Choreographic buttons: promoting social interaction through human movement and clear affordances

We used human movement as the basis for designing a collaborative aesthetic design environment. Our intention was to promote social interaction and creative expression. We employed off-the-shelf computer vision technology. Movement became the basis for the choreography of gestures, the development of gesture recognition, and the development of imagery and visualization. We discovered that the design of clear affordances is no less important in movement-based than in mouse-based systems. Through an integrated and iterative design process, we developed a new type of affordance, the choreographic button, which integrates choreography, gesture recognition, and visual feedback. Jumping, a quick movement, and crouching, a sustained gesture, were choreographed to form a vocabulary that is personally expressive, and which also facilitates automatic recognition.How can we evaluate socially motivated interactive systems? To create a context for evaluation, we held an integrated exhibition, party, and user study event. This mixing of events produced an engaging environment in which participants could choose to interact with each other, as well as with the design environment. We prepared a mouse-based version of the design environment, and compared how people experienced it with the movementbased system. Our study demonstrates that movement-based affordances promote social interaction.