A toolkit for tinkering with tangibles & connecting communities

Abstract

In this hands-on Studio, you'll explore Modkit [1], a new toolkit for creating tangible interfaces (e.g., bike handlebars with interactive lights and sounds). Modkit makes it possible for novices and experienced programmers/designers to bring tangibles to life by offering graphical command blocks inspired by the Scratch programming environment [2]. Modkit tools work with the Arduino [3] platform's library of code (such as C/C++) to enable users to participate in a community rich with project ideas and sample files. Modkit supports multiple representations of codegraphical command blocks can become editable textbased code to offer additional avenues for learning and sharing. The Studio welcomes members of the research, industrial, academic, maker, and I-just-wantto-have fun communities of all experience levels to participate. Participants will have opportunities to use Modkit in personally-meaningful ways. Participants who wish to extend Modkit tools with new functionality will have opportunities to do so. The organizers will conclude the Studio with a discussion around activities, example projects, and approaches to adapting the toolkit to different settings. Participants will contribute to brainstorming about potential uses, future directions, and collaborations.

Theorizing the nexus of STEAM practice

“…Coding can be realized in e-textile projects using a variety of methods, ranging from text-based coding environments, like Arduino (Banzi, 2008) to novice-friendly graphical programming block environments that extend Scratch-like functionality toward the programming of physical objects. One such environment is Modkit (Baafi & Millner, 2011), which enables users to drag and drop object blocks (such as "LED," "Button," "Knob," or "Speaker") into semantically functional combinations and assign them to outputs of a microcontroller. Once the program is uploaded to the physical microcontroller, the microcontroller can be stitched into a textile and connected to lights, motors and sensors via circuits stitched from conductive thread.…”

Extracting behavioral information from electronic storyboards

“…Several tools have been created that address these problems and fall into two large categories: either general programming languages that are aimed at novices, such as Scratch For Arduino [26] and ModKit [6], or custom tools targeted at a particular application domain, such as dTools [16], aCAPpella [11], CAMP [29], or Activity Designer [18].…”

Tools for interdisciplinary design of pervasive computing

“…This shared view allows novice programmers to code with the visual blocks, but also allows a more experienced programmer to write code, all with the same environment. Tools that exhibit this property are Lingua Franca (Hague et al, 2003), EsprantoSDK (van Herk et al, 2009), iCATch (Ngai et al, 2010), and ModKit (Baafi and Millner, 2011)…”

“…Li et al, 2004) † † Papier-Mache(Klemmer et al, 2004) † † Lingua Franca (Hague et al, 2003) † ESPrantoSDK (van Herk et al, 2009) † iCATch(Ngai et al, 2010) † TileScript(Warth et al, 2008) † Modkit(Baafi and Millner, 2011) † aCAPpella † Bosu(Parkes and Ishii, 2010) † † CAMP(Khai et al, 2004) † Ubidesigner(Vastenburg et al, 2009) † iCAP(Dey et al, 2006) † GART(Lyons et al, 2007) † CRN Toolbox(Bannach et al, 2008) † VisualRDK(Weis et al, 2007) † Phidgets(Greenberg and Fitchett, 2001) † xTel(Tokuhisa et al, 2009) † iStuff(Ballagas et al, 2003) † PTK(Matthews et al, 2004) †Inspirational Bits (Sundstrom et al, 2011) † User-Friendly Datasheets (Martin et al, 2011) † Ubiwise (Barton and Vijayaraghavan, 2002) † DiaSim ( Jouve et al, 2009) † Tatus (O'Neill et al, 2005)† Calder Toolkit(Lee et al, 2004) …”