BacPack

Abstract

We present BacPack, a tangible museum exhibit for exploring bio-design. BacPack utilizes tangible tokens on a large multitouch table display to allow visitors the opportunity to participate in a playful bio-design activityengineering bacteria for sustaining life on Mars. To understand the role of tangible tokens in facilitating engagement and learning with the exhibit, we developed and evaluated two versions of BacPack: one with tangible tokens and one that consists of only multitouch interaction. Results from an evaluation in the Tech Museum of Innovation indicate that tangible tokens provide additional opportunities for collaborative problem solving and impact learning through support for tinkering and experimentation. We discuss design considerations for exhibits that facilitate creative engagement and exploration with biology.

"I just let him cry...

“…There has been an accompanying focus on tangibles and other ways technologies become embedded and used in the learners' environment as a way to accomplish this (see e.g., [7,34,56,86,112] for reviews and proposed frameworks). As an example of these approaches, tangible and mobile interfaces enabled situated learning in nature [119], museums [82], as well as engaging with computation in classrooms [1,67]. Such possibility space for the design of situated, embodied learning is moreover steadily expanding with the emergence of conductive fabrics, soft and stretch sensors, and the increasing power and decreasing size of on-board computational capabilities (e.g., [93,144,146]).…”