"...a load of ould boxology!"

• Authors: Kieran Ferris;Liam Bannon
• Venue: DIS '02 Proceedings of the 4th conference on Designing interactive systems: processes, practices, methods, and techniques
• Year: 2002

This paper documents the design process for an augmented children's play environment centred on that most ubiquitous and simple of objects, the cardboard box. The purpose of the exercise is to show how computer technology can be used in innovative ways to stimulate discovery, play and adventure among children. Our starting point was a dissatisfaction with current computer technology as it is presented to children, which, all to often in our view, focuses inappropriately on the computer per se as a fetishized object. Shifting the focus of attention from the Graphical User Interface (GUI) to familiar objects, and children's interactions around and through these augmented objects, results in the computer becoming a facilitator of exploration and learning. The paper documents the journey from initial design concept, through a number of prototype implementations, to the final implementation. Each design iteration was triggered by observation of use of the prototypes, and reflection on that use, and on new design possibilities. By augmenting an everyday artefact, namely the standard cardboard box, we have created a simple yet powerful interactive environment that, judging from the experience of our "users", has achieved its goal of stirring children's imagination.