Learning sciences research shows that intuitive physics knowledge productively supports disciplinary learning through the Knowledge in Pieces (KiP) framework, which treats learners’ everyday intuitions as productive resources. We argue that similar parallels exist in HCI education, where students’ intuitive design knowledge can ground the development of interaction design expertise. Students live in a world saturated with professionally designed artifacts and routinely engage in “everyday design”, cultivating tacit knowledge about interfaces long before formal HCI instruction. This mirrors how intuitive physics knowledge develops through daily physical experience. To support this argument, we analyze first-week assignment submissions from an introductory HCI course in which students critiqued interactive systems. Our findings show that students enter HCI instruction with rich, nuanced intuitions about interface evaluation. We therefore suggest that (1) students’ prior intuitive knowledge is a valuable pedagogical resource for HCI educators, and (2) operationalizing a KiP approach can advance future HCI education research.

MusicLOGO 2.0 (ML2) is a free online programming environment designed to engage learners in foundational music concepts through composing music with computer code. The platform introduces a novel interval-based representation in which learners compose by specifying the relationships between notes rather than encoding fixed pitch values. This design reflects research in music cognition suggesting that listeners naturally organize pitch relationally. In our research with fifth-grade students and undergraduates working with the platform, we have found that the interval-based representation draws learners’ attention to musical patterns—such as scales, chords, and musical form—and that learners leverage computational abstractions to capture and transform those patterns. Our interactive demo will share music projects created by primary school students who have worked with ML2 and will offer attendees a short activity introducing them to the platform.

1. Learning, Design and Technology (LDT) is an interdisciplinary field of research that concerns the phenomena surrounding the design, development, implementation, and evaluation of learning experi...

While there is a growing body of research that explores the integration of music and coding in learning environments, much of this work has either emphasised the technical aspects of computer language design or music as a motivational context within which to learn computer science concepts. In this paper, we report on a study in which five undergraduate students with experience in both music and coding completed two creative musical tasks: one using conventional instruments and tools and one using Python code in an online music + coding environment. Inspired by the work of Christopher Small (1998. Musicking: The Meanings of Performing and Listening. University Press of New England), we describe music + coding as a set of interlocking processes which we call computational musicking and explore how practices from both domains are reimagined in this new hybrid context. We introduce semiotic theories of translation and transcription to make sense of the computational musicking process and describe strategies that participants devised in their creative process.

Large Language Models (LLMs) have the potential to fundamentally change the way people engage in computer programming. Agent-based modeling (ABM) has become ubiquitous in natural and social sciences and education, yet no prior studies have explored the potential of LLMs to assist it. We designed NetLogo Chat to support the learning and practice of NetLogo, a programming language for ABM. To understand how users perceive, use, and need LLM-based interfaces, we interviewed 30 participants from global academia, industry, and graduate schools. Experts reported more perceived benefits than novices and were more inclined to adopt LLMs in their workflow. We found significant differences between experts and novices in their perceptions, behaviors, and needs for human-AI collaboration. We surfaced a knowledge gap between experts and novices as a possible reason for the benefit gap. We identified guidance, personalization, and integration as major needs for LLM-based interfaces to support the programming of ABM.

Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and education researchers have applied Augmented Reality (AR) to support spatial thinking in K-12 education. However, fewer studies support spatial thinking through spatial exploration. Room-scale AR, a recent technology development, brings new opportunities not yet researched. We developed NetLogo AR, an AR authoring toolkit, that allows children to play with, design, and create room-scale AR experiences that combine AR with computational models. To acquire a deeper and more nuanced understanding of children’s interactions with this new technology, we conducted eight-week participatory design sessions with seven children aged 11-13. We analyzed 48 hours of video data, interview transcripts, and design artifacts. Children were enthusiastic and engaged in spatial thinking activities. We affirmed room-scale AR’s role in spatial exploration by comparing it with other supported modalities. Building on existing studies, we propose a new AR design framework around spatial movement and exploration that could help inform design decisions.

This demo presents a “digital drum circle”, a collection of bucket drums augmented with sensors that form a collective digital musical instrument. Through the drum circle prototype, we are exploring an alternative approach to computer science (CS) education that draws from cultural practices of collaborative music-making to create more engaging and meaningful learning experiences for young people. Within this context, we are interested in understanding how CS education might be remade through more equitable and culturally sustaining pedagogy approaches grounded in music and the performing arts.

Computational modeling plays an important role in scientific research and education. However, many models do not communicate with the real world, which might limit their learning potential. In this proposal, we introduce the design of NetLogo AR, an authoring toolkit that transforms NetLogo agent-based computational models into room-scale AR experiences. We are inspired by studies that integrate real-world environments into computational models, including bifocal modeling and participatory simulation, and those that leverage Augmented Reality (AR) to create authoring tools for children. We describe our design goals that focus on raising the ceiling and lowering the threshold for potential AR designers: researchers, educators, and children. For the IDC conference, we propose an example learning activity to demonstrate the capabilities of NetLogo AR. By incorporating dynamic and unpredictable real-world inputs, NetLogo AR has the potential to inspire future designs of AR experiences and enrich the learning experiences of agent-based models for children.

Agent-based modeling (ABM) has become a major approach to promote computational thinking and complex systems thinking in K-12 education. However, agent-based programming (ABP), the computational foundation of ABM, is less defined and discussed in previous literature. Summarizing previous studies around ABP from computer science and education, we argued for the potential benefits of introducing ABP to youth. Rooted in the interest development theory, we presented the design of a scaffolded agent-based programming space, the Pocketworld Playground (POP), that aims to engage out-of-school online young learners through developing their interest in ABP. The POP was built in Turtle Universe (TU), the mobile incarnation of NetLogo. Using a mixed-methods approach to analyze log data and artifacts created by learners, we found that POP successfully engaged learners with ABP practices; helped develop situational and individual interest; and contributed to TU’s emerging online community. Finally, we discussed design lessons that could benefit other online learning designers.

This interactive art installation presents Twist-Yay!, an isokinetic sculpture that draws fascinating connections with mathematics as a part of its making process. The design of Twist-Yay! is a large-scale, hands-on manifestation of the geometric properties of hexagons and hexagonal tessellation formations using mechanical movements. This installation invites children (and everyone!) to drive the sculpture by physically standing on the central hexagonal piece and twisting clockwise and anti-clockwise to make the sculpture move. The art installation intends to tap into the curiosities of young learners by drawing their attention to pattern-formation and by providing an analog experience with mathematics and art. Twist-Yay! aims to highlight the mathematics at play while the sculpture was being designed; enabling an affinity towards mathematics coupled with a playful full-body experience and mechanistic movements.

EcoSanté is a mobile lifestyle intervention that encourages individual behavior change while also helping participants understand the deep connections between daily lifestyle choices and our collective impact on the planet. Informed by research on “small” intervention approaches, we sent participants daily behavioral challenges that demonstrated connections between personal health and environmental impact at large. Through a 20-day mobile intervention study, 139 participants uploaded 1,920 submissions documenting their attempts to engage in these challenges. We found that participants’ self-reported healthy eating behavior and general self-efficacy improved significantly immediately after the intervention. Moreover, 30 days after the intervention, participants’ self-reported eating, exercise, and general self-efficacy all significantly improved compared to the beginning of the study. Participants had a more negative reaction when being asked to come up with their own challenges. Based on quantitative and qualitative findings, we provide implications for future researcher on mobile behavior intervention research.

This paper describes the design of an online learning platform that empowers musical creation and performance with Python code. For this platform we have developed an innovative computational notebook paradigm that we call TunePad playbooks. While playbooks borrow ideas from popular computational notebooks like Jupyter, we have designed them from the ground up to support creative musical expression including live performances. After discussing our design principles and features, we share findings from a series of artifact-centered interviews conducted with experienced TunePad users. Our results show how systems like ours might flexibly support a variety of creative workflows, while suggesting opportunities for future work in this area.

This paper explores how parents and children collaborate during a playful computational activity with a codable robot. We conducted interaction analysis of moments from two cases in which a parent and their daughter worked together to choose and input numerical values in their codes that would send the robot in a desired direction. Our analyses reveal how parents and children decide on this value through a process of mapping across symbol systems. We suggest that a shared understanding of these symbols’ meaning is critical for the mapping process, and that the process is impacted by the affordances of the representational tools the pair employs. The paper concludes with a discussion of design implications for supporting parent-child collaboration during play with a codable robot.

Scientists have long sought to engage public audiences in research through citizen science projects such as biological surveys or distributed data collection. Recent online platforms have expanded the scope of what people-powered research can mean. Science museums are unique cultural institutions that translate scientific discovery for public audiences, while conducting research of their own. This makes museums compelling sites for engaging audiences directly in scientific research, but there are associated challenges as well. This project engages public audiences in contributing to real research as part of their visit to a museum. We present the design and evaluation of U!Scientist, an interactive multi-person tabletop exhibit based on the online Zooniverse project, Galaxy Zoo. We installed U!Scientist in a planetarium and collected video, computer logs, naturalistic observations, and surveys with visitors. Our findings demonstrate the potential of exhibits to engage new audiences in collaborative scientific discussions as part of people-powered research.

There is a growing need to design augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) devices that focus on supporting quality of life goals, such as increased social participation in leisurely activities. Yet, designing AAC applications that support leisurely activities is difficult, as the activity might require novel and specific language in a timely manner. Through observations and contextual interviews with people with aphasia, their social partners, and speech-language therapists, we characterize the important but challenging nature of supporting one specific leisure activity: meal ordering in restaurants. Based on our observational and interview data, we design and explore three prototype AAC systems to support people with aphasia in ordering meals in restaurants. Each prototype integrates a different AI technology, contributing insights into how AI may enhance AAC usage and design. The study opens up questions of designing accessible restaurant experiences for neurodivergent people and the role of AI in AAC devices more broadly.

Computer science educators often use multiple creative computing platforms to motivate and support students learning computer science. Arguably, we understand little about the complementary ways in which the various platforms build on students' prior experiences. This study compares two CS+music platforms used by middle school students in a summer camp to understand the unique affordances of each platform at activating and building upon prior music and computing experiences. We assess interest formation through pre and post student surveys and via interviews on the final day of the camp. The findings suggest that using different approaches to CS+music platform design may help engage students with different levels of prior music and coding experience.

There has been a growing interest in the use of computer-based models of scientific phenomena as part of classroom curricula, especially models that learners create for themselves. However, while studies show that constructing computational models of phenomena can serve as a powerful foundation for learning science, this approach has struggled to gain widespread adoption in classrooms because it not only requires teachers to learn sophisticated technological tools (such as computer programming), but it also requires precious instructional time to introduce these tools to students. Moreover, many core scientific topics such as the kinetic molecular theory, natural selection, and electricity are difficult to model even with novice-friendly environments. To address these limitations, we present a novel design approach called phenomenological programming that builds on students' intuitive understanding of real-world objects, patterns, and events to support the construction of agent-based computational models. We present preliminary case studies and discuss their implications for STEM content learning and the learnability and expressive power of phenomenological programming.

Over the last decade, large multitouch displays have become commonplace in museums and other public spaces. While there is preliminary evidence that exhibits based on tangible technologies can be more attractive and engaging for visitors than displays alone, very little empirical research has directly compared tangible to large multitouch displays in museums. In this paper, we present a study comparing the use of a tangible and a multitouch tabletop interface in an exhibit designed to explore musical rhythms. From an observation pool of 791 museum visitors, a total of 227 people in 82 groups interacted with one of the two versions of our exhibit. We share the exhibit design, experimental setup, and methods and measures. Our findings highlight advantages of tangible interaction in terms of attracting and engaging children and families. However, the two exhibits were equally effective at supporting collaborative interaction within visitor groups. We conclude with a discussion of the implications for museum exhibit design vis-a-vis visitor engagement and learning.

The 32 chapters of the 2019 Cambridge Handbook of Computing Education Research synthesize the existing research in computing education and propose new directions for future research. An author from each chapter will summarize their chapter with auto-advancing slides. Attendees will be introduced to the breadth of content in the new handbook and can identify chapters of interest. This fits uniquely as a special session, and will likely be informative, inspiring, and overwhelming.

In 2017, Paulo Blikstein, Dor Abrahamson, and the Interaction Design and Children Community established an annual award in the memory of Edith Ackermann to recognize the work of two scholars, one emergent and one eminent. These individuals would be acknowledged for their accomplishments but also tasked with a mission to complete for the following year's conference. Through a series of meetings they would produce an artifact that would be shared with IDC. In 2018, Michael Horn was recognized as the emergent scholar and Heidi Schelhowe was recognized as the eminent scholar. Through a series of conversations culminating in an in-person visit, Mike and Heidi have written this essay in which they share resonating themes from their conversations.

This research explores patient education in pediatric hematology and oncology clinics. Based on interviews, observations, and a review of existing patient materials, we argue that education in clinic waiting rooms is in need of reform. We applied design principles from research in science museums along with tangible interaction techniques to create the Sickle Cell Station, an interactive learning experience about sickle cell disease. To evaluate the effectiveness of this design we observed approximately 580 participants in a pediatric hematology clinic waiting area in four different design conditions. These observations included detailed video analysis of 81 patients and their parents to understand their interaction and learning with the Sickle Cell Station. Our results show an engaging learning experience with relevant conversation, inquiry, and collaboration. We describe how patient engagement varied in the four design conditions and conclude with implications for new designs in the area of Active Waiting Education (AWE).

How can we use interactive displays in museums to help visitors appreciate authentic objects and artifacts that they can't otherwise touch or manipulate? This paper shares results from a design-based research study on the use of interactive displays to help visitors learn about artifacts in an exhibit on the history and culture of China. To explore the potential afforded by these displays, we unobtrusively video recorded 834 museum visitor groups who stopped in front of one collection of objects. Drawing on cognitive models of curiosity, we tested three redesigns of this display, each focusing on a different strategy to spark visitor curiosity, interest, and engagement. To understand the relative effectiveness of these designs, we analyzed visitor interaction and conversation. Our results uncovered significant differences across the conditions suggesting implications for the use of such technology in museums.

In this demo, we present Spark, an augmented circuit exhibit that enables visitors to make circuits using a set of tangible components and observe a simulation of electrons flowing through the circuit. Our goal is to use multiple representations of a circuit to help convey basic concepts of current and resistance. In Spark, the electron simulation and tangible circuit components are coupled using augmented reality techniques. We developed our system through a three-year iterative design process. We tested earlier versions of the design at a science museum with parent-child dyads and found that having access to the electron simulation could benefit children to better understand the concepts of electricity. We also observed that coupling the electron simulation through augmented reality can significantly enhance the learning benefits of the exhibit.

Computational thinking skills will be important for the next generation of students. However, there is a disparity in the populations joining the field. Integrating computational thinking into artistic fields has shown to increase participation in computer science. In this paper, we present our initial design prototype for TunePad, a sound composition tablet application controlled by a block-based programming environment. TunePad is designed to introduce learners to computational thinking and to prepare them for text-based coding environments. From our preliminary testing, with children ages 7-14, we observed that our design actively engages learners and communicates how the programming blocks control the sounds being played. This testing is a prelude to more formal studies as we continue to improve the design and interface of TunePad. With this work, we intend to engage students in computational thinking who may not have otherwise been exposed, giving the opportunity to more people to enter the computer science field.

Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) devices help people with speech-language impairments due to aphasia express themselves more independently and fluently. However, current AACs are still limited in that they must be pre-programmed with common words or phrases prior to use. When people with aphasia encounter unexpected and unplanned situations or contexts, they may have difficulty using their AAC device to generate the desired speech. We present the design of an AAC application that uses image recognition technology to give people with aphasia just in time access to words. Our design automatically carries out an extensive retrieval of words associated with a captured image. The relevance, accuracy and usefulness of each word can then be verified independently by the user through an intensive retrieval of images associated with each word.

Understanding electrical circuits can be difficult for novices of all ages. In this paper, we describe a science museum exhibit that enables visitors to make circuits on an interactive tabletop and observe a simulation of electrons flowing through the circuit. Our goal is to use multiple representations to help convey basic concepts of current and resistance. To study visitor interaction and learning, we tested the design at a popular science museum with 60 parent-child dyads in three conditions: a control condition with no electron simulation; a condition with the simulation displayed alongside the circuit on the same screen; and an augmented reality condition, with the simulation displayed on a tablet that acts as a lens to see into the circuit. Our findings show that children did significantly better on a post-test in both experimental conditions, with children performing best in the AR condition. However, analysis of session videos shows unexpected parent-child collaboration in the AR condition.

This paper presents Frog Pond, an interactive code-first learning environment about biological evolution. We deployed Frog Pond as part of a six-day curricular unit on natural selection implemented in six 7th grade science classes. Here we describe a case study of two students, Charlie and Aaron who participated in the unit. Comparing pre- and post- interviews in which they were asked to design a program for a hypothetical simulation of evolution, we found that both students shifted from an event-based programming approach to a rule-based approach. Both students also drew upon their experience with Frog Pond to explain an evolutionary phenomenon. However, the level of sophistication of the two students' explanations varied along with the aspects of Frog Pond they drew upon. These findings have implications for design improvement to better support students' understanding of evolution.

Electrical circuits are difficult to understand. In this paper, we introduce Spark, a museum exhibit that enables learners to interact with multiple representations of electrical circuits at the same time. The goal is to familiarize children with fundamental concepts of electricity such as current and resistance. We tested our design with 6 parent-child dyads at a major science museum. Our study investigates how families make sense of representations at the level of circuits and at the level of electrons and ions. Our findings show a wide variety of visitor interactions with the exhibit, in particular when connecting the two representations of a circuit.

We present the design and evaluation of an exhibit on the consequences of overfishing that we deployed at a local aquarium. The exhibit, Fishing with Friends, is a multiplayer game in which visitors compete to earn money by catching fish. As the game progresses, overzealous fishing results in damage to a simulated ocean ecosystem. Our goal is to encourage visitors to reflect on damage caused by overfishing and discuss strategies to preserve shared ocean resources. Aquariums are leading the effort to inform the general public about issues of marine sustainability. However, it is challenging to make these complex topics engaging and accessible to a diverse audiences in real-world settings. We conducted a study with 523 visitors at the aquarium to evaluate our design. Results from a questionnaire suggest that engagement with Fishing with Friends improved our target audience's awareness of environmental issues compared to those who were not exposed to the game. Our results also highlight challenges of using interactive tabletops displays in crowded and chaotic exhibit halls. On average, 52.6 visitors interacted with the game every hour that the exhibit was on display; this rapid flow limited engagement and presented unique design challenges that we discuss in this paper. Future work will be needed to assess longer term impacts and to compare game play to other forms of interactive and non-interactive interventions.

In this demo we present Strawbies, a realtime tangible programming game designed for children ages 5 to 10. Strawbies is played by constructing physical programs out of wooden tiles in front of an iPad. This interaction is made possible with the use of an Osmo play system that includes a mirror to reflect images in front of the iPad through the front-facing camera. We combined this system with the TopCodes computer vision library for fast and reliable image recognition. Here we describe a set of principles that guided our iterative design process along with an overview of testing sessions with children that informed our most recent instantiation of Strawbies.

Interactive surfaces are increasingly common in museums and other informal learning environments where they are seen as a medium for promoting social engagement. However, despite their increasing prevalence, we know very little about factors that contribute to collaboration and learning around interactive surfaces. In this paper we present analyses of visitor engagement around several multi-touch tabletop science exhibits. Observations of 629 visitors were collected through two widely used techniques: video study and shadowing. We make four contributions: 1) we present an algorithm for identifying groups within a dynamic flow of visitors through an exhibit hall; 2) we present measures of group-level engagement along with methods for statistically analyzing these measures; 3) we assess the effect of observational techniques on visitors' engagement, demonstrating that consented video studies do not necessarily reflect visitor behavior in more naturalistic circumstances; and 4) we present an analysis showing that groups of two, groups with both children and adults, and groups that take turns spend longer at the exhibits and engage more with scientific concepts.

Understanding processes of evolution and natural selection is both important and challenging for learners. We describe a "codefirst" learning environment called Frog Pond designed to introduce natural selection to elementary and middle school aged learners. Learners use NetTango, a blocksbased programming interface to NetLogo, to control frogs inhabiting a lily pond. Simple programs result in changes to the frog population over successive generations. Our approach foregrounds computational thinking as a bridge to understanding evolution as an emergent phenomenon.

We describe the research and design of educational media for children in doctor's office waiting areas. Even though technology use for medical purposes has become increasingly prominent for doctors, administration, and patients, research on the use of interactive technology for health education is limited. In this project, we focus on clinics for Sickle Cell Disease treatment. These clinics treat patients of various ages and disease severity, but all patients make frequent, recurring visits for treatments and checkups. We describe our current research to better understand the behaviors and activities of patients as they wait in the clinic, their expectations and understandings of Sickle Cell Disease and its treatment, the educational material currently available, and our preliminary methods for developing interactive technologies for these environments. This reseach includes observations in pediatric clinic waiting areas, interviews with clinic staff, and preliminary user testing with our interactive designs.

Electrical circuits are difficult to understand. Novices tend to have inadequate understandings of what happens at the level of atoms and electrons, leading to difficulty predicting the outcomes of electrical circuits at the level of wires, resistors, and light bulbs. In this paper, we argue that integrating micro and macro representations of an electrical circuit can provide students with a better understanding of fundamental concepts of electricity. We then introduce Spark, an interactive multi-level simulation environment that enables learners to interact with representations of electrical circuit at both levels. The primary goal of our design is to familiarize students with electrical current, resistance, and potential difference in a circuit. We conducted a study with 17 university students that shows the ability of our design to improve novice understanding of electrical circuits. Our study offers evidence that learners are able to develop better understandings of fundamental concepts of electricity drawing on both micro-level and macro-level representations of an electrical circuit.

Energy Diet is a design concept for a digital bathroom scale that displays personal health information in the form of body weight alongside environmental health information in the form of carbon weight. We intentionally conflate these two types of feedback in an effort to encourage people to regularly monitor their energy use as they weigh themselves and to reflect on the complex relationships between personal health and environmental health. To inform our design we tested paper prototypes and administered two surveys with 500 participants. We then created a working prototype that we deployed in four participants' homes for one month each. This paper discusses findings and design implications from our surveys and in-home deployment. Overall, seeing carbon weight together with body weight on a scale helped participants to conceptualize energy consumption and to reflect on a range of daily activities and their environmental impacts.

We present the design and evaluation of Ghost Hunter, an interactive system to engage parents and children in seeking out hidden sources of energy consumption in their homes. Our system combines an electro-magnetic field (EMF) detector with a mobile tablet computer. Bringing Ghost Hunter within range of an electrical current activates the detector. Through the Ghost Hunter design we attempted to evoke the cultural form of hide-and-seek as a way to help children and parents structure their activity. We present our design and implementation followed by a qualitative evaluation conducted with seven families in their homes. Our findings describe how parents supported their children's learning about energy consumption, and ways in which the activities led to unexpected discoveries.

Ultimate frisbee is a rapidly growing sport that is played in more than 42 countries. Although it is often seen as a lighthearted pastime, significant training and practice are necessary to achieve an average level of throwing proficiency, and it is difficult for new players to map the flight of the frisbee to their throwing action. In this paper, we present Ultimate Trainer, a frisbee augmented with electronics that gives a player visual and haptic cues based on grip strength and angle of release, along with flight information such as rotation speed and time of flight. We give a brief account of our design and implementation with results of preliminary testing.

What reasons do we have for continuing to incorporate traditional print media into interaction designs for children? In this position statement, I address this question from the perspective of cultural forms. My argument is that in the creation of novel forms of interaction it is advantageous to present strong and recognizable cultural forms to help parents and children structure their activity around familiar artifacts. This, in turn, helps activate valuable cognitive, physical, and emotional resources that parents and children can bring to bear on the new task.

We present the design and evaluation of an interactive storybook to support emerging computational literacy skills for preschool and early elementary school children. We structured our designs to take advantage of existing language literacy practices between parents and children around the cultural form of a children's storybook. We evaluated our design with 14 families from two distinct cultural backgrounds: families from the United States Midwest and families from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Our findings describe ways in which parents support and structure children's programming activities, and how parental involvement varied across the two groups.

I suggest an approach to tangible interaction design that builds on social and cultural foundations. Specifically, I propose that designers can evoke cultural forms as a means to tap into users' existing cognitive, physical, and emotional resources. The emphasis is less on improving the usability of an interface and more on improving the overall experience around an interactive artifact by cueing productive patterns of social activity. My use of the term cultural form is derived from the work of Geoffrey Saxe and his form-function shift framework. This framework describes a process through which individuals appropriate cultural forms and restructure them to serve new functions in light of shifting goals and expectations. I describe Saxe's framework and then illustrate the use of cultural forms in design with three examples.

We present Omnipedia, a system that allows Wikipedia readers to gain insight from up to 25 language editions of Wikipedia simultaneously. Omnipedia highlights the similarities and differences that exist among Wikipedia language editions, and makes salient information that is unique to each language as well as that which is shared more widely. We detail solutions to numerous front-end and algorithmic challenges inherent to providing users with a multilingual Wikipedia experience. These include visualizing content in a language-neutral way and aligning data in the face of diverse information organization strategies. We present a study of Omnipedia that characterizes how people interact with information using a multilingual lens. We found that users actively sought information exclusive to unfamiliar language editions and strategically compared how language editions defined concepts. Finally, we briefly discuss how Omnipedia generalizes to other domains facing language barriers.

In this paper we describe visitor interaction with an interactive tabletop exhibit on evolution that we designed for use in natural history museums. We video recorded 30 families using the exhibit at the Harvard Museum of Natural History. We also observed an additional 50 social groups interacting with the exhibit without video recording. The goal of this research is to explore ways to develop "successful" interactive tabletop exhibits for museums. To determine criteria for success in this context, we borrow the concept of Active Prolonged Engagement (APE) from the science museum literature. Research on APE sets a high standard for visitor engagement and learning, and it offers a number of useful concepts and measures for research on interactive surfaces in the wild. In this paper we adapt and expand on these measures and apply them to our tabletop exhibit. Our results show that visitor groups collaborated effectively and engaged in focused, on-topic discussion for prolonged periods of time. To understand these results, we analyze visitor conversation at the exhibit. Our analysis suggests that social practices of game play contributed substantially to visitor collaboration and engagement with the exhibit.

We present FlipLogic, a puzzle game that we developed to help children (ages 10-12) become familiar with conditional logic statements in programming. We designed the game to be embedded in an existing after-school curriculum on computer programming fundamentals. Our broader goal is to create a series of games to help students learn a variety of programming concepts including control statements, conditional branches, logic expressions, loops, and variables. We plan to study the effectiveness and motivational appeal of our design in after-school settings, comparing this game-based approach with a more traditional instructional approach.

Multi-touch technology lends itself to collaborative crowd interaction (CI). However, common tap-operated widgets are impractical for CI, since they are susceptible to accidental touches and interference from other users. We present a novel multi-touch interface called FlowBlocks in which every UI action is invoked through a small sequence of user actions: dragging parametric UI-Blocks, and dropping them over operational UI-Docks. The FlowBlocks approach is advantageous for CI because it a) makes accidental touches inconsequential; and b) introduces design parameters for mutual awareness, concurrent input, and conflict management. FlowBlocks was successfully used on the floor of a busy natural history museum. We present the complete design space and describe a year-long iterative design and evaluation process which employed the Rapid Iterative Test and Evaluation (RITE) method in a museum setting.

In this paper, we present the DeepTree exhibit, a multi-user, multi-touch interactive visualization of the Tree of Life. We developed DeepTree to facilitate collaborative learning of evolutionary concepts. We will describe an iterative process in which a team of computer scientists, learning scientists, biologists, and museum curators worked together throughout design, development, and evaluation. We present the importance of designing the interactions and the visualization hand-in-hand in order to facilitate active learning. The outcome of this process is a fractal-based tree layout that reduces visual complexity while being able to capture all life on earth; a custom rendering and navigation engine that prioritizes visual appeal and smooth fly-through; and a multi-user interface that encourages collaborative exploration while offering guided discovery. We present an evaluation showing that the large dataset encouraged free exploration, triggers emotional responses, and facilitates visitor engagement and informal learning.

Eco-feedback technology is a growing area of interest in interaction design research. From smart meters to ambient feedback displays, well-designed technology has the potential to help families cut costs, reduce waste, and increase environmental sustainability. In this paper, we reflect on this trend and pose two interrelated design challenges that we believe are important for the development and evaluation of next-generation eco-feedback technology. First, how can we design technology to encourage entire families, children as well as adults, to become meaningful and active participants in the management of household resource consumption? And second, how can we design interactive systems to engage families in inquiry-based learning around concepts of consumption and sustainability?

In this paper we describe the design and implementation of a tangible balance beam that we created for early algebra education. We also present data from an exploratory study with seven children (ages 9--10 years) in a local elementary summer school classroom. Our results provide insight into how students solve algebra problems using our tangible interface, how they coordinate multiple representations (both digital and physical) in the problem solving process, and how they understand the concept of algebraic equality in this context. The data suggests that our interface helps students think about equations in a relational context, which has been shown to be an important skill for understanding more advanced concepts in algebra. Whether or not the combination of physical and digital representations provided by our interface helps students apply this relational understanding to equations written using standard algebraic notation is an open question that we hope to investigate in future work.

In this paper we describe NetTango, an agent-based modeling environment designed for elementary school students to use on a multi-touch tabletop surface. We review literature on the use of interactive tabletops for learning and present examples from an exploratory study that we conducted with 28 children (ages 6--10). We also discuss two design challenges that emerged during our study and consider possible solutions.

In this paper we present a case study of children's collaborative behavior around a multi-touch tabletop interface. The study includes data from four sessions with four children over a period of three weeks. The children in our study exhibited a diverse set of collaborative behaviors including territorial control of screen real estate, conflict over interface elements, and turn taking behavior, all of which seemed related to specific aspects of the interface design. Most notably, we observed conflict relating to a graphical toolbar that the children could drag around the screen. After observing this conflict, we redesigned the interface so that children were forced to use a tangible object (a wooden block) to make the toolbar appear on the screen. This tangible object seemed to help the children resolve their conflict and to promote spontaneous turn taking behavior. This paper is an effort to understand why the graphical toolbar alone seemed to spur conflict and why the introduction of a tangible object seemed to help children resolve the conflict on their own

In this demo we present the BEAM, a tangible user interface designed to help teach mathematical concepts. This research considers the role of Montessori pedagogy and traditions in the design of new, digitally enhanced educational manipulative materials.

Much of the work done in the field of tangible interaction has focused on creating tools for learning; however, in many cases, little evidence has been provided that tangible interfaces offer educational benefits compared to more conventional interaction techniques. In this paper, we present a study comparing the use of a tangible and a graphical interface as part of an interactive computer programming and robotics exhibit that we designed for the Boston Museum of Science. In this study, we have collected observations of 260 museum visitors and conducted interviews with 13 family groups. Our results show that visitors found the tangible and the graphical systems equally easy to understand. However, with the tangible interface, visitors were significantly more likely to try the exhibit and significantly more likely to actively participate in groups. In turn, we show that regardless of the condition, involving multiple active participants leads to significantly longer interaction times. Finally, we examine the role of children and adults in each condition and present evidence that children are more actively involved in the tangible condition, an effect that seems to be especially strong for girls.

The goal of this project is to develop a tangible programming language for use in informal science learning and to evaluate its effectiveness. As part of this effort, we will explore the relative strengths and weaknesses of tangible and graphical interaction for this task in the context of an exhibit on robotics on display at the Boston Museum of Science. We hypothesize that a tangible programming language will be practical for use in informal science settings and will offer significant advantages in terms of learning and quality of interaction.

In this paper we describe the design and initial evaluation of a tangible computer programming exhibit for children on display at the Boston Museum of Science. We also discuss five design considerations for tangible interfaces in science museums that guided our development and evaluation. In doing so, we propose the notion of passive tangible interfaces. Passive tangibles serve as a way to address practical issues involving tangible interaction in public settings and as a design strategy to promote reflective thinking. Results from our evaluation indicate that passive tangibles can preserve many of the benefits of tangible interaction for informal science learning while remaining cost-effective and reliable.

We are in the midst of an explosion of emerging human-computer interaction techniques that redefine our understanding of both computers and interaction. We propose the notion of Reality-Based Interaction (RBI) as a unifying concept that ties together a large subset of these emerging interaction styles. Based on this concept of RBI, we provide a framework that can be used to understand, compare, and relate current paths of recent HCI research as well as to analyze specific interaction designs. We believe that viewing interaction through the lens of RBI provides insights for design and uncovers gaps or opportunities for future research.

This paper describes a new technique for implementing educational programming languages using tangible interface technology. It emphasizes the use of inexpensive and durable parts with no embedded electronics or power supplies. Students create programs in offline settings—on their desks or on the floor—and use a portable scanning station to compile their code. We argue that languages created with this approach offer an appealing and practical alternative to text-based and visual languages for classroom use. In this paper we discuss the motivations for our project and describe the design and implementation of two tangible programming languages. We also describe an initial case study with children and outline future research goals. Author Keywords Tangible UIs, education, children, programming languages

In this paper we introduce the Tangible Video Editor (TVE), a multi-user, tangible interface for sequencing digital video. We present a new approach to tabletop interaction by using multiple handheld computers embedded in plastic tokens. Drawing from the rich physical experience of tradition film editing techniques we designed the TVE to engage multiple users in a collaborative process and encourage the exploration of narrative ideas. We used active tokens to provide a malleable interface, enabling users to organize the interface components in unspecified ways. Our implementation improves upon common projection-based tabletop interfaces in a number of ways including a design for use beyond dedicated two dimensional spaces and a naturally scaling screen resolution.