HP Labs and award winning multimedia researcher & designer Ranjit Makkuni of the Sacred world Research Laboratory worked together to create a new authoring environment for children to compose a multimedia document using physical tactile media as well as digital multimedia. This research explores alternatives to the typewriter keyboard and mouse based interactions typical of contemporary computing systems. The research also illustrates new media, which combines both “display” and “interface”. Working with children from the culturally rich city, Brindaban, North India, Ranjit and his team developed a system that will allow children to represent a map of their city and create links to the spaces and interpretations of the city.

Workshops conducted at Brindaban allowed the children to enter the space of modern multimedia presentations, both form and aesthetics. Such a Physical virtual system allows people to access the creative faculties that can be unleashed though tactile interface. While displays screen and keyboard based interaction address the symbol manipulation and the ‘touch and feel’ of tactile systems will provide people with richer environments activating both left and right brain thinking and feelings.

As another alternative, we explored a form for a walk up kiosk for school children to compose and interact with multimedia documents. The kiosk consists of a circular map, which contains hotspots. In the center of the kiosk is a display that plays back content based on the hot spots selected. On top of the display are two tendrils like sprouts, one which houses a video camera and the second an audio recorder. These tendrils will allow students to compose video and audio annotations, and these functionalities will allow communities to comment on each other’s documents.