HUMAN - COMPUTER
INTERACTION
AUTUMN 2010- University Of Oslo
The Interactive Color Room
Group members: Henning Lundheim, Mads Jahren,
Tommy Madsen, Geirr Sethre
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INNHOLDSFORTEGNELSE
Innledning…………………………………………………….……s.3
Assumptions……………………………………………….………….s.3
Problemspace…………………………………………………………s.4
Collaborative learning………………………………………………….…s.4
Primary colors……………………………………………………..……..s.4
User group…………………………………………….………………s.5
Primary users……………………………………………………..…..….s.5
Secondary users…………………………………………………..…..….s.5
Tertiary users…………………………………………………..……..….s.6
Stakeholders…………………….……………………………..……..….s.6
Conceptual Model………………………………...….………………s.6
Design Process……………………………………………….……s.7
Methods………………………………...….……………………….…s.7
Brainstorming…..……………………...….……………………….…s.8
Data Gathering…..………………...….………………………….…s.10
Interview with a multitouch expert……….……………………..…….….s.10
Interview with teacher……….……………………..……..………..…..s.10
The Pilot……….……………………..……..………..………………..s.11
The Workshop……………………..……..………..……….…………..s.13
Results from the workshop at Disen………..………..……….…………..s.15
Evaluation………………………………………………...….……s.17
Bibliography…………………..………………………...….……s.19
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Introduction
The colors that surrounds human beings has been documented through
history as a source of inspiration and has affected art and human made
artifacts throughout history. One way to look at colors is as a kind of language
that expresses certain experiences. This can vary from person to person and
depend on ones cultural background. We use colors as a way of expressing
emotions i.e. through art, but also as important cultural codes like the colors
green, red and yellow in traffic lights (Amundsen 1991).
Knowledge of colors is a part of the national teaching plan in Arts & Crafts.
One of the goals is to teach children about basic forms, compositions and
colors for the purpose of creating a visual message in an appropriate way.
According to the Norwegian department of education, the increasing level of
digital and visual communication in today´s society makes it important to learn
about these things. After completing second grade the kids should have a
basic knowledge of mixing and using primary colors in their own creative
work. (Utdanningsdirektoratet 2010)
Having fun when doing a task increases motivation which influences
learning(Ormrod 2009). Motivation is influenced by a various cognitive factors
including interest, expectancies, goals, attributions, mastery and locus of
control.(Ormrod 2009, Furnham 2005). “Percieved control over task
engagement and outcomes is central to many views of intrinsic motivation.”
(Schunk et.al 2010: 244)
Assumptions
The project is based on the following assumptions:
•
An interactive color room will be a way to support collaborative
learning. according to the CSCL (Computer supported collaborative
learning) paradigm.
•
Children are able to cooperate to achieve a goal.
•
Children in primary school have basic skills regarding color theory.
They are familiar with the RYB color wheel.
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•
An interactive color room will make learning colors more exiting.
•
The children’s museum will primarily be used by groups of children,
particularly, school classes.
Problem Space
Collaborative learning
Most children are familiar with various artifacts that are supposed to give
training and give an understanding of colors like traditional color pens and
paper, watercolor etc. Traditional artifacts like these are suited for individual
experimentation as they are tools designed for use by individuals. In recent
years we have seen paradigms like CSCL emerging according to a more
sociocultural practice implemented in modern institutions of education.
According to the new paradigms in learning from a more sociocultural
perspective (Koschmann 1996), we find that digital technology offers new
ways to support the collaborative aspect of learning colors.
Studies has shown advantages of kids working collaboratively, and that peer
based learning affect the quality of the learning outcome. “Working with a peer
may support a creative process of converging upon a single, systematizing
object-a hypothesis, a prediction, a model, or whatever [13].” (Crook
1997:238)
Primary Colors
It is worth noticing that, although the Department of Education emphasises
the importance of knowledge about colors in digital visualizations, schools are
teaching the RYB (red, yellow, blue) color wheel. In our modern digital
society, the additive primary colors, RGB (red, green, blue), may be more
valuable for the students to learn, as it is used almost exclusively by
everything that uses a screen, like computers, televisions, cameras etc. By
teaching RGB, the teachers could increase the students’ future computer
literacy. If the reason for teaching RYB is that it is to be used for art, where
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subtractive colors are generally used, RYB are not the real primary colors.
The subtractive primary colors are CMY (cyan, magenta, yellow).
(http://www.rgbworld.com/color.php)
User Group
An important part of the design process is to find out, ”who are the users?”
This is not just the people who directly interact with the system you are
designing, but also people who affect the system indirectly. Knowing who the
users are is an essential part of designing a successful system. There are
three categories of users: primary users, secondary users and tertiary users:
”Primary users are those likely to be frequent hands-on users of the system;
secondary users are occasional users or those who use the system through
an intermediary; and tertiary users are those affected by the introduction of
the system or who will influence it´s purchase”(Sharp et.al 2007:430)
It is also important to find out what other people or organizations who may
have a influence on the system requirements. These people are the
stakeholders. The stakeholders are a bigger group than what you normally
consider your users, and involves everyone that is in some way affected by
the system. (Sharp et.al 2007:430)
Primary users
The primary users of color room is going to be children attending primary
school. Color room is designed for both boys and girls. Since the installation is
going to be at Oslo Children’s museum, we assume that the kids will mainly
travel to this museum together with their own school class.
Secondary users
Some of the secondary users of color room is going to be teachers, parents
and maintenance at the museum. The children will probably not come to the
museum without a guardian. This will in many cases be their teachers. Since
the color room is supposed to have an educational aspect to it, teachers will
bring the children to the museum for both having fun and enhance educational
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skills. When children come to the museum without their school class, it will
probably be with their parents or other relatives. The parents will look after
their kids, and maybe help them if they don´t understand what to do. In some
cases the parents may also even have to participate in using the color room. It
is also important to keep in mind the maintenance staff at the museum. They
are the people who are going to fix and clean up after the kids when the
museum is closed, and make sure that everything is ready for use the next
day.
Tertiary users
The tertiary users will be the museum administration. It is their responsibility
to make sure that the color room is working the way it´s supposed to at all
times. They are in charge of both handling the daily care of the museum and
delegating different tasks to the museum staff for maintaining the installation.
Stakeholders
In addition to the user groups mentioned above there are several different
stakeholders we need to be aware of. We need to talk to the community and
different primary schools to get the information we need to make the best
possible design. In the design process we also need to use children for
testing out different prototypes. It is crucial to get feedback from the children
in the early stages of the design process since they are the end-users of the
system. Educational authorities and politicians are two important
stakeholders to help us get funding for the project.
Conceptual Model
The conceptual model of the “Color Room”’- project is an interactive
computer-based system for teaching children about colors. Our goal is to
create an interactive system that is both fun for the users (children 3 - 7th
grade) as well as instructive. We will also try to create a system which will
require as little instructions as possible to operate. Ultimately we want this
project to be installed in the new Children's Museum in Oslo. Our system
design aim to build knowledge about primary, secondary and tertiary
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colors. To support the paradigms of collaborative learning, the children will be
responsible for one primary color and have to collaborate on the amount of
color to recreate a given color that is provided by the system. Their ability to
cooperate will be crucial to how well they succeed in recreating a given color.
We also want the system to offer a relevant type of feedback as to what the
users are doing. This is because feedback can be an important motivator for
users performing a task, which again enhances the learning process. (Ormrod
2009, Furnham 2005). Technically the system will be based on sensor-based
software which can detect positioning of different elements, and which is able
to mix colors accordingly. The created color will be presented in a form as
feedback to the users on how their actions are affecting color.
Furthermore we want the system to be challenging; “Challenges heighten
motivation and minimize boredom”(Ormrod 2009: 530), but still not too difficult
to operate; “Students are more likely to be intrinsically motivated when they
feel confident they can succeed at classroom tasks.”(Ormrod 2009:483)
Design Process
Methods
For our data gathering to be successful, we have focused on the 4 key issues:
goal setting, relationship between the data collector and the data provider,
combining techniques (triangulation) and pilot studies (Sharp et.al 2007:292 ).
The following methods have so far been used in collecting the data:
•
Brainstorming
•
Workshop (Disen school – involving users from 6 to 8 years of age)
•
Video recording (recordings of users trying out the prototype)
•
Interview (interview to test various design possibilities and to receive
feedback from actual use)
•
Prototyping (make a lo-fi flexible model that would simulate the system
as close as possible given the restraints of resources at hand)
•
Audio recording (record the interview sessions to look for patterns)
•
Observation (record and discuss our immediate impressions right after
the workshop)
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We wanted to base our data gathering techniques on recorded interviews and
observations during testing of a loosely constructed prototype in a workshop
environment.
Interviews were chosen as a method because this is a good way to explore
issues on how to construct our prototype. Physical observation, aided by
recording the session on film, were chosen because we needed to understand
aspects of user activity and behaviour that was difficult to foresee without
actually observing the children in action. The main goal with the observation
was to identify how well the children understood primary colors, and how they
managed to communicate depending on factors like age, knowledge and sex.
Brainstorming
In the beginning of the project, we conducted several brainstorming sessions
where we came up with the conceptual model, several different prototype
sketches, assumptions and possible technologies that could be used for the
project. We ended up with a concept consisting of two rooms, where the
children would move colored balls in one room to create colors (fig.1). One
corner of the room represents maximum amount of color, while the opposite
corner represents minimum amount of color. Another corner will represent
amount of darkness(black), and the last corner will represent the amount of
brightness(white). The other room would be an exhibition room. We thought
that multi-touch technology would work for this project.
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Fig. 1
Fig. 2
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Data gathering
For the workshop we needed to find a easy way to test how the kids could
collaborate, what age was appropriate for mixing primary colors and if this could
be a fun way of learning about colors.
Interview with a multi-touch expert
We conducted an interview with a multi-touch expert to determine the viability of
using multi-touch technology for this project. He meant that multi-touch was a
poor technological choice for this project and suggested we instead employed
object-recognitioning, pressure plates or laser sensor technology.
Interview with a teacher
We´ve had two sessions including potential users, where the first sessions goals
was to collect information and get feedback on initial sketches of the interface.
This was a way of testing if our intended design would be understandable for the
user group, and what kind of challenge we would be offering to engage the
children in the task at hand tested on a user belonging to our target group. I.e.
we wanted to know his opinion on the relevance of coloring objects vs. Just
creating color, and if so:
•
What kind of objects was relevant to color?
•
How should they know what to do with the system?
•
Should they move objects or should the user be the object representing
a primary color?
•
How should they move about?
•
Which setup was the most intuitive?
The first interview was with a 7-year-old child and his mother, which also is a
teacher at Disen primary school in Oslo and took about 1 hour.
The initial response from the user was that it was hard to grasp from our
sketches how it was supposed to be used, and it became clear that we had
not made enough considerations on how the users more specifically was
supposed to be using the interface, other than to just move around in certain
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areas on the floor. It became clear that we needed a more specific system
and a better structure on how to move the objects that would represent the 3
primary colors. Another aspect that came out of the interview was that it
should have some sort of competitive element or a task at hand as motivation
for use. Just playing around with various colors did not seem as challenging
or fun for neither the kid or the teacher involved in the interview, especially the
teacher emphasised the need for this. How many objects a group could
manage to color within a certain time frame was suggested.
Figure 3 illustrates the design proposal that came out of the interview
structuring the floor into a 3-scale star-shape. The purpose will be to recreate
a colored object.
Fig. 3
The Pilot:
Our next challenge was to find out how we could put together our conceptual
model in a prototype that was loosely enough constructed to be modified by
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user input, but still managed to signal it’s purpose and be usable enough to
conduct a workshop including testing and generating useful feedback for our
project.
To create the star shaped coordinates representing each primary color and a
scale of values from 0 to 100% for each color, we simply used tape and
divided the scales with an added value of 20% for each step. A simple
computer program called ’ColorMixer 2.0” (fig. 4) was used to generate a mix
of primary colors (RYB) according to the coordinates on the floor, which was
displayed on a screen. An operator did this manually. The screen had two
objects on it. One initially left blank and one with a color that could be
recreated from the scale on the floor. We rehearsed for 2 hours at a
multimedia room at IMK. Here we tested the model (fig.5) and tried to make
the changes appear as seamless as possible so the kids would not be
distracted by time lag.
After the testing, we concluded that we could make it work, and that the setup
was ready for testing by real users.
Fig. 4
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Fig. 5
The Workshop:
The workshop involving real users took place at Disen primary school. With
help and permission from the school, we managed to gather 12 pupils that
could participate in the project on the grounds of a written consent from their
parents. We intentionally chose 4 as a buffer in case someone would not get
permission. We ended up with a consent for all 12, which was a small
problem, because this meant that each group had 4 instead of 3 participants.
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This was however solved with some participatory circulation, and did not
cause any specific problems for the outcome of our session.
We had 1 group of children from 1st grade who were 6 years old. The other 2
groups consisted of children from 3rd grade with an average age of 8 years.
The first group was boys, the second both boys and girls, the last contained
only girls. The workshop was situated in a multimedia room at Disen primary
school and was conducted by taking one group in to test the installation after
a short presentation of ourselves, like who we were and what we were doing
there, and the purpose of the session and project. Each group was then
instructed briefly on what they were supposed to do and how they should
proceed on their own. They were given t-shirt with colors matching the color
they were to represent. The group was then taken aside for an interview
lasting around 10 to 15 minutes before the next group entered the room. Like
mentioned earlier, we used these interviews were for collecting data on how
our users were reacting to our design. Our interwiev was of a semi structural
character trying not to pre-empt answers by asking leading questions (Sharp
et.al 2007:298). This proved however quite difficult to do because the children
mostly preferred responding in a ’yes’ or ’no’ kind of manner, even if the
questions were of an open nature. We also noticed that most of the children
seemed shy at first and that one child often took leadership of the interview
situation.
An observer was placed on the floor (fig.6) so he could see what coordinates
the children were standing on at all times. A second person controlled the
data program that could fill color into objects on a screen adding values from
the 3 primary colors. The third person present conducted the interviews with
the children. The last person observed and took pictures from a non-intrusive
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location
Fig. 6
Results from the workshop at Disen
Short summary of findings:
•
6 levels (0, 20, 40, 60, 80, 100%) for each primary color seemed to
offer to many possible options for different color combinations,
especially for the younger children.
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•
Pure color (i.e. just 40% or 100% red) seemed difficult, because the
pupils expected all the given colors to recreate was a blend of colors.
•
The youngest children did not manage without instructions along the
way.
•
In each group one of the children took the role as natural leader.
•
Girls did a little better than the boys, especially the group with 8 year
old girls proved most successful, and managed to use the installation
more or less on their own.
•
The idea of using time as a competitive element was not as motivating
as just figuring out how the colors was to be created.
•
The objects seemed less important, and the children gave no especial
notice to whatever they were coloring.
The main issue with the prototype was the technology. The program we used
was not optimal for the task. While it gave a decent representation of the
concept, it had several weaknesses. The program was not made for rapid
color-changes, so there was a considerable lag-effect, which meant that the
children had to wait for a few seconds before the color showed on the screen.
This caused some issues, as the prototype became much less intuitive. The
children could not move freely and see what color they ended up with, they
had to move more slowly and wait. It became much harder for them to see the
connection between the floor-scale and the colors on the screen. This lead to
a notable increase in demanded instructions from us.
A second technological problem was with the lack of color-calibration on the
screen. The school had lost the control to the projector, and the colors were
not accurately projected on the screen. They took on a slightly greener hue
than originally intended. This created a problem with some of the colors. We
had a 100% yellow slide that became yellow-green on the screen. The
children quickly solved it anyway, but we also had a purple slide that none of
the children seemed to solve correctly. The green hue probably made it
harder for the children.
The last technical issue was with the colored tape we used. We didn’t have
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enough of the red and yellow tape, and had to fill it in with the blue. This
seemed to create some confusion among the children. When asked to stand
at the “0” point, the kids in one group stood at the end of the yellow/red tape
until told to go all the way to the end. Another child commented on the
different colored tape. This could also have made the prototype less intuitive.
Even with these issues, the children managed to find many colors, and they
seemed to have a lot of fun doing so.
Interviews with the children:
The purpose of the interviews was to get a more general impression on how
the prototype worked for the children; we emphasize here the most common
patterns from the interview session:
•
None of the children were familiar with the term primary, secondary or
tertiary colors.
•
11 of the 12 children participating thought it was fun to experiment with
colors.
•
None of them thought this would be fun to do on their own; it was
mainly the cooperative element that they liked the most.
•
The first grade pupils thought it was a bit difficult to understand what to
do.
•
The children suggested that to give points as opposed to manage
within a time frame would be a better motivation for competition.
•
The children expressed a general wish to learn more about colors in
which they thought would be fun.
•
It seemed to be a general agreement on a wish for homogeneous
groups consisting of only boys or girls.
•
Objects didn’t matter, colors was the most important.
Evaluation
Even though we revealed a lot of weaknesses during the workshop, the
children’s feedback supported the collaborate aspects of the model as a
positive way of learning about colors.
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The data suggested that we might take the following steps to improve the
system design:
1. Improve the technology so that the color-change will happen quicker.
2. Focus on interface options to make the system easier to understand
3. Creating a ”score” functionality like in a computer game as a
competitive element
4. Focus on recreating given colors and not coloring specific objects
5. Centre-based interface
Analyzing the videotapes made us realize that we needed to position the
monitoring of color and coloring activity differently. The star-shaped model
gives all the users an obvious natural focus point to the centre of the star. One
of the children had to turn his/her head to see the screen. To solve this issue,
we will use an object in the centre of the room instead of a screen. As the test
showed that the type of figure has no real value, we have decided that we will
have two prisms in the centre of the room, one hanging from the roof, and
another on the floor. The one in the roof will project a color, while the one on
the floor will be the one that reacts to the children’s movement. When the
children manage to make the same color as the top prism, a tube connecting
the two prisms will light up, creating an illusion of a beam of light connecting
the two prisms. The top prism will then change color, while the lower prism will
raise itself slightly off the floor.
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Sketch of future prototype model based upon user input from
workshop:
Fig. 7
We noticed that our assumptions regarding the children’s level of color
understanding was wrong. None of the children had any knowledge about the
RYB color wheel, although they had some prior knowledge with mixing paint
for art.
The workshop supported our assumptions regarding collaboration and that
this would be an exciting way to learn about colors.
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Koschmann, T. (1996): CSCL: Theory and Practice of emerging paradigm, s.
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Omrod, Jeanne-Ellis (2009) Human Learning. Fifth Edition. Pearson
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