The reality of what most of today's digital and interactive play environments had offered to our children are typically relegated to limiting physical interaction and gross motor skills to merely moving and clicking a palm-sized mouse, or miniaturized game controller. To capture the causal relationship between any kind of technology and its impact are a really important and critical part of anything that we do as designers. Whether it is for a toy, a play environment, or for any kind of experience at all, you want it to be as obvious and as intuitive as possible.

How do we create more fun and entertaining play environments for children so that they can be encouraged to explore open-ended play that will allow them to better experience direct cause and effect relationships? The key to realizing such relationships has been to optimize the creative and tangible interfaces between the desired physical attributes of traditional toys with the visual luminance and stimulation of virtual environments. Fortunately, for us "Old School" players, who reminisce for the classic toy interaction and conjured imaginative play, yet aspire to marvel and fantasize with the digital delicacies of what our virtual playscape offers us today, - there are some exciting interactive solutions for play.

Behold, the tangible Virtual Toys and Play environments that encourage our primary intuitive motor skills, while placating our digital palate. These applications range from a hammering a nail in a virtual workshop construction play set driven by PC Enhanced Toys (P.E.T.) technology, to an interactive and "socialized" experience of rhythm, light and sound, influenced by African drumming circles and Musical Instruments Digital Interface (MIDI) technology. These primary, yet diverse connections, between our physical and virtual play environments, have captivated and fused the tactile, physical virtues and "classic" symbolism of traditional toys. While simultaneously, enhancing the visual stimulation of virtual interactive environments. What makes these approaches most successful and noteworthy is their common goal to creatively link, in a seamless and complimentary manner, the attributes between the concept of play in the physical and virtual worlds.

"We can't wait to play the games we create!' - K.I.D.

K.I.D. Interactive (Klitsner Industrial Design) is a toy invention and licensing group that has invented some of today's most successful electronic games and interactive toys. KID actively plays out its innovative quest to create, develop and license marketable ideas for technology-driven toys, games and interactive entertainment. Some of their amazing, yet cost-effective and marketable toy products include "Bop-It T," the top electronic selling game for the past 4 years for Parker Brothers Toys; as well as, the award-winning, Hasbro Interactive Toys' Tonka CD-ROM Playsets. K.I.D. has optimized the notion of P.E.T. by creating an integrated approach to the computer interface by introducing to the Tonka Playsets, in 1999, a new design platform that harmoniously fused "computer peripheral" and "toy." In the case of the Tonka Workshop Playset, a classic toy tool-bench console was designed to be placed over a standard PC keyboard that would interface with an animated interactive CD-ROM virtual environment. Dan Klitsner, principle of KID points out that the, "Physical maneuvering replaces point and click manipulation, allowing kids to truly engage in building activities."

Designers and industry alike, recognize the common need to utilize cutting-edge technology in a feasible and marketable manner. This is of paramount concern in their challenge to develop successful products. In this context, Klistner states that, "KID is looking for the next technology that will go beyond the constraint of having to design within mass markets manufacturing limitations. At the same time, K.I.D. is also interested in working with non-commercial, museum/site-specific environmental projects that will allow them to better utilize their design exploratory research, technology and creative interface options."

Klitsner believes there is also a need for more experts in the "Content" area of interactive toy designs versus the technological gurus. From Klitsner's point of view in the interactive toy design "playground," it is difficult to find someone who has the combined experience in both areas.

"JAM-O-WORLD!"
".. technology itself isn't what is important, it's the ways in which peopleuse it to create positive experiences for themselves." (Tina Blaine)

Enter across the threshold of this digital divide - Tina Blaine. Blaine is a person who does have these combined, unique "techno-content" attributes that Klitsner is seeking. As an experienced artist, musician, dancer and "technophile" extraordinaire, Blaine is an interactive designer in the San Francisco Bay Area and a transcontinental "commuting" adjunct professor at the Entertainment Technology Center at Carnegie Mellon University. Blaine is interested in ways to explore new kinds of tangible interfaces that enhance the virtual experience, but is not limited to traditional computer icons, peripheries, or interfaces. Blaine states, "I like the fact that we have this opportunity to explore the impact of space in creating an immersive environment on the idea of a particular kind of game play that is collaborative in nature."

In creating a play environment that optimizes the relationship between the physical interfaces with instruments and play devices and an immersive 3D gaming hardware & software environment, an interdisciplinary team of graduate student's under the direction Blaine at the Carnegie Mellon University's Entertainment Technology Center (ETC) in Pittsburgh, PA developed the "Jam-O-World" exhibit. This interactive children's exhibit opened in May 2001 at Zeum Youth Art & Technology Center in San Francisco, CA. The participatory exhibit features the "next generation" exploration of interactive play as a way to achieve community-oriented play experiences.

The creative development of the Circle Maze concept, in the Jam-O-World exhibit, with its theatrical environmental ambience and visual drama, was influenced by the existing conical space in which it is housed at the ZEUM. The design team at ETC built a virtual 3D interactive modeling environment of the ZEUM space to facilitate the research and development of the Jam-O-World environment. This allowed the R&D team to design the Jam-O-Whirl unit specifically for its site-specific installation. Blaine explained that the conical space in the ZEUM presented a really interesting opportunity for them to create a very immersive kind of environment for not only the people who had come together to play in this virtually-enhanced space, but also for the other people who were in the space as observers.

One of the main design constraints that Blaine stressed was to create a really positive immersive game playing experience that would not be competitive, but would be something that everybody could enjoy together. "I am not really interested in shooting and killing as entertainment. I like the idea of trying to create a structure around which people can play a game and then hopefully, have enough of it be open-ended so that they can add some of their own sensibility into it."

The Jam-O-World is the archetype of social computing in respect to the socialization of the computer in bringing people together in a play and game environment. Jam-O-World turns a traditional African drum circle into an interactive virtual "socializing" experience.

The next generation of interactive design, as noted by Tina Blaine, will employ embedded computational powering in various environments, whether it is in our home, public spaces, or in the toys that we use for play-like experiences. There is a huge amount of potential for the future of what we do in terms of building and designing of toys and games that we use for enhancing tangible play-like experiences.

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Ricardo Gomes,
IDSA Associate Professor/Director
Design Center for Global Needs
San Francisco State University
Design & Industry Department
1600 Holloway Ave. San Francisco, CA 94132
(415)338-2229 voicemail
(415)338-7770 fax
http://dai.sfsu.edu