6
SEMINAR HOT & COOL NEW STUFF

Seminar Hot and cool new stuff

  • Upload
    cinekid

  • View
    226

  • Download
    4

Embed Size (px)

DESCRIPTION

Cinekid for Professionals: seminar Hot & Cool new stuff.

Citation preview

Page 1: Seminar Hot and cool new stuff

1Cinekid for Professionals 2013

www.cinekid.com

Cinekid for ProfessionalsSeminar Hot & Cool new stuff

SEMINARHOT & COOL NEW STUFF

Page 2: Seminar Hot and cool new stuff

2Cinekid for Professionals 2013www.cinekid.com

Cinekid for ProfessionalsSeminar Hot & Cool new stuff

Seminar Hot & Cool new stuff

New technology and how it affects children

“We are all in a battle for the 64.000 minutes of childhood that every human being gets”, Children’s Technology Review editor Warren Buckleitner kicked off the Hot & Cool New Stuff seminar at Cinekid. But the question is: How to get children’s at-tention and how to do that in a responsible way?

Before introducing his three guests Buckleitner presented a quick overview of things to come in children’s media. In terms of hardware next year will bring the 150 dollar Android tablet, a new pipeline for delivering content to children. Essentially though, Buckleitner made clear throughout the afternoon, the tablet hardware will not change radically in the decade to come. The quintessential functionality is there: it can hear the user, it can see the user, it has motion sensing and increasingly smarter touch screens, as was proven by the new iPad that was released only a day earlier. Important news for software developers because they have to create new apps in an increasingly shorter amount of time. The ‘touch rejection algorithm in the new iPad was great news for children, Buckleitner pointed out. Accidental touches can now be distinguished and disregarded by the tablet.

A short video from entertainment technology Mecca E3 earlier this year showed Sony’s The Playroom, an augmented reality entertainment experience which com-bines the PlayStation Camera with the DualShock 4 wireless controller to turn the area around the player into a technological playground. This can be combined and integrated with an Android tablet and this blending of screens said Buckleitner, we will see much more of. As to the software we will see maturation in the app space, Buckleitner predicted. “Take into account that iTunes and Google Play are only a few years old. And we also need to talk about Moshi Monsters as well as Minecraft and Sony Skylanders versus Disney Infinity. We should be aware of these software battles that are coming.”

Buckleitner jokingly showed on the big screen the first ‘in-presentation advertise-ment’ that asked the audience to donate 1.99 dollar for his daughter who needs to get through college. There was really a point to it, Buckleitner said. “As reviewers we have to figure out how to ethically monetize children’s content in the digital space. The people who are developing trust in the digital space, like Sago Sago and Toca Boca, are trusted by the parents that they don’t put some sort of gimmick or a license in the apps that are impeding in the child’s play space. It’s very important that people can make a living of this. But there’s a sacred ground in respecting the child’s pri-vacy, and if you violate that sacred ground, I as a reviewer will come after you like a swarm of bees.”

Page 3: Seminar Hot and cool new stuff

3Cinekid for Professionals 2013

www.cinekid.com

Cinekid for ProfessionalsSeminar Hot & Cool new stuff

Sago Sago

‘The principles of our design are pretty timeless’

Toronto based app developer Sago Sago was launched only last February as a merger between Canadian Zinc Row and Swedish Toca Boca. Since then the company put out five apps that to date have been downloaded over two million times.“We make apps for 2-4 year olds”, CEO Jason Krogh explained the studio’s practice and design principles. Titles include Sago Mini Forest Flyer and Sago Mini Sound Box.

Design principles:

1. Don’t pay too much attention to what happens inside the frame. In the end we need to be looking at the whole experience. So what we obsess over is how the app is experienced by the children.

2. Three things we look for

- Mastery: a feeling of accomplishment that kids feel when they discover or master something independently. That means that kids need to be able to enjoy the app with very little assistance. So we don’t like to put in menus or tutori als. How do we realise that? Through attention to detail and play testing. We want to create that happy satisfaction a child feels when it knows it drove the experience.- Ownership: all of our apps have to have some kind of unique outcome or expe rience that is reflective of the child’s participation. So what happens at the end: the child needs to feel he had some role in how it played out. - Joy: joy and learning are inextricably linked. Often it works through physical moves and experiences. The fundamentals of our design are pretty timeless.

Page 4: Seminar Hot and cool new stuff

4Cinekid for Professionals 2013www.cinekid.com

Cinekid for ProfessionalsSeminar Hot & Cool new stuff

Krogh discussed the development of Sago Sago’s new app Music Box, that will launch in December. The app allows the child to steer a cat in an air balloon drifting over green hills and even up into space and touching nearby planets. Each touch creates different sounds enabling the player to create music. Krogh explained how the idea evolved from the original first plans to something completely different. Some details:

- We start by thinking about what we can do with a music box- We had a go at this in the past and that resulted in a prototype version. The design was ok, but we wanted it to be less structured and more playful- The first ten seconds of the app experience are essential: we now start with white space and let the child begin the experience. It gives them control- This points to an essential point: do not put too much in there. We had an app called Forest Flyer, which originally had a voiceover describing what was hap pening to a bird. But after we removed that voiceover, the children themselves started describing what was happening, often making up very elaborate stories

Botanicus Interacticus

‘More a framework than a finished product’

Not directly involved with children’s media but working on a more abstract level of digital interaction was Jonas Loh, co-founder of German Studio Nand. Loh was invi-ted to talk about Botanicus Interacticus, a collaboration with Disney Research Pitts-burgh and The Green Eyl in Berlin.

Page 5: Seminar Hot and cool new stuff

5Cinekid for Professionals 2013

www.cinekid.com

Cinekid for ProfessionalsSeminar Hot & Cool new stuff

Working at the intersection of science, design, education and technology, Loh refer-red to Disney research scientist and his collaborator on the project Ivan Poupyrev, who once said ‘we should digitize what we already have and stop making more junk.’ Ultimately he wants to make the whole environment interactive.The idea behind the Botanicus Interacticus is to create a technological framework more than a finished product. “Disney already developed the Touché sensor: a new sensing technology that proposes a novel Swept Frequency Capacitive Sensing tech-nique that can not only detect a touch event, but simultaneously recognize complex configurations of the human hands and body during touch interaction. It’s a capa-citive sensor. That is not entirely new but what’s technically different is that this sensor reads a range of frequencies rather than one frequency. So you can attach the sensor the any kind of conductive object and you can recognize this object and recog-nize how this object was touched.”Disney then suggested to combine this with plants and make that visible on screens. That resulted in Botanicus Interacticus, which creates an aurora like effect around the plant when it is touched. “The next step is to bring this technology out in the open so people can use it for all kinds of applications. I strongly belief in this approach and I want to think more about open platforms rather than closed applications. Let people create their own tools. This kind of technology has more to do with the education of the 21st century.”

Sony’s Wonderbooks

‘Casting Harry Potter’s iconic spells’

Russell Harding, through a cooperation with Sony and J. K. Rowling Creative Direc-tor of The Book of Spells and The Book of Potions, lifted the veil on some of the magic behind these successful augmented reality products.

The cooperation didn’t happen overnight. Back in 2004, Harding explained, London Studios, then Camden Studios, developed the EyeToy for Sony’s Playstation 2. In 2005 SingStar followed. Both games were based on the interaction through using the mi-crophone and the camera. The aim was to bring socialisation to the console gaming experience. According to Harding, that Augmented Reality m.o. stayed with the studio since.Already working with AR and looking for ways to bring the graphics into the living room and offer the possibility to interact with it, the studio started developing the concept of the Wonderbook. “The idea was to have this magical book in which you can bring a character to life such as a genie, and rotate and turn the book. After we star-ted prototyping we discovered that we wanted something bigger: we wanted to create a platform on which you can get a range of AR experiences.” “We asked children how they would like to play such a game. We set up workshops where kids would tell how they would like to interact and which stories they wanted to hear. We continued that iteration process throughout development of physical pro-totypes and throughout production. Every two weeks we would test what we had with kids. And in fact in many instances they’ll lead the development. It was a real learning process.”

Page 6: Seminar Hot and cool new stuff

6Cinekid for Professionals 2013www.cinekid.com

Cinekid for ProfessionalsSeminar Hot & Cool new stuff

Sony at that time was talking to Pottermore.com and as a part of the talks Harding was offered the possibility to present prototypes to J.K. Rowling. It became clear that one of the things she always wanted to do is to create a spell book. That started the production of The Book of Spells, the first Wonderbook. It’s a role playing device through which children learn to cast spells and have animated experiences and cast Harry Potter’s iconic spells.

On November 13th The Book of Potions will be released in Europe, the follow up game to The Book of Spells. Rowling came up with a totally new character, Zygmunt Budg, a potioneer character created entirely for the new book and also the supposed author of The Book of Potions. Additionally she created a magical championship where the player can try out potions.

“When the idea for the new book came up, we went straight back to our audience to discover what they wanted to experience in such a game. Well, they want to smash things up and make a mess of things. So that became the core of The Book of Potions. It’s all about experimentation, making a mess and having fun. You can chop up and grind and mash ingredients. And we wanted kids to be able to explore the ingredients by a magnifying glass. The championships became quite a strong narrative drive for the game as well.”