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The
Digital Seed is a microworld for learning about plant growth, life
cycles, and the origin of seeds.
The Digital Seed is a virtual alter-ego of a real seed, he lives
in a cube. To grow up he needs help from outside, the user must
take care of the seed: watering the cube, keeping the cube the
right temperature, and exposing it to the right amount of light.
The physical actions on the cube will affect the inner virtual
world where the seed lives and grows. The user must care for the
seed throughout its life cycle until the end, with the birth of
a new seed.
Digital
Seed is a project by Mauro
Cherubini, Jamie Rasmussen, Carol
Strohecker - MLE Everyday Learning; Hugh
Gash, Tom McCloughlin
- Psychology Department, Saint Patrick's College, Dublin City
University. |
Preliminary
discussion of plants and their life cycles informed design of
the Digital Seed device. The discussions were based on the Piagetian
notion of clinical interview |
The
software states correspond to three environmental conditions which
are under the child's control: sufficient light/water present;
not enough present; too much present |
On
the left is the iPAQ Pocket PC; on the right, the board with the
light and temperature sensors (below) and the accelerometer, clap
and flow sensor and a 9-volt battery (above). |
The
sensors and board fit in one side of the box; the iPAQ fits behind
the window so that, when closed, the box becomes a colorful, responsive
toy. |
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For More Information |
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| Digital
Seed : Paper presented as a poster at the conference
Interaction Design and Children
(with Jamie Rasmssen, Hugh Gash, Tom McCloughlin). International
Workshop, August
28-29 2002, Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands
(PDF File 953 KB) |
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| Digital
Seed Poster (PDF FIle 4159 KB) |
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| Gash,
H., and Cherubini, M. A
digital seed: designing a toy plant to facilitate cognitive
growth. At the annual conference of the Psychological
Society of Ireland, Cork, November 2002 (PDF File 7 KB)
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Acknowledgments |
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We
would like to thank several colleagues at Media Lab Europe: Carol
Strohecker for thinking through the ideas and the writing; Brendan
Donovan, for the PIC programming; Matthew Karau and Brian McDonald,
for help in designing the electronic board; Mike Ananny, for the
theoretical advice; James Condron and Steven Hughes, for help
in debugging the electronic board; Valentina Nisi, for the art
work; and Herve Gomez, for the important discussions about the
workshop design. Also we would like to thank Anna Lometti, St.
Patrick’s College and California State University, Chico,
for help in the workshop assessment, and Bakhtiar Mikhak, MIT
Media Lab, for the important advice on the iPAQ-sensors interfacing.
We thank the children for sharing their ideas with us. |
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