Augmented carousel : an exploration of human powered interaction in outdoor play design
Abstract: Harvesting children’s kinetic energy to power the electronics can bring interactive play to novel places and create unique context for play. This project presents design, crafting and testing of a child-powered interactive carousel designed for everyday outdoor play. Through a Research through Design approach and craft thinking, a digital play artefact was realized through exploring material qualities and affordances, to crafting a real-world object, to immersing interactive elements in the final prototype. The situated play led understanding of the experiential qualities of the digital artefact in the emergence of a children-object-space relationship. The hybrid craft making and digital fabrication emphasized the process of making through negotiating and renegotiating with materials and digital abilities until the integration of the two. The unique composition of human power technology and outdoor play design opened up new conversations to exploit human motions and self-initiated engagement in designing embodied play.
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