Using children's drawings to improve a programming app

Abstract

After being shown a prototype tablet programming environment, iFizz, children were asked to draw computer programs, either games or stories, that they would like to make with such an environment. The drawings in conjunction with the children's descriptions were then inspected to see what functions were missing from the programming environment in order to make it easier for children to produce their programs. A small number of programming functions were extracted from the drawings along with some changes to the programming environment's user interface and tools. These additions and changes are described and the most common requirements are now being added to the programming environment.

Participant Observation to Apply an Empirical Method of Codesign with Children

“…However, the codesign objective is to design an artifact (technological solution). Codesign can be used during generative, pre/posttest, and evaluative research and during the complete development of an intervention [70].…”