Rick Borovoy (for MAS 712)
Vanessa Stevens
Final Project Proposal for MAS 837
Cooperation Between Humans, Computers and Things
Things That Make You Think
Augmented First-Person Explorations of Complex Systems
Thinking Tags are small, wearable computers that have the ability to communicate with one another through infrared technology and display a small amount of information. The Thinking Tag technology was first implemented at the tenth anniversary of the Media Lab. It served as a conversational ice-breaker by encouraging people to explore how much they had in common, as indicated by the red and green LED display on their Tags. For this first Thinking Tag activity, one goal was "to create an augmented name tag that [did] not interfere with the social mechanisms that normally operate among groups of people. Therefore, the communication and computation technology [were] hidden within the tag." [IBM Systems Journal Vol. 35 1996]
This first Thinking Tag activity was certainly a success. [See Time Magazine ] The ability to gather bits of information about the relationship between two people -- sometimes before they had even been introduced -- turned out to be extremely compelling for many participants.
For MAS 837 we are interested in exploring new applications of the Thinking Tags, in particular looking at how the Tags create new learning environments. We will begin an investigation into how distributed computational technology can not only augment human-human interactions but also help enrich the understanding that stems from those interactions.
Simulation Activities
In the past decade there has been a rise in the use of simulations and modeling tools. This is true both in popular culture -- witness the success of games like SimCity and SimLife -- and in more traditional educational settings -- note the advent and increasing utilization of programs like STELLA and StarLogo. These programs use the unique properties of computational environments to enable kids to play and learn with a model of a dynamic system. Though the set of modeling tools is quite diverse, virtually all of the tools give the user only one perspective on the environment: a sort of god's eye view of the entire system.
We are interested in pursuing the notion of participatory simulations (similar to traditional role-playing activities) in which participants get a first person perspective on an entire system. Certainly, anyone who has ever acted in a play is familiar with witnessing a first person account of an event most people watch from a third person perspective; however, no computational modeling environment allows its users a similar first person perspective on a complex system. By giving a Thinking Tag to every person in an activity, we are able to create computationally-supported simulations in which every participant enjoys a first person view of a large-scale system. We imagine that participating in these "fantastic voyages" will increase people's abilities to think about complex, dynamic systems.
Description of Activity
For this pilot study, we will engage eight to ten high school students in a simulation of how disease spreads through a population. The kids will wear Thinking Tags that pass a "virus" from one Tag to another. As they interact with one another, their Tags will also interact, passing the "virus" from Tag to Tag. During the activity, kids will need to make decisions about whom to interact with, based upon their assumptions about the mode of "virus" transmission. Afterwards, the kids will collaborate to decipher the algorithm that controlled the spread of the virus and draw upon their individual representations of the system to build a collective understanding. Subsequent iterations of the activity will vary conditions based upon suggestions from the kids and similar explications of the model will follow.
Research Questions
Since this is a pilot study, we are most interested in identifying the provocative questions this activity raises. The following are a sample of the kinds of things we expect to investigate:
- Does the presence of a prop assist in developing understandings? We know that in science, physical models have helped lead to new discoveries of both form and function. Can the Thinking Tags play a similar role in the discoveries of the dynamics of systems?
- Does the presence of computation in the prop change the way people construct a mental model of the system? Can computational props be seamless during an interaction and yet also become tokens for detailed exploration?
- How does the activity context influence the learning experience? How does it enable participants to imbue meaning into a limited information display? How does emotional engagement impact the learning process?
- Is the "human" scale, first-person perspective of interaction a significant factor in the development of new understandings?
- How does the collaborative nature of the discovery of the underlying model contribute to the construction of understanding? Does the distributed nature of the computation influence systems learning? Does this individual perspective, and the group explication of the whole system, lead to new ways of relating big and small, individual and group, micro and macro?
- Does the possibility of multiple iterations or variations on the initial model further transform the learning experience? Would this be more effective if people could construct their own simulations?
- Would the ability to collect and display global feedback of the simulation augment the learning process?
- What effect does participation in these simulations have on the ability to conceptualize dynamic systems? Does it enhance people's ability to make predictions about a system? Does it increase people's awareness of the relationships between individual actions and systemic effects?
See progress report on participatory simulations