“At Club Penguin, which launched in October 2005 and had 4 million unique visitors in January, according to comScore Media Metrix, your 8- to 14-year-old can waddle through a virtual world as a flightless waterfowl, interacting with other penguins of her choice. Registration is free, but if junior wants to decorate her penguin’s igloo or use other advanced features on the site, you’ll need to pay a $5.95 monthly membership. And Club Penguin is just the tip of the iceberg.

A new site designed for the skinned-knee demographic seems to pop up nearly every day. Their potential market is huge: there are some 28.5 million kids between the ages of 8 and 14 in the United States, according to emarketer.com. A 2006 Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg survey found that an equal 38 percent of both male and female teens aged 12 to 14 use MySpace (even though the site’s age cutoff is 14) or some other social-networking site.”

Sites featured: Club Penguin, Whyville, Habbo, Imbee, Tweenland, Webkinz, Nicktropolis, and Disney Xtreme Digital.

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In the interview, Knudstorp starts of by explaining how they became a user-centred toy company by involving their users to an extreme degree. He also states the core brand value as “the joy of building and the pride of creating things”, which is a description of an experience.

The interview, which was conducted by Monocle editor-in-chief Tyler Brûlé and took place at the company’s innovation centre in Billund, Denmark, then goes in to an interesting discussion on the changing nature of play. Knudstorp describes some insights from an anthropological survey the company did recently, in particular about interactivity, community and what children expect from a brand.

Watch interview
(Note that the actual video file seems to be huge and the streaming is not exactly smooth. I couldn’t get beyond the first half: it simply stalled. Unfortunately a download is not possible.)

“U.S. residents made up only 31.2 percent of active Second Life users in the month. France has the second-highest number of users after the virtual world became a battleground for the country’s presidential election.

Although French residents had long been a part of Second Life, thousands more joined Second Life in January as demonstrators picketed the virtual offices of Jean Marie Le Pen’s far-right National Front party. Socialist candidate Ségolène Royal also established a Second Life presence.”

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(via Loic Le Meur)

“In keeping with the general trend toward ‘age compression’ or KGOY (industry shorthand for “kids getting older younger”), toy manufacturers will be introducing a host of adult technologies aimed at small children — including kid-friendly laptops, graphics tablets, digital cameras and a host of other high-tech items.

Consumer electronics for kids is the fastest growing trend in the $22 billion toy industry. With children becoming ever more tech savvy at ever-younger ages, toymakers are scrambling to capitalize on the rapidly growing market for youth electronics.”

The article features the following products:

• colorful optical mice by Kutoka Interactive
• digital cameras and graphics tablets by French toy giant Smoby
• Click & Create With Mia — a kind of Photoshop for tots that teaches kids to draw, paint and animate shapes on screen, and allows them to create posters, invitations and birthday cards
• the SmartKids laptop for children aged 3 to 6 that features a piano keyboard and bilingual programs in Spanish and English
• the Marvel Ani-Movie Studio, which allows kids to create digital stop-motion films starring Marvel Comics characters
• Pressman Toy’s iGamez, which allows kids to play a digital version of Name That Tune
• Fisher-Price’s Digital Arts and Crafts Studio, a graphics tablet and software package
• Fisher-Price’s Smart Cycle, a small stationary bike that allows kids to peddle their way through a virtual environment on a standard television set
• Pyramat’s PM440-W wireless gaming chair

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In part one of the interview (10:01), Moggridge talks about the process he went through to design/write the book (yes, there was a prototype involved!) as well as some thoughts on what factors are common where good interaction design is created.

In the second part (05:48), Moggridge talks about designing games and what interactions can learn from games design.

Part three (10:28) finally, deals with the ingredients of successful design teams - who is in them, how do they work together, where do they work, etc.

(via Usability in the News)

“While America’s Internet users send e-mail messages and surf for information on their personal computers, young people in China are playing online games, downloading video and music into their cellphones and MP3 players and entering imaginary worlds where they can swap virtual goods and assume online personas.

Another distinguishing feature is the youthful face of China’s online community. In the United States, roughly 70 percent of Internet users are over the age of 30; in China, it is the other way around — 70 percent of users here are under 30, according to the investment bank Morgan Stanley.

Because few people in China have credit cards or trust the Internet for financial transactions, e-commerce is emerging slowly. But instant messaging and game-playing are major obsessions, now central to Chinese culture. So is social networking, a natural fit in a country full of young people without siblings.

[This] is one reason America’s biggest Internet companies, like Yahoo, Google and eBay, have largely flopped in China. Analysts say the American companies struggle here partly because of regulatory restrictions that favor homegrown companies, but also because foreign companies often do not understand China’s Internet market, which is geared primarily to entertainment and mobile phones.”

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During his presentation, he started from the definition (by Rogers, Sharp and Preece) that interaction design is about “creating experiences that enhance and extend the way people work, communicate and interact.” He then described the four key areas that interaction design is focusing on — human-computer interaction and interfaces; technologically mediated human to human interaction; interaction between humans and devices in contained enviroments like museums, shops and offices; and responsive architectures and spaces — and showed a large number of examples to highlight how the field of interaction design is developing.

A video of the lecture (30 min.) can be seen on Google Video.

“The web site, which is to be activated today, is aimed at children ages 6 to 14, and plays heavily to their appetite for games, the company said yesterday.

Nickelodeon was prompted to join the surging world of online activities for children in part by research that showed that 86 percent of 8- to 14-year-olds were playing games online, more than 51 percent were watching TV shows and videos online and 37 percent were sending instant messages, the company said.

In virtual worlds like Nicktropolis, visitors create alter egos — termed avatars — which then interact with other avatars and the web site environment, like people do in the physical world.”

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A few months back I was a jury member of the EUROPRIX Top Talent Award, a contest for the best in European multimedia from young producers, and was delighted to see the puppet theatre reinvented in Tadam, an entry by students of Gobelins, a Paris school of visual communication.

The young team responsible for Tadam (a French onomatopoeia used to express an excited announcement) have deeply understood the fascination of this magic and the three essential aspects it implies, and created an interactive and computer-supported experience that brings delightful freshness to the old art.

The joy of crafting is present in just about everything the project contains: from the soldering of the theatre frame out of metal tubes, to the knitting of the red and gold theatre curtains, from the careful computer rendering of the puppet faces (based on the actual faces of the project members) to the hand-sown clothes of the digital marionettes, from the intricacies of computer coding to the hand-drawn storyboards, and from the electronics-in-a-wooden-box prototypes to the sweet toy instrument music.

The marionettes are digital and only exist on a projected screen. Yet, they are operated like any other marionette: a skilled puppeteer holds a wooden cross that manipulates their arm, leg and head movements, and brings thrilling life to the inanimate forms.

Finally, the direct interaction between the puppeteer and the digital marionette allows for a direct dynamic with the audience, which is essential to this type of storytelling.

As a bonus, the making-off video is a splendid presentation of the project, conveying very well the pleasure the young team felt while working on their challenge.

Technical description

Tadam is a multimedia puppet show which brings computer animations to life and stages the animation film in a traditional theatre. Users initially build up a plot scene by scene through the director module and can select different well-designed graphic environments and themes. The show can be pre-cut in several parts. Using software similar to moviemaker, static sequences (e.g. transition, fade or text) or sound effects can be added, edited and saved. The puppeteers are free to manipulate 3D marionettes in real time by interacting with a wooden cross lever which is equipped with movement sensors. The puppet’s mouth can even be animated by speaking through a microphone. Once the show is performed, it can be burned on DVD. Tadam is hand-crafted and fully customisable for beginners or professionals.

Tadam, which was rightfully selected as a Europrix Top Talent Award 2006 winner in the category “Digital Video & Animations”, has a project website in French only. The Medias section also contains a shorter presentation video (which is however not as good as the “making-of” one, due to poor music and voice choices).

“A two-year, government-funded study by researchers at the University of Stirling in Scotland found that electronic toys marketed for their supposed educational benefits, such as the LeapFrog LeapPad, an interactive learning activity toy, and the Vtech V provided no obvious benefits to children. “In terms of basic literacy and number skills I don’t think they are more efficient than the more traditional approaches,| researcher Lydia Plowman told the Guardian. Although no Luddite (Ms. Plowman makes the rather perverse recommendation that parents give children their old cellphones so that they can learn to “model” adult behavior with technology).”

At a Boston University conference on language development in November, researchers from Temple University’s Infant Laboratory and the Erikson Institute in Chicago described the results of their research on electronic books. The Fisher-Price toy company, which contributed funding for the study, was not pleased. “Parents who are talking about the content [of stories] with their child while reading traditional books are encouraging early literacy,” says researcher Julia Parish-Morris, “whereas parents and children reading electronic books together are having a severely truncated experience.” Electronic books encouraged a “slightly coercive parent-child interaction,” the study found, and were not as effective in promoting early literacy skills as traditional books.”

(via Pasta and Vinegar)

“While the urge to play is a human universal, gaming cultures differ widely across different societies - that goes for the games people enjoy as well as how they enjoy them. You can play with interactive media alone or to socialise, to compete or to relax, at home or in the street. What is play and what’s in a game?”

In “The space to play“, Matt Jones, director of user experience design for Nokia Design Multimedia, explores themes from his research into the universal human urge to play – and how it relates to the way we design our technology, our environments and our future.

“Lucky Wander Boy – the microsurgeon winner” is the title of a story about a man who finds a purpose through and is ruined by his obsession with video games. It is written by D.B. Weiss, who is currently in the headlines for working on the script for a movie adaption of the “Halo” video game series.

In “Gaming International“, Jim Rossignol, a British technology author specialising in video games, tells us about his experiences in Seoul and compares European and Asian approaches to gaming.

“Mobile gaming – the troubled teenage years” is the title of a contribution by technology writer Stuart Dredge, in which he takes a look at the future of mobile gaming, focusing on how mobile games could move beyond the familiar hits like Tetris and Pac-Man to new concepts blending innovation and connectivity.

In “Games in spite of themselves“, Auriea Harvey and Michaël Samyn of the Belgian design studio Tale of Tales discuss “The Endless Forest”, a multiplayer game in which everybody plays a deer.

In “Playing by creating“, David Edery, the Worldwide Games Portfolio Planner for Xbox Live Arcade (Microsoft) tells us why we should be excited about user-generated content.

“Playing the news“: games are the new news, argues Gonzalo Frasca, a video game theorist and developer, currently researching serious gaming at IT University of Copenhagen, and the co-founder of Powerful Robot Games, a studio known for its work on election video games as well as its newsgaming.com project.

In “Three play effects – Eliza, Tale-Spin and SimCity“, Noah Wardrip-Fruin, a digital media creator and scholar whose current work focuses on digital fiction and play, looks at three different models of what we experience through play.

Finally “Interaction as an aesthetic event“, is the title of the contribution by media theorist Lev Manovich, a Professor of Visual Arts at UCSD, in which he takes a look at the playful user interaction in recent cell phone models and other personal information technology.

“LEGO Serious Play is an innovative, experiential process designed to enhance innovation and business performance. Based on research that shows that this kind of hands-on, minds-on learning produces a deeper, more meaningful understanding of the world and its possibilities, LEGO Serious Play is an efficient, practical and effective process that works for everyone within an organization.”

“LEGO Serious Play uses LEGO bricks and elements and a unique method where people are empowered to “think through their fingers” - unleashing insight, inspiration and imagination.”

Visit the LEGO Serious Play website

From the press release:

“Philips Design will have a space on Second Life where virtual concepts can be tested and residents can participate in co-design projects. In this way, Second Life users can have a greater say in the kind of colors, ergonomics, functionality and other features of products they may wish to buy in this virtual world. This will allow Philips Design to find new ways of relating to end users. Having such direct feedback can significantly enrich the design process and lead to innovative and surprising end results. This fits with the Philips Design philosophy that design should be based around people and grounded in research. It also corresponds to Philips Design’s firm belief that the future of design lies in the co-creation of products.”

Philips Design has just signed a collaboration agreement with Rivers Run Read, the leading virtual world design agency in Europe, to establish a Philips Design presence within Second Life conceived as “a collaborative working space for the real and virtual worlds”.

Read full press release

Mike Spang has the long job title: “Business Research Director, Document Imaging, Corporate Business Research, Eastman Kodak Company”. He spoke about how Kodak went about creating a satisfying global corporate web experience.

To put it in somewhat of a context, about five years ago Kodak had to rapidly reinvent itself as a digital camera company, and so the website had to also change from a portal for photography to a portal for digital imaging, with 80 percent of the web visitors being regular consumers.

The website also had to provide people with an experience beyond just camera purchasing. As one can read in an article in Business Week that was just published, CEO Antonio M. Perez “aims to make Kodak do for photos what Apple does for music: help people to organise and manage their personal libraries of images. He’s developing a slew of new digital photo services for consumers that he expects to yield higher returns.”

Spang described how Kodak through a clever use of user-centred design and a wide range of usability methods, was able to reinvent its web site, make it truly global and incorporate input from users worldwide.

The techniques used included open ended site surveys, heuristic evaluation, focus groups, cognitive walkthroughs, card sorting, usability testing (in lab, remote, web-based), visitor satisfaction assessments, multivariate design testing, and web traffic analysis.

Since there are more than 50 different national versions of the site, the research took place in the UK, Germany, France, China, South Korea and the United States.

Download presentation (pdf, 2.8 mb, 44 slides)

Emmi Kuussikko, Sulake Corporation

Emmi Kuussikko is a research manager with particular responsibilities for market and user insight at the Sulake Corporation, an interactive entertainment company based in Finland. Sulake is responsible for Habbo Hotel.

Habbo is one of the largest teen online communities in 29 different countries. It is a virtual world for young people, a massively multiplayer online game where teenagers create their own personalised virtual characters and interact with other characters in the community. It has 7 million unique users monthly, mainly in the 13 to 16 year old age range, and over 60 million characters have been created globally.

Since it is the community that creates a truly unique gaming environment and a great deal of the changing content is created by the users themselves, they strongly feel they own the brand and the Sulake Corporation just manages it with them.

Research in this online environment is of course also done online. The user base is very loyal and they are very eager to participate in surveys. So actual data collection is very fast. A survey can collect over 40,000 answers in just a few days.

Here are some of the results from a recent survey done globally.

Most teens spend more time on the internet (>90%) than TV (~60 %). Mobile usage is mainly used for text messages, followed by camera use and game playing. One third listen to music on the mobile phone, especially in the UK and Italy. Teens mostly use the web to stay in contact with their friends: IM and email. Then come games. The research provides also a more detailed insight into youth characteristics regarding life style and values:

• No 1 value: having warm social relationships with friends and family; no 2 value was having fun, and no 3 was security
• Many are rather conservative in their values
• Fame, wealth and influence are important to about half
• They generally have a very positive self-image
• They endorse a socially responsible world-view
• Even thought most claim to be tolerant, many have negative attitudes toward minorities. But they would like to have friends from other countries.

Kuusikko’s presentation started to become really interesting when she presented user segments, and the spread of these segments by country.

The user segmentation was based on a cluster-factor analysis. Trying to create maximum divergence between groups and minimum within, provided an accurate and reliable method for identifying groups with similar characteristics. The variables examined were personality, values, attitudes, subculture membership, areas of interest.

Five user types were found: achievers, traditionals, creatives, rebels and loners.

Sulake also uses a more selective community of 200 users to generate, co-create and test new ideas in a continuous and open dialogue.

I hope to be able to add a download to Kuusikko’s presentation shortly.

Mehmood Khan, Unilever

Mehmood Khan is the eccentric thinker who is the Global Leader of Innovation Process Development at Unilever.

Unilever’s mission is to “add vitality to life”. It manages 400 brands spanning 14 categories of home, personal care and foods products “that help people look good, feel good and get more out of life”.

Khan has been with Unilever since 1982 and has worked in wide areas of the business: marketing, exports, procurement, business development and innovation. He has been pioneering new business for Unilever in places like Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Mongolia and North Korea, along with developing new portfolios in China and other countries in East Asia.

In his presentation, entitled “A holistic approach to innovation”, Khan described the key features of Unilever innovation.

According to Khan, innovation is about turning creativity in a successful enterprise. At Unilever innovation is customer-focused which allows the company to keep its brands connected to people’s lives. The innovation learnings and in particular the customer focus have also shaped the vitality brand strategy.

Download presentation (pdf, 136 kb, 17 slides)

The technology is based on sophisticated gesture recognition, while the end-result for the visitor is a radically simple content navigation system in which the images are projected on a large screen, and interaction is performed via nothing but a flat luminous surface.

The project was developed by Jan-Christoph Zoels, Yaniv Steiner and Ofer Luft of Experientia, the Turin-based international experience design consultancy.

A prototype of the gesture-based interface was previously used to navigate Google Earth and to guide club dancing during a music rave. The various interfaces are all based on the smartRetina™ technology, which provides the designer with a programmable “eye”, allowing him to easily design new experiences and interactions which do not require a tangible interface.

YouTube video

“In some cases museums—famously top-down institutions—are even incorporating the views, critical choices and contributed content of visitors into their programs. They are also re-examining the ways in which visitors interact with objects and spaces, as well as each other. For help with both of these approaches they are turning to a growing sector of the interactive design world; one that specializes in interactive museum displays.”

“Thus, the best interactive exhibits are open-ended. They encourage visitors to be active participants in the experience rather than passive consumers of information. They take their visitors’ views seriously and break down the hierarchy of institutions.”

Acknowledging the debate (”The idea of the audience taking control sends shivers down many a curator’s spine”), Kabat provides some very good examples of thoughtful integration of user-generated content in museum and exhibition contexts.

Read full story

Here is what Morville wrote about it:

Henry presents eleven new skills or literacies…

• Play - the capacity to experiment with one’s surroundings as a form of problem solving.
• Performance - the ability to adopt alternative identities for the purpose of improvisation and discovery.
• Simulation - the ability to interpret and construct dynamic models of real-world processes.
• Appropriation - the ability to meaningfully sample and remix media content.
• Multitasking - the ability to scan one’s environment and shift focus as needed to salient details.
• Distributed Cognition - the ability to interact meaningfully with tools that expand mental capacities.
• Collective Intelligence - the ability to pool knowledge and compare notes with others toward a common goal.
• Judgment - the ability to evaluate the reliability and credibility of different information sources.
• Transmedia Navigation - the ability to follow the flow of stories and information across multiple modalities.
• Networking - the ability to search for, synthesize, and disseminate information.
• Negotiation - the ability to travel across diverse communities, discerning and respecting multiple perspectives, and grasping and following alternative norms.

…and three concerns:

• The Participation Gap - the unequal access to the opportunities, experiences, skills, and knowledge that will prepare youth for full participation in the world of tomorrow.
• The Transparency Problem - the challenges young people face in learning to see clearly the ways that media shape perceptions of the world.
• The Ethics Challenge - the breakdown of traditional forms of professional training and socialization that might prepare young people for their increasingly public roles as media makers and community participants.

Henry also argues that “textual literacy remains a central skill in the twenty-first century” and that traditional research skills “assume even greater importance as students venture beyond collections that have been screened by librarians into the more open space of the web.”

In considering goals and challenges regarding the education of our two daughters over the next decade or so, this feels like a pretty good roadmap.

The Digital Learning Initiative is exploring the hypothesis that digital media tools now enable new forms of knowledge production, social networking, communication and play. Through the use of such tools, young people are engaged in an exploration of language, games, social interaction and self-directed education that can be used to support learning. They are different as a result of this use of digital media, and these differences are reflected in their sense of self, in how they express their independence and creativity, and in their ability to learn, exercise judgment and think systemically.

The Digital Learning Initiative acknowledges the emerging vernacular of young people who are “growing up digital” and embraces the writing, thinking, and design tools of the digital age. It is seeking to answer questions such as: Are young people fundamentally different because of their exposure to technology? What environments and experiences capture their interest and contribute to their learning? What are the implications for education? It includes ethnography, the development of media literacy, and the connection between games and learning.

“For the first time this fall, a Harvard University class is meeting on its own ‘Berkman Island’ within Second Life (SL). ‘Avatars,’ visual images that represent the students and teachers, gather in an ‘outdoor’ amphitheater, head inside a virtual replica of Harvard Law School’s Austin Hall, and travel to complete assignments all over the digital world.”

“Some 90 Harvard law and extension school students taking the course, called ‘CyberOne: Law in the Court of Public Opinion,’ can receive real college credit. But anyone on Earth with a computer connection can also take the course for free. Students are participating from as far away as South Korea and China.”

Read full story

Three reports and two projects offer some valuable recent insight, but the website contains much more:

The report Social Software and Learning explores the relationship between the emergence of social software and the personalisation of education. It suggests that there is a changing view of what education is for, with an emphasis on the need for young people to develop the skills necessary for today’s evolving global knowledge economy. Alongside this development is the rapid growth of social software, characterised as software that supports group interaction, and by combining these two trends there is significant potential to see a new approach to education.
- Read online version
- Download report (pdf, 994 kb, 71 pages)

Learner Voice is the title of a report on giving more of a voice to the learner. “Despite the vast number of changes in the education system in recent years, learners are seldom consulted and remain largely unheard in the change process. If education is to become more personalised, then the views of learners must be heard. This handbook draws on examples, case studies and research to provide learners and educators with information and ideas for promoting the voices of learners.”
- Read online version
- Download report (pdf, 816 kb, 42 pages)

Teaching with Games was a year-long project supported by Electronic Arts, Microsoft and Take-Two, as well as the Interactive Software Federation of Europe (ISFE), investigating the place of mainstream commercial computer games in the classroom. The project aimed to provide practical and informed evidence of the implications and potential of the use of these games in school, and an informed strategy for future educational development requirements, based upon collaborative discussions between industry and the education community. A report, outlining the context, objectives, methods, findings and key messages arising from the Teaching with Games project, is now available.
- Read online version
- Download report (pdf, 1.3 mb, 65 pages)

Enquiring Minds is a three-year research and development project investigating how children can shape their own learning, by changing the emphasis from what they learn to how they learn. Run by Futurelab and funded by Microsoft through its Partners in Learning initiative, the project is essentially trying to put into practice the theories of fully personalised learning.

Create-A-Scape is a new website that provides free resources to enable teachers and pupils to create digitally-enhanced, personalised learning experiences, using HP’s Mediascape authoring toolkit.
- Read project article
- Download article (pdf, 68 kb, 2 pages)

Finally, an article on the BBC website today reports on a Futurelab survey that shows that video games could have a serious role to play in the classroom. The survey, which covered 1,000 teachers and more than 2,300 primary and secondary school students in the UK, found 59% of teachers would consider using off-the-shelf games in the classroom while 62% of students wanted to use games at school.