4i: Immersive Interaction design for Indie Developers with Interactive machine learning is an EPSRC funded project that aims to enable independent developers and artists to design and implement movement-based interaction for immersive media such as Virtual, Augmented and Mixed reality.
The key to this approach is Interactive Machine Learning (IML), where design is specified through examples of movement which are used as input to a Machine Learning algorithm, which “learns” to recognise those movements. However, this will be interactive: users will not simply gather a data and send it to the algorithm as a one-off, but gradually add examples to refine and tweak the results, just as a design refines a product.
Small developers have increased the diversity and creativity of the industry, particularly with more work that is influenced by fine arts and literature (though there is considerable work still be done as women and BAME people are still underrepresented in the industry). The tools will be developed collaboratively with undefended and underrepresented developers to ensure they meet the needs of our user groups and to understand how they perform immersive interaction design. This user research will be done, in the wild, with working developers and artists via a series of hackathons, game jams and choreographic coding labs.
The challenges of this project cannot be addressed simply with technology as the creation of immersive movement interaction is as much a creative as a technological problem. As such this project will be based on a close interaction between technology and artistic practice.
This project is a partnership between Goldsmiths, University of London, The University of Coventry, University of the Arts London, Gibson/Martelli and CodeLiberation.
