Kurio was a playful museum guide system that encourages collaborative play by families in a local history museum. It was developed by researchers at the School of Interactive Arts & Technology at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, BC. I worked on the game design and interaction design as well as the programming in JESS (Java Expert System Shell) and Java to run adaptive learning system on the tabletop and communicate with the handheld components.  I collaborated on the interaction design for the mobile and tabletop apps and assisted in the deployment and user studies done at the museum. With my co-authors, I wrote papers resulting from these studies. 

In Kurio, a family imagines themselves as time travelers from the future whose time map is broken, stranding them in the present. Family members complete a series of challenges that require finding information from the museum exhibit or using the artifacts on display to help answer questions, all in order to fix the map and continue on with their time travel. The interactive system is comprised of a tangible user interface that is distributed over several tangibles with different functions, a tabletop display, and a PDA (personal digital assistant).

The Kurio Project received a Gold Award in Concept Design at the IDSA Northwest Design Invitational for 2009.

Project Leads: Ron Wakkary, Marek Hatala & Jim Budd

Interaction Designer & Developer: Karen Tanenbaum 

Content & Learning Designer: Kevin Muise

Software Developer: Bardia Mohabbati

Hardware Developer: Greg Corness