Mixed play spaces

Abstract

Young children tend to use mobile devices for solitary media consumption, yet they develop through social interactions. The presence of tangible objects in Bear Abouts invited imaginative play in a triangulation between device and child, and between child and child. As a starting point, the researchers developed a number of prototypes, where objects made from accessible and familiar materials, such as card stock and ink, were augmented by characters, animations, and sound from the mobile device. The first Bear Abouts story was based on a migrant bear who has a bag of useful objects to aid him on his journey. Inside the bag are sunglasses, a sandwich, a compass, and a woolly hat. In the initial steps of this project, researchers tested this story with a group of children ages 5 to 7 in a primary school. They found that children were using the app to develop stories both with the system and also through dialogue with each other. The children also developed verbal narratives together, and when asked to recall their version of the stories, they used the objects as props to retell them. In the next step of the project, the researchers expanded on ways of storytelling and investigated the kinds of stories that could be made between the device and children using the Bear Abouts app. In the tests, children play-acted with the objects in real life as well as playing with them in digital space.