Design Decisions for Interactive Environments: Evaluating the KidsRoom

We believe the KidsRoom is the first multi-person, fully-automated, interactive, narrative environment ever constructed using non-encumbering sensors. The perceptual system that drives the KidsRoom is outlined elsewhere(Bobick et al. 1996). This paper describes our design goals, successes, and failures including several general observations that may be of interest to other designers of perceptually-based interactive environments.