My Green Pet: A current-based interactive plant for children

Sungjae Hwang, Kibeom Lee, Woonseung Yeo

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

20 Scopus citations

Abstract

The difficulty that children have in perceiving plants as living entities has been verified by several studies. As an initial attempt to address this issue, we propose "My Green Pet", an interactive plant for children. Through this, children enjoy human-like interactions with the plant and also perceive that this particular plant is living. This is achieved by personifying a regular plant by giving it human feelings and emotions, such as pain, joy, laughter, etc. The interactive plant is implemented over a current-based framework, which enables it to recognize multiple gestures and give audio and visual feedback to the user. The effectiveness of the interactive plant on the conception of plants on children was studied with a simple user test. We observed the children interacting with "My Green Pet" and noticed interactions resembling those between people. We also noticed the children being increasingly curious about the plant, resulting in spending more time with "My Green Pet". A straight-forward questionnaire done by children revealed that the children's perception of life in plants greatly differed after showing "My Green Pet".

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationProceedings of IDC2010
Subtitle of host publicationThe 9th International Conference on Interaction Design and Children
Pages210-213
Number of pages4
DOIs
StatePublished - 2010
Event9th International Conference on Interaction Design and Children, IDC2010 - Barcelona, Spain
Duration: 9 Jun 201012 Jun 2010

Publication series

NameProceedings of IDC2010: The 9th International Conference on Interaction Design and Children

Conference

Conference9th International Conference on Interaction Design and Children, IDC2010
Country/TerritorySpain
CityBarcelona
Period9/06/1012/06/10

Keywords

  • Children
  • Current-based
  • Interaction
  • Interface
  • Plant

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