Section: New Results

Creative Coding on Objects

Participants : Renaud Gervais, Jérémy Laviole, Asier Marzo, Martin Hachet.

In a near future scenario, we will replace some of our everyday objects with counterparts in form of Computational Objects (COs). COs look similar to the original object; however, inside them there are input sensors, output devices such as displays and a CPU. Furthermore, COs still convey the context and meaning that the original object had. For instance, a clock is associated with time and thus users could expect its CO version to display time-related data. We suggest that any user should be able to easily code new appearances and behaviors for his or her own objects. Using creative coding as a base, we propose to add the notions of affordances and conventions to this programming context. Moreover, we suggest that COs could be used as a creativity support tool although modifying their behavior beyond conventions could confuse the user. Finally, we reckon that with the proper tools, users could also make physical modifications to COs. For example, a retractile cord can be attached to the clock and be used to pull data out and display them in a linear layout.  

This work has been presented as a poster at TEI 2014 [30] .

Figure 9. Sketch for a creative coding on objects scenario