Incorporating Virtual Forms into Traditional Things to Increase Their Values

Abstract

Computing technologies allow us to enhance our daily objects by adding virtual forms to the objects. The virtual forms present dynamically generated visual images containing information that influences a user’s behavior and thinking. In a typical way, adding a display to show visual expressions or projecting some information on an object offers visual forms on the existing daily objects. We have designed three case studies that add virtual forms to existing objects. The first case study is Virtual Aquarium, which offers a virtual aquarium that reflects a user’s toothbrushing behavior. The second case study is Augmented Go, which projects additional information on the real Go board for making a better decision in the game play. The third case study is Augmented Trading Card Game, which adds virtual characters and special effects on the trading cards of the Nintento DS game in order to encourage and provoke more social play of the game.

In this paper, after presenting an overview of the three case studies that enhance traditional objects with virtual forms, we present six values that play an important role in the design of the enhanced objects. We believe that these values would be useful in the design of any other enhanced objects with virtual forms.