I talked to a few people about this gaming table so far.. and it has spiraled out of control. In a good way.

A highlight of my trip to Europe in 2000 was a meal I had with a complete stranger in Paris. I wandered into a restaurant alone, and I asked the hostess the only French phrase I knew. The answer was no, so I stood there for a minute. Tried to gesture at a menu. Someone came up to me and said something, so I asked if he spoke English. And indeed he did. He asked if I’d like to have dinner with him, and I said sure. I realized that this was a custom that simply doesn’t exist in America. We had a great meal and I thought, why don’t they do this stateside?

So American café culture could be friendlier. And short of changing the culture, maybe this digital gaming table could add much needed glue.

Anyway, my cousin Ethan had a number of valuable suggestions. The most important: start with the need to be addressed by the users. Of course, this is the bedrock of usability. So, from the point of view of the users, this table could:

• act as an ice breaker in a cafe (there’s always someone you’d like to meet, isn’t there?), then give people who just met something to do together so they can cultivate their relationship a little.
  
• give bored people something to do while they sip their coffee
  
• provide entertainment for passive observers of the game in progress
  
• give people a place to go when they want to play a game

And of course, all of these points help the sale of coffee. Bring people in and keep them around longer.

Anyway, I’ve always liked looking at what the user will experience. It’s also interesting to see what happens when you put something out there. Inevitably, people will not use it exactly as you expect, but their usage patterns will always hint at what might be needed.

The community part is the most promising, in my mind, and it’s also closer to chess and scrabble than to Tony Hawk Pro Skater 4. I thought of the Au Bon Pain in Harvard Square, with its famous chess boards. There’s always a bustle of community activity around those tables, and that’s a good sign. So going along those lines of community games, Ethan and I did a couple minutes of brainstorming. I told him about Audiopad’s interface, and he talked about an exhibition at the SFMOMA that was similar. Radio/magnetic pucks that relayed location information and therefore acted as controls for the interface, combined with an LCD projector aimed at the table from above.

We also talked about having a large central screen, viewable by all participants, which showed progress of the current game(s). The simplest form would show scores and some other interesting bits to draw people in, but I think it gets more exciting if you see the central screen as a key element in the game itself. For example, Bingo or Keno, where you have your own card and you watch the screen for results. OK, those aren’t games, but you get the idea. Take that notion and add the digital gaming table to it, so now you have the micro-game and the macro-game. The four people at my table can help build scrabble words together and place them on the big board.

When I told this all to Todd tonight, he said “I’d love to play Risk like that: Germany and its resources are on my table, and the big board shows the whole world.” The micro-macro possibilities here are v. cool. So I think the big board should be a big part of this project.