THE WISDOM WELL- an interactive Floor for Learning

red dot: best of the best
red dot award: design concept 2007

In-house design:
Kaj Grønbæk	Ole Sejer Iversen	Karen Johanne Kortbek
Kaspar Rosengreen Nielsen	Louise Aagaard

The Wisdom Well concept involves an interactive floor supporting new kinds of kinesthetic learning and entertainment experiences.

The objective of the Wisdom Well is to create an IT-based physical setup for learning and entertainment that enables users to utilise their bodies as well as their minds in collaborative games and explorative digital simulations. The Wisdom Well is a 12-square-metre projected glass surface using camera-based tracking of limbs (e.g. foot and hand). Projectors and cameras are placed in a 2.5-meter-deep cavity beneath the surface. More than ten users may interact in games at the same time using their bodies as their only interaction devices. The Wisdom Well combines multiple interaction styles (visual, auditory and movement) on a surface with tracking technology, creating a stimulating environment for experiencing digital content.

Learning is a promising application of the Wisdom Well concept, since it transcends traditional PC-based systems through support for body-kinesthetic learning. The theories of Howard Gardner and others suggest that stimulating one intelligence area may enhance skills within other intelligence areas. For instance, stimulating children’s bodily skills on the Wisdom Well may enhance their linguistic capabilities. Furthermore, children may gain important social experiences from movement-based play due to the communication taking place when using the Wisdom Well.

Several applications have been developed on the Wisdom Well platform both for learning and leisure purposes. The applications were developed in a user-driven design process involving children and teachers.

For instance the ‘Stepstone’ application is suited for speech and hearing training for hearing-impaired children with cochlear implants (CIs). ‘Stepstone’ is a collective learning game, where the aim is to answer questions correctly through body movement and social interaction. Players should score as many points as possible over a number of rounds. ‘Stepstone’ enables 1-4 players – as a group aiming at a collective high-score, as group against group, or as individuals against individuals. Questions (e.g. “Which of these are tropical fruits?”) are posed by speech transmitted directly into the children’s CI devices. Potential answers appear randomly on digital stones on the floor. Correct and incorrect suggested answers appear either as images or text. Players must answer challenges by placing their hands and feet on as many correct stones as possible within a given time. Simultaneous reaction, communication, and quick bodily action are required to answer the challenges. The hypothesis is that the participants’ struggles to physically touch the right combinations of stones will help them better understand and memorise the results, since an engaging bodily experience was involved.