The Stone Age trail:
A mobile outdoors
computer game for nature experience
Markus Maijala,
Stefan Nygard and
Mattias Arvola
Södertörn University College

Structure
• About the prototype: The Stone Age Trail
• Our use of theories in the design process
• Design objectives
• Test results
• Conclusions

The Stone Age Trail
• Two handheld computers and physical
information boards
• Mobile outdoors game
…Watch the movie!

Theories in the Design process
• Embodied interaction (Dourish, 2001)
(integration of the prototype in the
environment of the activity).
• Technology as experience (McCarthy &
Wright, 2004).

Design objectives
The system shall
• Be part of an activity
• Be used outdoors
• Encourage exploration
• Have low level of abstraction and low learning
threshold
• Encourage people to cooperate
• Make use of the meaning already existing in the
outdoors environment and not interfere with the
nature experience

Design objectives in use
• Shared view
• Something to measure
• Non specific. Divergent solutions

Design objectives in use
• Structuring principles in the development
of the vision (Löwgren & Stolterman, 2004)
• Our vision: ”involve to inform”

Testing the prototype
• Competition Rather than Cooperation
• Exploration
• Easy to Understand
• Cooperation and Communication

Conclusions
• Design objectives as a way to use
theories in the design process
• The system as a part of an activity