The Reading Glove

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The Reading Glove

The Reading Glove is an interactive storytelling system designed and built to investigate research questions of interactive narrative, player modeling, adaptivity, and tangible embodied interaction. I collaborated on the story design, content and interaction design and did the programming for the Arduino components of the glove and the Java/JESS recommendation engine in the tabletop. I conducted the user studies (observation, machine logs and interviews) and the subsequent data analysis. With my co-author, I wrote and presented several academic papers related to this system and its design.

The Reading Glove is an interactive narrative installation comprised of a large horizontal display surface, a wearable RFID enabled glove, and a collection of narratively rich objects. When readers pick-up objects from the surface an associated fragment of audio narration is triggered. At the same time, a reasoning engine is tracking the reader’s choices and displaying navigational recommendations on the display beneath the objects to assist the reader in solving the puzzle of the narrative.

The Reading Glove combines a wearable and tangible interaction with an expert storytelling system for a uniquely embodied narrative experience. The system uses the metaphor of psychometry to inspire a “hands on” interaction with narrative objects. Interactors using the Reading Glove explore and reveal the “memories” of physical artifacts by handling them.

The Reading Glove project was funded as part of the GRAND NCE network, and my work on it was additionally funded via an NSERC Discovery Grant. The work took place as part of my graduate studies at Simon Fraser University in Surrey, BC, Canada.

Team

Story Design, Interaction Design & Software: Karen Tanenbaum

Story Design, Interaction Design & Hardware: Joshua Tanenbaum