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Hi,

I really enjoyed reading this blog post and your analysis of Bel's experience both on a traditional computer and on surface.  I've posted my own blog where I talk about using Surface for education and I give a pointer to your blog.  I hope you don't mind if I used Bel's picture in my own blog post as I don't have a Surface unit yet and wanted to show a child interacting with the device.

Here is the blog entry:

http://theclevermonkey.blogspot.com/2008/11/children-and-microsoft-surface.html

Let's keep in touch. I plan to start designing applications for children as my first forays into Surface development. It would be interesting to compare notes if you decided to do the same thing.

All the best,

Richard

I work for RM who are the largest producer of hardware and software for education in the UK; needless to say we are very interested in Surface and how it will benefit education.

We have been working closely with the product group for a while now and before Christmas did a Surface education proof of concept with the Microsoft Technology Centre in the UK to produce an app called Finguistics.

The DPE team from Microsoft shot a film about the development process which is interesting: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Ae9yvA3Lhg

For me the more interesting video is when I went with the Education product group when they put a Surface device in a school for a couple of days, a first in the UK: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=baDJNtBT1Fg

The video shows how kids just get Surface and how it lights them up. Hopefully we can get the momentum to make Surface a great addition to the classroom.

Okay, how do I get one?!  

I've long been a fan of virtual worlds for immersive, experiential learning and interaction, ever since experiencing one, and reading a quote by an MIT guy on the fact that we organize our digital information today in artificial, non-intuitive ways like html. Silly really. Especially when a more organic, natural feeling manner is now available.  Ones and zeros can be organized in a rich environment which feels natural ... the way human mind is meant to operate!

Kudos to the Microsoft team on this development!

And I have a 4 year old who would SIMPLY love this! (Your paint on the trousers illustration was an awesome visual!) Perhaps he could help me create his baby album, which I have yet to finish, and spent this last weekend tagging and arranging in the-digital-old-fashioned-way.

Thanks!

Polly Pearson

EMC HQ, Hopkinton, MA

Very cool, I can't wait to play with one of these things. Hopefully I can buy one (for a small fortune of course) before my son hits kindergarten.

Your story was featured in iam3ric! Here is the link to vote it up and promote it: http://iam3ric.com/Technology/4_Year_Old_Tests_Microsoft_Surface

Her interaction with it in the 1-minute clip looks much less intentional and intuitive than what you describe.  The table is responding to her, and she isn't leading it to do anything "wrong" but that isn't the same as successful interaction.  You can look at it and say, "ooo, she's resizing and rotating pictures" but it doesn't seem like that's what she wants to do.  She does seem to be somewhat intentional about moving them around, but she's getting these undesired and distracting resize and rotate effects as byproducts of her normal 4-year-old coordination level.  At :16 it also looks like she tries to pick it up.  Instead the picture keeps jittering in size and orientation.  A very informative experiment, to be sure, and certainly more a more interactable device for a kid than a mouse, but it's still an imperfect approximation of reality.

Thanks for sharing this video. It’s very informative.

(However I watched it without sound.)

I’m not sure it proves the point you’re trying to make (at least the one I understand): “Interacting with a touch screen is easier than interacting with a mouse for children.”

Mainly because there is no evidence comparing mouse vs touch screen vs keyboard to manipulate pictures.

And by “manipulating pictures” we need to define what kind of manipulations.

Here the action seems to be merely “seeing big pictures”.

A classic slideshow in that case would have been more efficient.

Then learning to press “arrow right” to see the next picture might be as effective as “sliding your finger from right to left” if not more.

And talking about “magic” the automatic full screen computation would have been more “magical” compared to this complicated gesture with two hands (on the video we see Isobel trying to scale up the pictures because they are too small and the rotation is obviously a great deal of distraction for her).

The video also shows the way we could organise photos.

Once again not in the more efficient way: pictures are stacked together creating the same real mess we would have with paper pictures.

It’s not very clear which one is on the top while she’s talking.

We can see a movie under her hand and that’s really interesting because what she’s manipulating is not any more “photos”.

It’s more.

It’s different.

But what is it then?

What’s the name of the stuff I’m touching on this table?

It’s me, but not only me.

Those are the questions she may ask herself.

And as soon as we’re trying to explain to her: “this is a movie, this is a photo”, we break her first natural understanding of “digital content” that ONLY exist through a screen.

As soon as she can put a name on it, she will have a better understanding about what she’s manipulating than adults.

To me this table shouldn’t try to re-create “reality”.

The table is real by itself by the new concepts it presents due to the nature of digital content.

Flexibility is the key but in the sense of “re-processing” that material thus allowing a greater creativity.

For Isobel manipulating the picture is neither right or wrong. It’s just the way it is.

If the objective is to train her co-ordination movements, I’m not sure manipulating a mouse or a touch screen are good exercises.

The problem is not the interactions we are struggling with but instead the concepts we want to interact with.

And digital content brings newer concepts that need to be learned, but they are not “simple”. Sometimes they don’t even have a name.

Thanks for reading.

Thibault.

I've noticed the same thing with my four-year-old and the iPhone. He's always showing people how to use it, can easily get to the apps he wants to use, likes to use the simple drawing program and play with the swimming fish and choose movies to watch.

My son still can't use a mouse, gets frustrated easily and gives up. But he loves playing with the iPhone. And he's doing more than playing, he's accomplishing tasks that he sets out for himself.

Direct manipulation makes all the difference.