition to this visual response, we will manually trigger a corresponding sound on a Korg music sequencer. This sound will hold its position in a musical loop while that shape remains stood on. Certain colours will correspond with particular sounds.
Aim
We focused on the level of engagement of people within the space; how accessible the floor interface is as well as how intuitive peoples interaction with the system was. The intention of the testing was on gauging the level of complexity in musical sequences people are able to create with such a simple construct, as well as the ease of doing so. How people worked together in order to collectively achieve these responses and their interaction with one another was observed to gain better understanding of how to tailor our solutions to enhance these relationships. }
Conclusion
The paper prototyping showed us that our concept for our interface was very easy for the participants to understand, making it very easy for the participants to use and fun. We also found out that participants found the interface not to be intimidating and that they wanted to interact with it. Paper prototyping also gave us an insight into the way people would move with in the space and how people would react to the sounds they have activated. From the paper prototyping we didn’t come out with any major problems or need to make alterations to the concept interface.
