 Platform Description The three platform components, Structure, Technology and Information, are managed as a system, integrated with the library and its users.
Structural components provide a physical setting where environmental, spatial, proximal and aesthetic issues are related. Specification of a flexible, free-standing frame system enables the creation of adaptive settings that integrate technologies and support interaction behaviors and protocols. Pathways (a manufactured Steelcase Office System), provides dimensional and configurable variability as well as an immersive structure that connotes a “sense of place” and signifies ThinkeringSpace as a special destination within the library. Technological components enable mediated communication, interactions and access to content within the environment. The system architecture, application design, interface, resolution and bandwidth provide affordances for “Doing Things Together”. Four technologies are being explored concurrently: 1) large, interactive display surfaces; 2) tangible interface object tagging systems that support physical/virtual interplay; 3) multi-user control devices enabling face-to-face collaborative interaction; 4) gesture/motion recognition technologies that use body movement to control computer interaction. Prototyping is shaping understanding of collaboration, physical/virtual interplay, affects of image scale and social interaction within ThinkeringSpaces. Informational components provide rich content, activity priming and points of engagement. Representation, purpose, quantity and integrity help symbolize ideas, convey meanings, and support understanding for different users. They also provide control and feedback. Each library will have different kinds of resources available. The ThinkeringSpace platform will make them accessible through various forms of media and activities. Shaped by the spatial and aesthetic properties of the structure, and governed by the protocol of the library, users will have personal and collaborative experiences in acquiring information and creating new ideas. Platform Integration The relationships between the library, its users and the ThinkeringSpace platform are framed in terms of Protocol, Resources and Experience.  Experience is focused on the how kids actually interact with ThinkeringSpace and the affordances enabled through the structure, technology and information platform. ThinkeringSpace is being shaped as an activity based model where “activity nodes” enable kids to explore, experiment, reflect and share naturally as they navigate in spatial, social and mediated ways. Enabling kids to choose and control what they do will affect both capability and outcomes manipulating tools, exercising control and receiving feedback. Resources include all of the content available in a particular library through its collections, utilities, services and programs: books, CD’s, DVD’s, artifacts, computer applications, filtered internet data, as well as content created for special interest activities and the things kids make themselves. Using this available material the ThinkeringSpace system can provide information primers and activities that enable kids to choose and control what interests them. Work that kids create can be stored in an archive or be used as resources by others to build upon. Protocol is focused on procedures for user engagement and guidelines for library operation of ThinkeringSpace. Protocol models describe how kids will engage with the ThinkeringSpace offerings, from leaving home to entering the library to returning back home again. Library protocols will guide procedures and policies determining how the system is conceived, configured and managed over time. |
     |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
||||||
| © 2008 IIT Institute of Design |
• • • • • • Top of page |
|||||