Projected Play No 1 is a tangible 3D tabletop installation developed for LEGO World, an annual four-day event held in Copenhagen, where more than 40,000 children and adults go to play with physical LEGO bricks and digital LEGO.

Projected Play starts from four design principles:

1.     Support walk up and use

2.     Encourage exploration

3.     Support both individual and group play

4.     Enable emergent use

Based on these four principles, Projected Play was designed with very basic interaction and projected content. We operate with two kinds of tangibles: cubes, and stylized buildings. Along the edge of the table surface there is a set of colored circles. All tangibles are white when first placed on the table. The cubes produce virtual bricks that are “sprayed” onto the table. When a cube is moved over one of the circles, to paint buildings, the cube is “filled up” with the color of the circle, and the bricks “sprayed” from it now match that color (video 00:05). All cubes can “push” away the virtual bricks on the table. When two colored cubes are close to each other, they flicker and exchange colors (video 00:22). When a cube touches a building, a layer of bricks is filled with the color of the cube, enabling users to paint buildings with different layers of color (video 00:55). When a building is colored from bottom to top, it emits a large flash and “blows away” the virtual bricks (video 01:24).