Edinburgh Napier University

  This application invites the user to create short Haiku poems by selecting and arranging words that are displayed onscreen. The web-based application is presented on a touchscreen, and displays a constantly refreshing pool of words taken from the large collection of Haiku poems written by Jack Kerouac in the 1950s. Once the user has created a new Haiku, it is added to the pool of user-created poems, and information is then displayed about Kerouac’s approach to the Haiku form of poetry. The research aim of this project is to explore design approaches that attract interest and then sustain engagement with publicly sited systems, using the themes of “emotional intelligence” and “independent agency”. To this end, two versions of the application have been created, each demonstrating a variation on the design approach, enabling comparative user studies to be carried out.