Jürgensen, Christine

Rasmussen, Majken Kirkegaard

English

Research in Architecture, Design and Conservation

  
In: Wouters, I.H.C.; Tieben, R; Kimman, F.P.F.; Offermans, S.A.M. and Nagtzaam, H.A.H. (Eds.)
’Flirting with the Future’, Proceedings of SIDeR ‘09, April 15-17 2009, Eindhoven University of Technology, the Netherlands.
37
TacTower: Designing Physical Co-Located 
Multiplayer Interaction
Christine Jürgensen
lachris@cs.au.dk
Center for Interactive Spaces, Aarhus University
Åbogade 348210 
Århus N
Majken Kirkegård Rasmussen
denmike@cs.au.dk
Center for Interactive Spaces, Aarhus School of 
Architecture
Nørreport 20, 8000 Århus C    
Abstract
Learning from the multiplayer interaction in sports, we describe 
our project TacTower; a fl exible system for professional elite 
handball players to train game perception and kinesthetic em-
pathy. The design is founded in ideas of Collective Interaction 
and qualities that is inherent in sport and is based on consid-
erations about paralanguage, kinesthetic emphatic interaction, 
physical positioning of players and collaborative interaction.
Keywords
Multiplayer interaction, kinesthetic empathetic interaction, co-
located, face to face, sportyfi ed interaction, project work.
Introduction
By studying multiplayer interaction in a sports context we 
found a potential for improving multiplayer interaction, espe-
cially in an interactive sports appliance. Having the parameters 
that constitute interaction sport in mind: physical, social, vi-
sual, verbal, and mental contact, we examined some examples 
of existing interactive sports equipment. We found that they do 
not fully embrace the physicality and co-located collaboration 
that is so characteristic of sport interaction. In this paper we 
present a design solution TacTower, a new appliance for train-
ing kinesthetic empathic ability. The kinesthetic empathic abil-
ity is in short the ability to read body movement. This ability 
is founded in bodyawareness, empathy in interaction, freedom 
in movements, and micro-tactics [3]. In our design we seek to 
employ physical abilities by incorporating a tangible user in-
terface [7].
Sports qualities gone missing in interac-
tive sports equipment
What often distinguishes a good athlete from a great athlete 
in motoractive sports is the athlete’s capability to accurately 
perceive and acting upon the constant supply of information 
from the environment while performing complex movements 
[11]. Perception and action can be trained by either focusing on 
the physiological dimension: psychomotor abilities and partly 
refl ex actions, or focusing on the cognitive dimension: in-game 
decisions and kinesthetic empathy [3].
In the following section we take a look at two existing pieces of 
interactive training equipment that aims to train perception- and 
action ability; the Octopus trainer [9] which train the athlete’s 
psychomotor abilities and IntelliGym [5] which train in-game 
decisions.
Octopus trainer consists of a computer and 8 light stations, 
which can either be mounted vertically on a rack or placed 
horizontally on the fl oor. Lights turn on and the player has to 
turn them off, by waving a hand or foot in front of the light at 
an approximate distance of 30 cm. Octopus trainer allows the 
athlete to train speed, strength, concentration and reaction in 
an isolated context removed from the interactivity of the game. 
Even though it utilises the sports inherent movement patterns 
the interaction is stripped of visual cues from other players. In-
telliGym focuses on tactical aspects of basketball; the objective 
is to train the ingame skills of decoding other players’ move-
ments on the court, and determining the optimal action in a 
given situation. IntelliGym is a screenbased computer game, 
where a basketball court is viewed from above. Players and ball 
is shown as coloured circles on the screen. The circles move 
around the court in movement patterns similar to the sport, and 
from this the player has to choose a suitable strategy. Intelli-
Gym allows the users to train game perception individually in 
an isolated context. As it is a PC game it is a passive  raining, 
for improving court sense and enhancing concentration [5]. 
The training of the in-game decoding skills is removed from 
the physicality of the game, both in IntelliGym, as well as in 
Octopus trainer. Because the psychomotor abilities and the tac-
tical in-game decision-making are closely linked, IntelliGym 
and Octopus trainer are not adequate. Therefore we aim with 
our project TacTower to combine in-game decoding skills with 
physicality.
Sport possesses qualities like physical, verbal and mental con-
tact. What otherwise extinguishes sport is the importance of 
social collaboration between team mates. Collaboration is af-
fected by many factors, both internal and external [4]. When 
designing interactive artefacts for sport it is therefore important 
to create a colocated interaction [8,10] which enables human-
human interaction.
Paralanguage in human-human interac-
tion
A pure human-human interaction can be describes as an on-
going negotiation between the people involved and their sur-
roundings. The interaction does not only contain what is clearly 
stated in the actual conversation, but also the paralanguage1 
that the participants express consciously or unconsciously. 
1Paralanguage is identifi ed as “features of written language 
which are used outside of formal grammar and syntax and oth-
er features, related to but not part of written language which 
through varieties of visual and interpretive contrast provide 
additional enhanced, redundant or new meanings to the mes-
sage” (Asteroff, 1987).
38
Paralanguage greatly depends on visual contact, in order to 
convey the full extent of what is being stated in the negotiation 
[2]. In order to enable a human-human interaction that incorpo-
rates paralingual cues it is vital that the players are collocated 
and positioned in a way which allows them to see each other. 
--Understanding paralanguage and visual cues is an essential 
element in sport on elite level. The object of our project, Tac-
Tower has been to incorporate paralingual cues into an inter-
active appliance for training handball. With the TacTower we 
aim to create an appliance that facilitates the handball player’s 
training of kinesthetic emphatic interaction [3] in a sport con-
text.
Learning from Collective Interaction
Sport possesses some of the same qualities as described in the 
Collective Interaction framework proposed by [8], from which 
the following is excerpt:
The interaction invites for human-human interaction beyond what is in the 
interface […] The spatial organization of people induces expectations of use. 
[…] the interaction may be assymetrical, in the sense people take on different 
roles […]
In sport the ball is the “interface”. In itself the ball is an inani-
mate object, but through imagination, play and collective inter-
action it invites to an interaction beyond it’s physical interface. 
Sport allows for a collective interaction were the participants 
often have  symmetric roles; the referee, goalkeeper, try line 
player etc. In sport as in collective work the proximity of the 
participants and interfaces plays an important role in the inter-
action [4].
Physical positioning of players in multi-
player games
Communication, proximity and spatial organisation plays an 
important role in collective interactions. In order to include all 
these aspects in a design we have to consider the physical posi-
tioning of the players. 
Looking at some examples of how players are positioned in 
different types of multiplayer games with sport relations, we 
fi nd some clear differences on how multiplayer interaction is 
played in the digital version compared to how it is played in the 
actual sport. The Nintendo Wii ™ can be defi ned as a Single 
Display Groupware (SDG) [10], that enables co-located play-
ers to play on a shared display and simultaneously use multiple 
input-devices . Players using a Nintendo Wii ™ are positioned 
side by side while playing a multiplayer sports game.
Figure 1
The illustration shows how the players’ focus is projected onto 
the screen instead of on each other, thus loosing the possibil-
ity to perceive the paralanguage. However the game tries to 
convey the physical positioning of the actual sport by digitally 
positioning the players face to face. Most likely the players ac-
tually exhibit paralingual cues, but because of their physical 
positioning, they are not able to pick them up. Instead the play-
ers are limited to watching the digital representations, which is 
a poor substitute compared to actually seeing ones opponent.
If we compare the screenbased Nintendo Wii™ interaction e.g. 
with the kind of interaction that would take place during a real 
handball match, the positioning of the players and their visual 
focus is quite different. In a real handball match, visual contact, 
focus on opponents and teammates are vital. Face to face po-
sitioning enables the players to use their kinesthetic empathic 
ability to read their opponent’s paralingual cues.
The drawing below shows a setup where players using Octopus 
trainer are positioned face to face. The positioning enables the 
players to have visual contact and to read the paralingual cues. 
But there is no direct interaction between them, as they only 
have to react on the basis of the system and not on the other 
player. In a real match the players are not acting upon random 
digital cues from a system, but instead acting on the paralingual 
bombardment of the match. So the ability to react on a systemic 
output is only valid as a way of training the reaction ability.
 
Figure 2
When designing for a sportyfi ed context, it is important both to 
have the players positioned opposite each other and to create a 
setting where it is possible and necessary for them to interact 
directly. But positioning the players opposite each other raises 
a problem: How to create an interactive interface that is posi-
tioned between two players and still allows them to see each 
other and physically interact with each other?
TacTower – training kinesthetic empathy
We answer the question above by designing a tangible interface 
distributed on four pillars, TacTower. The design allows for vi-
sual and physical contact between the players.
The TacTower is an interactive appliance for handball training 
which positions the players face to face and enables players to 
train their kinesthetic empathic ability and thereby  developing 
the players’ in-game micro-tactics. Micro-tactics in games like 
handball concentrate on decoding the opponent’s actions and 
reacting upon them, e.g. by feinting or by preventing an attack. 
This particular ability is not only important in handball, but in 
many other branches of sport, where players are directly con-
fronting their opponents.
This paper is the design argument of a submission to the SIDeR 
‘09 Conference. The full submission, including an elaborate 
explanation can be found on www.sider09.com
39
TacTower is a modular system that consists of four TacTower 
which defi ne the playing fi eld. Each pillar consists of eight 
spherical units; each unit is illuminated from the inside by mul-
ticolored LEDs, and can be operated by striking or hitting the 
unit. Each unit can be affected from six directions; from four 
hitzones distributed at 90 degrees around the center and one 
from the top and one from the bottom. The user interacts with 
TacTower by hitting the hitzones, thus turning on the light in 
the unit or pushing the light signal in the direction of the hit. 
The direction of the hit is registered by an accelerometer placed 
inside each unit. By hitting the zones the player is able to shoot 
the light signals from one unit to another  both horizontally and 
vertically. The TacTower can either be placed in a line or in a 
spatial grid, according to the gameplay.
Figure 3
One person cannot play a game on TacTower alone, as it re-
quires an opponent to play, because the game’s main focus is 
the ability to create a powerful micro-tactic from reading the 
other person’s movements.
Learning from sports - TacTower collab-
orative interaction
In sports there is a difference between acting and reacting, as 
the players have an opportunity to intercept and prevent an ac-
tion by using their kinesthetic emphatic ability. But in a screen-
based interaction the players are limited to reacting, as there 
are no hints of the next action, as the screenbased interaction is 
striped from paralingual cues.
A signifi cant aspect of sport is the physical proximity of the 
players that creates a closeness which intensifi es the interaction 
between them. We tried with TacTower to centre the interaction 
on the possibility to act on the opponents physical cues before 
the actual event occurs. This gives the player the opportunity 
to prevent an action as the visual cues are available. With Tac-
Tower we deliberately worked on increasing the players’ prox-
imity in order to maintain the sportslike qualities in the interac-
tion. By positioning the player face to face we created a space 
to explore the potential of a physical paralingual interaction.
Future work
We are currently working on creating a working prototype, and 
setting up tests with handball players in order to see how ef-
fectively the TacTower train the empathic part of the bodily 
intelligence. We are aware of the diffi culty in measuring the 
player’s  progression, as the game always depends on the oppo-
nent, which make it diffi cult to create a constant factor in order 
to compare each result. Instead we intend to collect data em-
pirically through a prolonged test setup and evaluate by qualita-
tive interviews from both players and trainers.
Acknowledgements
This project has been supported by the iSport design team at 
Center for Interactive Spaces, ISIS Katrinebjerg and the part-
ners involved in the project.
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(??)Kinesthetic Empathy Interaction - Applying psychomotor abilities to interaction design.

Collective Interaction -let’s join forces.

Human-to-Computer-to-Human Interactions (HCHI) of the communications revolution Interactions,

Paralanguage in electronic mail: a Case Study. Unpublished doctoral dissertation,

Single Display Groupware: A Model for Co-present Collaboration,

Tangible Bits: Beyond Pixels,

Tangible Bits: Toward Seamless Interfaces between People, Bits and Atoms.

Visual Perception and Action in Sport, chapter 4 Anticipation and decision-making in sport,

TacTower:Designing Physical Co-Located Multiplayer Interaction

TacTower:Designing Physical Co-Located Multiplayer Interaction

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