Electronic Furniture for the Curious Home: Assessing Ludic Designs in the Field

In this paper, we describe field trials of three electronic furniture prototypes for the home. Each of the pieces was developed to explore different ways to encourage " ludic " engagement with the home, suggesting that computational technologies can meaningfully serve curiosity and exploration in domestic environments. The Drift Table shows slowly scrolling aerial photography controlled by the centre of gravity of the things on its surface. The History Tablecloth senses the locations of objects left upon it and creates a slowly growing " halo " around those left the longest. The Key Table, measures the force with which people put things upon it and tilts a picture frame to indicate their mood. Each of the pieces was loaned to different households for periods ranging from one to three months. Because they were designed to encourage users to appropriate them through their activities and interpretations, a hypothesis-testing paradigm was inappropriate for evaluating the success of the designs. We focused instead on gathering rich, multi-layered accounts of peoples' experience through ethnographic observations and documentary videos. As we had expected, allowing people to try the designs in the field not only exposed issues relevant for assessment, but was integral to the designs themselves: Although we conceived of, designed and implemented the pieces, it was the users who endowed them with meaning.