March 20th, 2018

Current Research Exploring Game Play at Science Center Tom Tits Experiment – Project Experimenta

Tom Tits Experiment Homepage
This was referenced in the research paper “Designing for Transformative Play” by JON BACK, ELENA MA´RQUEZ SEGURA, and ANNIKA WAERN. The basics of it are that there was work done on a project called Experimenta (originally “The Mission”), where designers worked to create a large scale game that visitors of the Tom Tits Experiment science center in Södertälje, Sweden could play while they interacted with the various experiments around the exhibit.

Key Quotes on Details from the Paper

• “The design has been iteratively developed over two years, and repeatedly studied over the course of the project. It is now installed as a permanent part of the science center’s exhibitions.”
• “Allen [2004] describes an interactive experiment as typically including: (1) a surprising phenomenon, (2) some way to interact to explore the phenomenon, (3) an explanation of the physics, or biological, principle underlying the experiment, and (4) a connection to everyday phenomena.
• “Experimenta is constructed by rebuilding and sensor-equipping such classic installations, so that the experiment can measure how ‘well’ the user performs [Bergstr¨om et al. 2014]. The result is translated into a number of “points,” which are saved to a RFID card. The points are then used to drive a big ‘machine’—a toy marble labyrinth mounted close to the entrance of the science center.”

Paper Citation