Design, Creativity, and New Media » Independent Research Projects » EDC Remixed

EDC Remixed

Abstract

The Envisionment and Discovery Collaboratory (EDC) is a collaborative work environment that has primarily been used to address and create solutions to complex design problems. Notably, EDC applications have focused on solving urban planning and community issues at large. However, there lies tremendous potential for this system to be applied to other areas including problem solving in other domains, creative work in groups, and educational games. This paper discusses the ideological principles behind the EDC and explores the utility of three future application scenarios not yet addressed by the EDC.

Future Directions

In this paper we explored three potential collaborative applications of the Envisionment and Discovery Collaboratory (EDC). These included a room layout application exploring a new problem solving domain, an animation studio application fostering creative work in groups, and an Iron Chef educational game. We feel these applications further explore the EDC's potential for copresent, collaborative activities and would be interesting avenues for further research. The next step toward exploring the application scenarios would be to test and refine the designs, 8 using informed participatory design techniques, such as a "Wizard of Oz" experiment, or prototyping. We feel that each of these applications could be implemented in a reasonable time frame and would produce interesting findings through user studies.