MurMur Moderators, the talking playful seats

In this article we present the concept of MurMur Moderators, talking playful seats facilitating playful atmosphere and creativity at office environments. The article describes the design and technological composition of our first prototype, and our experiences exposing the concept to audiences at two science fairs in Italy (2013) and Finland (2014). This research has served as an informative pilot study, consequently directing our focus to the ways the accompanying narrative brings additional design value to the interactive seats. Our goal with the fairs was to investigate what are the preliminary audience reactions for the high level concept and how people interact with the initial prototype. The feedback was used for generating further ideas for ambient play and furniture-as-a-service, some of which carries on to future research and second prototype of the seat.