Tangibles, in the form of physical artefacts that are electronically augmented and enhanced to trigger various digital events to happen, have the potential for providing innovative ways for children to play and learn, through novel forms of interacting and discovering. They offer, in addition, the scope for bringing playfulness back into learning. To this end, we designed an adventure game, where pairs of children have to discover as much as they can about a virtual imaginary creature called the Snark, through collaboratively interacting with a suite of tangibles. Underlying the design of the tangibles is a variety of transforms, which the children have to understand and reflect upon in order to make the Snark come alive and show itself in a variety of morphological and synaesthesic forms. The paper also reports on the findings of a study of the Snark game and discusses what it means to be engrossed in playful learning.

Abstract The AS Interactive Project aimed to assess the potential of single‐user and collaborative virtual environments to support learning and enhancing of social skills in people with autistic disorders on the high‐functioning end of the autistic spectrum. The project had two distinct phases of research: Phase I focused mainly on development and design using user‐centred principles. Phase II was concerned with implementation of design feedback, further improvements and evaluation studies of the virtual environments developed. This paper describes the research process, summarizes results of the project and briefly outlines plans for future research. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Virtual Environments (VE's) offer the potential for users to explore social situations and 'try out' different behaviour responses for a variety of simulates social interactions. One of the challenges for the VE developer is how to construct the VE to allow freedom of exploration and flexibility in interactive behaviour, without the risk of users deliberately or inadvertently missing important learning goals. Scaffolding embedded within the VE software can aid the user's learning in different contexts, such as individual, tutored or group learning situations. This paper describes two single-user VE scenarios that have been developed within the AS interactive project and presents observation results from initial trials conducted at a user school.

The specification, development and evaluation of a VE to allow people with Asperger's Syndrome to practise social interaction is described. A "front-ended" style has been adopted, where the emphasis on user consideration is placed during the early stages of the development life cycle, before any VE programming takes place. A model for user-centred design is presented that shows the involvement of different groups of users and professionals at various stages of design. Design guidelines have been derived from literature reviews and empirical examination of existing VEs. These have then been applied within a highly iterative cycle of low -tech VE specification and review. One VE module has been developed and evaluated with a focus on usability.

We describe the design of tangible interfaces to the KidPad collaborative drawing tool. Our aims are to support the re-enactment of stories to audiences, and integration within real classroom environments. A six-month iterative design process, working with children and teachers in school, has produced the “magic carpet”, an interface that uses pressure mats and video-tracked and barcoded physical props to navigate a story in KidPad. Reflecting on this process, we propose four guidelines for the design of tangible interfaces for the classroom. (1) Use physical size and shysical props to encourage collaboration. (2) Be aware of how different interfaces emphasize different actions. (3) Be aware that superficial changes to the design can produce very different physical interactions. (4) Focus on open low-tech technologies rather than (over) polished products.

We describe the iterative design of two collaborative storytelling technologies for young children, KidPad and the Klump. We focus on the idea of designing interfaces to subtly encourage collaboration so that children are invited to discover the added benefits of working together. This idea has been motivated by our experiences of using early versions of our technologies in schools in Sweden and the UK. We compare the approach of encouraging collaboration with other approaches to synchronizing shared interfaces. We describe how we have revised the technologies to encourage collaboration and to reflect design suggestions made by the children themselves.