The Digital Dream Lab: Tabletop Puzzle Blocks for Exploring Programmatic Concepts
teaching simple programming to kids, found at TEI'13
to teach them that the physical world affects the virtual world
tangible educational system for young children
- jigsaw puzzles are helpful to develop logic and organization skills
- contrained froms of puzzles express the rules intuitively
- tabletop surfaces allow children to collaborate naturally
- tabletop surfaces keep the underlying technology in the background
setup
projected screen like a whiteboard and a tabletop
final system
character block
turtle, frog, fish, octopus, alien, chameleon moving the thing causes the character to move in 3D as well
animation block
walk jump, wave combine them together
color block
each edge has a different color if you attach a character, the color will be applied to that character
size block
change size of the character by turning the size block
backgroud block
a dice selecting one of three backgrounds (forst, underwater, lawn)
variable blocks
has small instance blocks to use copies of the contained character communicate the concept of classes and data (I think she means prototypes)
demo
unity3d used to render graphics tabletop only as input not as screen probably only one simple walkthrough possible
design process
throughout six user tests in the childrens museum pittsburgh
block design
- show me block to show the graphics was removed because long
- reduced height of the blocks
- switched from discrete to continuous input (leads to orientation gaining meaning)
detection system
interactive background added for user experience
design guideline for playful learning experiences
- continuous feedback for all sensed actions (“they are alive!”)
- graphic contents having character based metaphors (“my alien likes to swing”)
- powerful medium, jigsaw puzzle pieces (“love assembling puzzles”)
- open structure of the installation (“whats going on?”)
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