Serious Toys, Design of a TagTiles Game

Serious Toys, Design of a TagTiles Game

Van Wieringen, W.

Molenbroek, J.F.M. (mentor)
Kim, C.J. (mentor)

Industrial Design Engineering

Industrial Design

Master of Science Integrated Product Design

2010-04-29

Hello, I’m Pelie. I’m your peer and could use some help in gardening. Each season seeds have to be sowed, water will have to be given to plants and fruit will have to be harvested. Would you like to help me? This question is being asked to children of group 1 and 2 of primary school when playing the Pelies Garden game on TagTiles. TagTiles is an invention of Serious Toys, a company that develops products that combine fun and personal development in tangible human-computer interaction solutions. For the product to gain market in future, more games will have to be developed. TagTiles uses tangible interfaces which holds enormous promise for children, as exploring and manipulating physical objects is a key component of young children’s learning. All game objects have unique tags on them. Because of localization technologies, each object and location will be recognized by the TagTiles console. Each game exists of physical objects, a foil and game software being programmed in a dedicated specification language; ESPranto SDK. From the reflection on six selected concepts the Pelies Garden game was created out of two of those concepts. Contracting those concepts created a combination of a story context and spatial tasks. A peer figure was developed, named Pelie. Children can ask Pelie for help during the game. Twelve geometrical objects were developed; four cylinders representing fruit, flowers and grass, four filled triangles representing seeds and four transparent cubes representing water. All objects were given the colours red, yellow, blue and green. A foil was developed and software was programmed. The game was tested several times and improved with the help of analysed results. In the Pelies Garden game children will have to set objects on the board according to the story Pelie tells. There are twelve levels divided into three years. In spring, summer and autumn objects will have to be placed at the right positions and in winter the child’s performance will be reviewed. In the first three season levels objects will have to be placed in relation to images on the foil, in relation to other objects and in relation to coloured LED crosses; offering children different spatial tasks. Educational values of the game are listening in a comprehensive way, understanding a story, reproducing, spatial awareness, localising, logical thinking and reasoning, perception of colour, comparing objects, recognizing and naming forms. Results from user tests indicate children become better gardeners each year for each value. The game suffices to all determined requirements and wishes for TagTiles game packages. Recommendations have been made on future development for the game design, physical product design and expansion of the game with future levels. This report describes the product development process of the design of a TagTiles game. The graduation project is the last step in finalizing the Integrated Product Design master at the Delft University of Technology.

Serious Toys
tangible
interaction
game
children
primary school

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:f0b13fb6-f4b7-436f-9ef8-b2e5e729fb1c

Campus only

Student theses

master thesis

(c) 2010 Van Wieringen, W.