Workshop

Recipe for a locative media project

Perspective

Narrative

Gameplay

Social Interaction

Virtual vs Physical

Location(s)

Tools

 

Perspective

What is the perspective/context? (historical, social, political, societal, personal)

Who is your intended audience?

What do you want them to experience?

What is the goal of the project?

Why place your project in this context? What is the specific relevance?

What is offered? What are the (un)intended options?

Why would they engage themselves with your application / system?

 

KeyWords

sharing, messaging, notes, leaving, marking, demarcating, tracking, logging, opinions, trading, collaboration, gaming, searching.

Narrative

The narrative is often an important factor together with the context to get people involved and even more importantly keep them involved over the duration of the project.

Do you expand an existing narrative or do you create a new one altogether?

First Contact

How do you get people to play the game? How do you get them involved?

Immersion

Do you use a narrative to get the players immersed and how do you use/proportion it during the game?

Identity

What identity does the user have in the game and how is it represented? MMORPG-style or are you you?

 

Gameplay

Game formats

Would you like to use any of the following game formats in you project.

classic games reinterpreted locatively

strategy [capture the flag]

role playing [narrative in place]

remote operator driving human avatar

collect objects from environment

trade or interact with other players as you come across them

perform specific task and record

always-on ladder competition

Replay

Can the game be easily replayed? If so, is there a connection between previously played sessions?

Users: how many and how?

What is your user setup? One-on-one, team against team, everbody for himself? How many users in total?

Rules

What and how many game rules does a player need to know?

Duration

How long does the game take? 1 hour, 1 day, 1 month?

Can the project only be played at a certain time of the year?

Is it a night or day project?

Realtime/Live

Do you use realtime communication/media and why? Do you need multi-user realtime communication?

Mobile/Web

Does the game take place on the mobile device or also partly on the web?

Identity

What identity does the user have in the game and how is it represented? MMORPG-style or are you you?

Together/Alone

Is playing a team effort or do you play solo?

Media Usage

For what reason do you use which media?

Map Usage

Do you use a (paper?) map or other ways of navigation? Do you really need a map at all?

Intensity

Is user interaction continuous or spread out? (like tamagotchi)

Together/Alone

Is playing a team effort or do you play solo?

 

Social Interaction

What kind of social behavior do you wish to stimulate (or (un)consciously) force?

Do participants have a shared object that triggers communication? (can be a location too)

Do you want people to collborate and share?

Would you like participants to interact with non-participants?

How do you use social interactino to achieve your project goal?

 

Virtual vs Physical

What and why does something take place in the virtual and/or physical world?

What is the relationship between the virtual and the physical? How do they connect?

Is there a shift in between the virtual and physical during the project?

 

Location(s)

How do you use the enivronment you project takes place in? What does this setting and it's locations have to offer? Think about what happens when people doing a dérive.

Do you use the entire city or a street or square?

What makes tour project typical for this location or can it be played at diffent locations as well?

Do you want to use specific objects at certain locations? What would you want these objects to mean?

What are the urban semantics (the social meanings of places that you use)?

 

Tools

Devices and Connectivity

What hardware do you need and do you have to be online during the game? If so when?

Technology

Which technologies do you use? You can combine any from the list below and any other you can think of.

GPS / RFID / Chalk / Semacode (Shotcode) / Bluetooth / Wifi

Actors

Do you use actors within your project as part of your experience? If so, what role would they play?

 

Workshop Techniques

Step by step Interaction Scenario

Create a step by step scenario on paper in which you clearly describe the different types of situations that can take place in your project.

 

Bodystorming

Bodystorming manifests ideas into objects and situations to reveal the kinds of relationships that occur through social and cultural interactions between people.

Unlike brainstorming, bodystorming is the transformation of abstract ideas and concepts into physical experiences. Fun and tactile, this approach allows us to investigate different qualities that an idea may have when applied in a physical setting. It enables rapid iteration and development of ideas and relationships through a dynamic, continuous and creative process of trial and error.

We also develop playful bodystorming experiences for demonstrating and researching ideas and situations with groups of people. Like a game it reveals the tensions and pleasures of limits and rules. Using props and take-home materials generated by the participants, everyone shares ownership of their experience.

http://research.urbantapestries.net/bodystorming.html

http://www.spaceandculture.org/2004/11/play-and-bodystorming.php

Understanding contexts by being there: case studies in bodystorming - Antti Oulasvirta Æ Esko Kurvinen Æ Tomi Kankainen

 

As a research tool
Proboscis uses a technique called bodystorming to rapidly iterate and test ideas. Ideas are brainstormed then turned into material forms and situations to reveal the kinds of relationships that occur between social and cultural interactions between people, places and things. Bodystorming is the transformation of abstract ideas and concepts into physical experiences, a tactile approach allowing us to investigate different qualities that ideas may have when applied to physical settings – part of a dynamic and continuous process of trial and error.

As a public experience
Proboscis has been developing a playful experience to engage people in the broader issues surrounding Urban Tapestries. Like a game it reveals the tensions and pleasures of rules and constraints. We use props such as a large floor map taken from a 1930s London guide, pre-authored Urban Tapestries threads to suggest the kinds of things people might annotate about a place, different coloured Post-It notes as the authoring tool and Proboscis' own custom Urban Tapestries' DIFFUSION eBooks to annotate each participant's threads.

The experience is intended to offer a gentle, non-technological, introduction to the concepts of mobile public authoring – to provoke and cajole unexpected and unintended ideas for what Urban Tapestries could be for different people. It creates a collaborative framework for testing our own assumptions and pre-conceptions about public authoring and social knowledge – about what happens when ideas become technologies, practices, and relationships. Bodystorming allows us to ask questions in an open and co-creative environment, where all the participants are responsible for their experience as much as we are for facilitating it. The event allows us to investigate:

* what happens when people become co-creators and not just consumers of information
* what kinds of knowledge will they want to share with their neighbours and fellow city-dwellers
* how do people articulate and share their experiences of inhabiting the city
* how people interact with ideas and situations on physical, emotional, intuitive and intellectual levels.

So far we have run eight events with a wide range of people: from senior citizens and teenagers, to artists, academics, civil servants, community workers, business consultants, technology professionals, designers, writers and teachers.

 

From http://www.spaceandculture.org/2004/11/play-and-bodystorming.php

 

Before place-storming, there was bodystorming. Developed by Proboscis, one of my dissertation case studies, bodystorming experiences are one of the ways these UK researchers and designers "challenge notions of interactivity" by bringing the physical and material to bear on the creation of the digital and virtual:

"We use bodystorming within our project teams to act out issues, techniques, interfaces and designs. Bodystorming manifests ideas into objects and situations to reveal the kinds of relationships that occur through social and cultural interactions between people.

Unlike brainstorming, bodystorming is the transformation of abstract ideas and concepts into physical experiences. Fun and tactile, this approach allows us to investigate different qualities that an idea may have when applied in a physical setting. It enables rapid iteration and development of ideas and relationships through a dynamic, continuous and creative process of trial and error.

We also develop playful bodystorming experiences for demonstrating and researching ideas and situations with groups of people. Like a game it reveals the tensions and pleasures of limits and rules. Using props and take-home materials generated by the participants, everyone shares ownership of their experience.

Bodystorming experiences create a collaborative framework for testing assumptions about ideas, relationships and technologies. These experiences are a way to learn more about how people interact with ideas and situations on physical, emotional, intuitive and intellectual levels. More than just a research tool, each bodystorming experience is an exciting and enabling event in itself."

You can learn more about bodystorming and other ways of stimulating creativity and innovation in the Proboscis DIFFUSION eBooks.

Update: I just learned from the Urban Tapestries blog that HP Labs (another of my case studies - I really must pay better attention!) also developed their own version of bodystorming, called Model-storming. I have to admit that this particularly appeals to me because since childhood I have dreamed of being small enough to play inside architectural models. In the past year alone I was quite overcome by the urge to crawl inside a model of Price's Fun Palace at the CCA and all of the Archigram models at the Design Museum...

And since we're tracing out the genealogy, Proboscis' bodystorming experiences are inspired by IDEO's bodystorming methods - based on brainstorming, this involves using physical experience as input to the design process. (On a somewhat related note, I recently ordered a new book from IDEO, Extra-Spatial: Technology, People and Spaces. But more on that later.)

http://research.urbantapestries.net/bodystorming.html

 

References

Understanding contexts by being there: case studies in bodystorming - Antti Oulasvirta Æ Esko Kurvinen Æ Tomi Kankainen