Felines, Foragers, and Physicists: Supporting Scientific Outreach with Multi-Surface and Multi-Space Games

Abstract

We describe the design, development, and deployment of two scientific outreach games to support an open house event at an Institute for Quantum Computing (IQC) by an 11-member team of academics and practitioners over a one-year period. We overview our collaborative design process, the development of design goals aligned with facilitating scientific outreach during a one-day open house, and report on how successfully our final prototypes achieved those goals. We then reflect on implications for the use of interactive surfaces and spaces as a platform for scientific outreach, and in particular, the effectiveness of large displays as `honey pots', the immaturity of technologies for creating interactive spaces, and extending the reach of outreach activities through technology.