Paper Reading #5: Tangible Video Bubbles

Comments
Patrick Frith
Jessica Gonzales


Reference Information
Title: Tangible Video Bubbles
Authors: Kimiko Ryokai, Hayes Raffle, Hiroshi Horii, Yotam Mann
When/Where: CHI 2010, Atlanta, Georgia


Summary
Tangible Video Bubbles is a video-based drawing space for children in order to encourage children's "meaning making" through various forms of creativity. The Bubble acts as a both a container and instrument for the project, allowing video to be recorded and manipulated by it. This was created because children between the ages of five and seven display expressiveness and creativeness using various types of media. While many forms of technology that promote this interaction exist, they are usually expensive and difficult to use, making adult supervision necessary.

Tangible Video Bubbles is a "play space" for that allows both video recording and manipulation, as well as the ability to transfer video to a touch-screen digital canvas that allows for drawing and placing of the video. The video is displayed as a bubble on the canvas, that can be repositioned and can be touched for playback. The Bubble itself is a large, huggable ball with a video camera and a screen for playback. There is a button to press for recording of video and audio. While recording, the screen displays what is being recorded. The child can then play back the recorded message, manipulating it by squeezing the bubble with different amounts of pressure. For example, both speed and position in the video are controlled by squeezing. Pieces of video/audio can be cut and repeated just by squeezing the bubble, as well.

User studies were done with groups of children of various ages to both determine what shape worked best for the bubble, and then to evaluate the bubble and the canvas operations. The article states that the results of the evaluation were that the children quickly understood the idea of the bubble and were able to learn how to manipulate it for recording and playback purposes. Each child used it differently to create unique, creative projects, with some similarities between age, such as complexity of creations with older children.

The Tangible Video Bubbles process. Source: Article.

Discussion
While this idea seemed to be very interesting, to me, I feel as if it would be a very complex item to learn to use. In the article, they outlined how to do all of the interactions, and I got lost with the instructions written out for me. However, the authors do say that the children seemed to pick it up quite fast, so it may just be the description of it that sounds confusing. Other than that, this idea seems like it would be a good way for children to mix many different modes of creativity. I find it particularly interesting that the authors note that children seemed to say more personal statements to the video, since the bubble seemed to provide a private atmosphere for them. This could have many implications for fields such as psychology when dealing with children.