Rethinking children's programming with contextual signs

Fernaeus, Ylva; Kindborg, Mikael; Scholz, Robert

doi:10.1145/1139073.1139105

“…Another area has been using tangibles to program. Most of this work uses blocks [208,337,342], but there is also work involving physical programming by example [246,248,249], and even programming in a room environment [90,91,92,321]. There has also been work on games that use tangibles [142,243,294], and storytelling environments [45,61,98,275].…”

Section: Tangiblementioning

confidence: 99%

Interaction Design and Children

2021

2

0

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Children are increasingly using computer technologies as reflected in reports of computer use in schools in the United States. Given the greater exposure of children to these technologies, it is imperative that they be designed taking into account children's abilities, interests, and developmental needs. This survey aims to contribute toward this goal through a review of research on children's cognitive and motor development, safety issues related to technologies and design methodologies and principles. It also provides and overview of current research trends in the field of interaction design and children and identifies challenges for future research.To understand children's developmental needs it is important to be aware of the factors that affect children's intellectual development. This survey analyzes the relevance of constructivist, socio-cultural, and other modern theories with respect to the design of technologies for children. It also examines the significance of research on children's cognitive development in terms of perception, memory, symbolic representation, problem solving, and language. Since interacting with technologies most often involves children's hands this survey also reviews literature on children's fine motor development including manipulation and reaching movements. Just as it is important to know how to aid children's development it is also crucial to avoid harming development. This survey summarizes research on how technologies can negatively affect children's physical, intellectual, social, emotional, and moral development. Following is a review of design methodologies for children's technologies organized based on the roles children may play during the design process including a description of cooperative inquiry and informant design methods. This is followed by a review of design principles obtained through experiences in developing technologies for children as well as research studies. It includes design principles related to visual design (e.g., icons, visual complexity), interaction styles (e.g., direct manipulation, menus), and the use of input devices (e.g., pointing, dragging, using mouse buttons). The latter half of this survey summarizes research trends in the field of interaction design and children, grouping research efforts in the following areas: supporting creativity and problem solving, supporting collaboration and communication, accessing, gathering and exploring content, learning from simulations, supporting children with special needs, interacting with intelligent characters, supporting healthy lifestyles, learning skills, mobile, tangible, and ubiquitous computing, and designing and evaluating technologies. This survey concludes by formulating research challenges for the future and identifying three information age "plagues" children are in danger of facing in the near future.

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“…Children could program the environment using a visual programming environment. Fernaeus and Tholander [90,91,92] and Tholander and Fernaeus [321] have studied the design of innovative interactions to enable groups of children to collaboratively program in a room environment. They highlight the social and physical aspects of the activity.…”

Section: Programmingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Another area has been using tangibles to program. Most of this work uses blocks [208,337,342], but there is also work involving physical programming by example [246,248,249], and even programming in a room environment [90,91,92,321]. There has also been work on games that use tangibles [142,243,294], and storytelling environments [45,61,98,275].…”

Section: Tangiblementioning

confidence: 99%

Interaction Design and Children

Hourcade

¹

2007

FNT in Human-Computer Interaction

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Children are increasingly using computer technologies as reflected in reports of computer use in schools in the United States. Given the greater exposure of children to these technologies, it is imperative that they be designed taking into account children's abilities, interests, and developmental needs. This survey aims to contribute toward this goal through a review of research on children's cognitive and motor development, safety issues related to technologies and design methodologies and principles. It also provides and overview of current research trends in the field of interaction design and children and identifies challenges for future research.To understand children's developmental needs it is important to be aware of the factors that affect children's intellectual development. This survey analyzes the relevance of constructivist, socio-cultural, and other modern theories with respect to the design of technologies for children. It also examines the significance of research on children's cognitive development in terms of perception, memory, symbolic representation, problem solving, and language. Since interacting with technologies most often involves children's hands this survey also reviews literature on children's fine motor development including manipulation and reaching movements. Just as it is important to know how to aid children's development it is also crucial to avoid harming development. This survey summarizes research on how technologies can negatively affect children's physical, intellectual, social, emotional, and moral development. Following is a review of design methodologies for children's technologies organized based on the roles children may play during the design process including a description of cooperative inquiry and informant design methods. This is followed by a review of design principles obtained through experiences in developing technologies for children as well as research studies. It includes design principles related to visual design (e.g., icons, visual complexity), interaction styles (e.g., direct manipulation, menus), and the use of input devices (e.g., pointing, dragging, using mouse buttons). The latter half of this survey summarizes research trends in the field of interaction design and children, grouping research efforts in the following areas: supporting creativity and problem solving, supporting collaboration and communication, accessing, gathering and exploring content, learning from simulations, supporting children with special needs, interacting with intelligent characters, supporting healthy lifestyles, learning skills, mobile, tangible, and ubiquitous computing, and designing and evaluating technologies. This survey concludes by formulating research challenges for the future and identifying three information age "plagues" children are in danger of facing in the near future.

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“…MagicWords [3][10] from the same author is intended for young children, but has textual labels. An original solution has been found to avoid the need of reading skills; when the mouse is over a label, the name of the label is pronounced.…”

Section: Figure 13 Magicwords Simulation With Vtoys Scriptsmentioning

confidence: 99%

V-Toys: An Experiment in Adding Visual Tiles to EToys

Dreyfuss¹,

Stinckwich

²

2008

Sixth International Conference on Creating, Connecting and Collaborating Through Computing (C5 2008)

1

0

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Usability issues in programming languages and associated environments are the topic of multiple studies, which led to the creation of many innovating programming systems where the user is the center of the design process, allowing non-programmers to create programs without understanding the underlaying concepts. In this paper, we describe the V-Toys system which add visual programming to the EToys scripting system of Squeak. This framework is intended to children that have problems with text and reading. As a side effect, the fact that visual stuff eliminate the barrier of different language, enable V-Toys to be used as an international programming language since there is no need for translations to be able to understand it and use it. Built as an extension of EToys it is compatible with all the Squeak environment and can be mixed with stuff either programmed using Smalltalk or EToys.

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Rethinking children's programming with contextual signs

Cited by 11 publications

References 7 publications

Interaction Design and Children

Interaction Design and Children

Interaction Design and Children

V-Toys: An Experiment in Adding Visual Tiles to EToys

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