Title
A Design Method for Creatio,Entertainment with Creation
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Abstract
This research focuses on entertainment with creation and discusses Dynamic Feedback Flow Mechanism (DFFM) for generating fun in it. This idea of entertainment with creation was not covered in sociologist Caillois’s four categories about play. Namely, it is the action through which user actually creates something and enjoys the process. This research calls entertainment with creation Creatio and defines it as the fifth category in play. Like DFFM, Funology is a research domain for having fun. It was assembled by usability researchers and focuses mainly on evaluation of fun and thus has not figured out a mechanism for generating fun itself. In that regard, Flow by psychologist Csikszentmihaly is a research domain that actually focuses on generating fun. However, the studies to adopt Flow into HCI have not developed any valid mechanism for Flow. On the other hand, as well as DFFM, pattern research as a design method has been carried out in the domain of HCI. Since pattern research looks on a pattern as determinism, when integrating different patterns, there often remain the parts that are not covered by them. Stochastic pattern might solve this problem. Pattern research by Anthropologist Bateson looked on a pattern as stochastic trace based on cybernetics. In addtion, Bateson developed a mechanism to generate pattern with feedback mechanism. Based on the Bateson’s approach, this research developed DFFM as a mechanism to generate patterns with an approach of cybernetics. With DFFM, a designer can develop a framework of a Creatio by operation of some static constituent elements in the feedback process, and generate Flow in the Creatio by dynamic operation of parameters in temporal axis. Simultaneously, he or she can perform pattern practice as calibration through which stochastic patterns should be observed in the feedback process that leads to Flow. The entire picture of this design method for Creatio is composed of the mechanism, dynamics in DFFM and pattern practice. The author designed two Creatios, Suirin and MYSQ, and validated the hypothesis through them. Evaluation experiment was performed with a method of evaluation for Flow adopted in HCI. This result revealed that the users got Flow through these Creatios. Therefore, by employing this design method, a designer can develop a Creatio which generates fun in high accuracy that its users can be blessed with creative behavior with fun.
