A child’s bedroom holds the potential to be a meaningful space that scaffolds both practical and emotional needs. While home IoT technologies offer unique opportunities to enhance the room’s meaning, studies show children tend to associate them with practical rather than emotional use-cases. We present programmable IoT prototypes designed to overcome this tendency by applying two design principles: (1) Encourage self-appropriation and meaning-making using an open-ended design, simple coding blocks, and abstract outputs; (2) Encourage emotional use-cases using an explicit affordance. In a qualitative study, children used the prototypes in their bedrooms, appropriating them by coding personal use-cases that were both practical and emotional. We conclude that if designed appropriately, children can leverage IoT prototypes to enhance the meaning of their bedroom.

Deliberate regulation of diaphragmatic breathing can contribute to well-being. We present a targeted-heat wearable designed to direct attention inward during breathing practice. In a mixed-methods study, breathing was guided with a pulsing-heat or a screen-based app. We included physiological measures of heart-rate, HRV, and breathing pace; self-report questionnaires on interoception and mindfulness; and qualitative interviews. Results show both groups adhered well to the breathing guidance, yet heat-condition participants reached lower heart-rate and reduced sympathetic activation, physiological markers associated with stress reduction. They also reported higher interoceptive awareness, specifically self-regulation and body-listening abilities, alongside significantly higher state mindfulness. Qualitative findings revealed that targeted-heat fostered a stronger connection with bodily sensations and emotions, while visual feedback was often experienced as pulling attention outward. Our work suggests that breathing with the heat wearable increases the known positive outcomes of diaphragmatic breathing, helping people connect more deeply with their bodies by directing attention inward.

Animacy is central to HRI, as it is critical for perceptions of intentionality and influences acceptance, interaction quality, and trust. In order to better understand the underlying mechanisms of the sense of animacy and its role in HRI, we conducted an experiment (n=13) using a social robotic object that is ambiguous with respect to its perceived animacy. We examined how brain activity related to a subjective animacy rating of the robot by participants after watching it perform simple gestures. Using functional imaging, we found that the ventral occipitotemporal (VOT) cortex, a region known to distinguish animate from inanimate entities, also responds to robots along this same organizational gradient. In an exploratory analysis, activity in the left VOT was associated with the individual differences in participants’ subjective animacy rating of the robot. This extends established principles of animacy perception to non-humanoid robots and suggests that individual differences in brain responses may shape how robots are experienced. We discuss implications for HRI, including guiding social cue design, informing gesture alignment with robot roles, and raising ethical considerations around attachment and trust.

We introduce a novel approach to evaluate how the design properties of morphing metamaterial influence shape-changing experiences. We leverage parametric design to create cutting patterns that change the Density and Geometry material properties. Using laser-cutting, we apply the patterns to a non-stretchable woven textile, resulting in a stretchable metamaterial that we actuate using an electromagnetic coil. This systematic design approach leads to programmatic control over the material movement, making it suitable for controlled evaluation of perceived experience. In a 2×2 mixed-method study, we assess how the metamaterial’s Density and Geometry properties impact the observed experience. Our findings indicate that such changes significantly and independently affect participants’ perceived emotions, mood, associations, and preferences. Our research contributes to the body of work of systematic studies in the shape-changing community. By using our morphing metamaterial design and implementation technique, coupled with our controlled evaluation of specific design properties, we have revealed new insights about the influencing factors of shape-changing experiences. We have incorporated these insights into our morphing metamaterial design guidelines, which outline the impact of Density and Geometry properties on an observer’s perceived emotions. We hope our work will open up new possibilities for expressive, evocative metamaterial-focused shape-changing experiences.

Mindfulness meditation has vast benefits, yet is challenging for many. We designed a novel targeted warmth somaesthetic wearable and evaluated how the thermal sensation is perceived during meditation. In a qualitative study, twenty participants explored the wearable during meditation. Findings reveal participants’ rich experiences, sensations, and feelings. They perceived the technology as an appropriate tool for self-exploration. Even when participants initially felt the wearable was distracting their meditation process, they easily learned how to leverage it in their introspection process. We report on four potential roles for warmth technology: functional (pulling focal of attention), behavioral (motivating to "get back to the practice"), emotional (comforting during the lonely process), and therapeutic feelings. We conclude with design guidelines, highlighting that warmth is a promising technology for meditation if designed to encourage self-exploration of body sensations and emotions while not compromising the natural meditation practice.

One of the main challenges parents face is recognizing and supporting the changing needs of their children. The Circle of Security (COS) psychology theory addresses this challenge by increasing parental mentalization, a parent’s ability to mentally envision her child’s mental states, and to engage in reflection on her own internal experiences. We present an exploratory design process of a tangible interface for parents of 5-7 years-old children, grounded in theoretical aspects from Attachment theory, Caregiving sensitivity theory, and COS theory. We designed three low-fidelity prototypes and evaluated them with four parents to generate initial insights about the potential of TUI as an aid for parental mentalization. Our work suggests that parents see potential in using a TUI to improve their parental mentalization abilities, however they report it is not easy and requires significant mental effort. Our work is a first step towards TUI as an aid for parental mentalization.

Family dinners introduce an opportunity for quality family time which is significant for the development of emotional skills, life satisfaction and the establishment of a strong parent-child bond. However, family dinners are constantly challenged by mobile distractions. We present the design and preliminary evaluation of a peripheral Tangible User Interface, in the form of a table spinning top. The object is aimed at enhancing family quality time by raising awareness of mobile phone distraction and motivating family members to return their focus to the family activity. A preliminary user study with three families revealed high engagement and increased motivation for stopping mobile distractions and re-engaging in the family interaction. Our results suggest the prototype can assist in regulating digital interference in a constructive and positive way.

Autonomous actuated-interfaces provide a unique research opportunity for shared-control interfaces, as the human and the interface collaborate using the physical interaction modality, manipulating the same physical elements at the same time. Prior studies show that sharing control with physical modality interfaces often results in frustration and low sense-of-control. We designed and implemented adaptive behavior for shared-control actuated-interfaces that extends prior work by providing humans the ability to anticipate the autonomous action, and then accept or override it. Results from a controlled study with 24 participants indicate better collaboration in the Adaptive condition compared with the Non-adaptive one, with improved sense-of-control, feelings of teamwork, and overall collaboration quality. Our work contributes to shared-control tangible, shape-change, and actuated interfaces. We show that leveraging minimal non-verbal social cues to physically communicate the actuated-interface’s intent, coupled with providing autonomy to the human to physically accept or override the shift-in-control, improves the shared-control collaboration.

We evaluate whether an interaction with robots can influence a subsequent Human-Human Interaction without the robots' presence. Social psychology studies indicate that some social experiences have a carryover effect, leading to implicit influences on later interactions. We tested whether a social experience formed in a Human-Robot Interaction can have a carryover effect that impacts a subsequent Human-Human Interaction. We focused on ostracism, a phenomenon known to involve carryover effects that lead to prosocial behavior. Using the Robotic Ostracism Paradigm, we compared two HRI experiences: Exclusion and Inclusion, testing their impact on a Human-Human Interaction that did not involve robots. Robotic ostracism had a carryover effect that led to prosocial behavior in the Human-Human Interaction, whereby participants preferred intimate interpersonal space and displayed increased compliance. We conclude that HRI experiences may involve carryover effects that extend beyond the interaction with robots, impacting separate and different subsequent strictly human Interactions.

We present an actuated-interface that is not only a tangible interface but also an autonomous object, designed as an independent entity that takes a similar role to the user’s role in an anagram word game. We highlight two leading interaction paradigms: Turn-taking-actuation and Joint-actuation, and evaluate both in a qualitative interaction study with the autonomous actuated-interface. Our findings reveal that all participants perceived the interaction as a social experience. The different interaction paradigms led to different interpretations: Turn-taking-actuation was interpreted as a competitive experience, while Joint-actuation was interpreted as a collaborative experience. The interaction paradigms also influenced the intensity of emotions and perception of control, with Joint-actuation leading to more intense emotions and higher sensitivity to control in the interaction. To conclude, our findings show that it is possible to design an actuated-interface that users perceive both as a tangible interface and as a social entity with its own intent.

Robot-Robot-Human Interaction is an emerging field, holding the potential to reveal social effects involved in human interaction with more than one robot. We tested if an interaction between one participant and two non-humanoid robots can lead to negative feelings related to ostracism, and if it can impact fundamental psychological needs including control, belonging, meaningful existence, and self-esteem. We implemented a physical ball-tossing activity based on the Cyberball paradigm. The robots' ball-tossing ratio towards the participant was manipulated in three conditions: Exclusion (10%), Inclusion (33%), and Over-inclusion (75%). Objective and subjective measures indicated that the Exclusion condition led to an ostracism experience which involved feeling "rejected", "ignored", and "meaningless", with an impact on various needs including control, belonging, and meaningful existence. We conclude that interaction with more than one robot can form a powerful social context with the potential to impact psychological needs, even when the robots have no humanoid features.

This work presents Magnetform, a shape-change display toolkit designed to enable exploration of movement in soft materials. The toolkit allows designers with no technical knowledge to leverage their material expertise to experiment with shape-change. We present the toolkit design, and case studies with two design studios who used the toolkit for 15-days each. Through the presentation of their process, we reflect on two main themes: empowering designers to participate in shape-change exploration; and the developing practice of designing objects which integrate motion. We situate this work as part of the growing efforts in the TEI community to involve designers in the evolution of shape-changing interfaces, and demonstrate how material-oriented designers could contribute to this field in which materiality plays a major role in.

Robots designed for social interaction are predicted to be employed in a wide range of environments including homes, schools, and workplaces (Bartneck & Forlizzi, 2004; Fong, Nourbakhsh, & Dautenha...

One of the challenges faced by healthy older adults is experiencing feelings of not "being-seen". Companion robots, commonly designed with zoomorphic or humanoid appearance show success among clinical older adults, but healthy older adults find them degrading. We present the design and implementation of a novel non-humanoid robot. The robot's primary function is a cognitive word game. Social interaction is conveyed as a secondary function, using non-verbal gestures, inspired by dancers' movement. In a lab study, 39 healthy older adults interacted with the prototype in 3 conditions: Companion-Function; Game-Function; and No-Function. Results show the non-verbal gestures were associated with feelings of "being-seen", and willingness to accept the robot into their home was influenced by its function, with game significantly higher than companion. We conclude that robot designers should further explore the potential of non-humanoid robots as a new class of companion robots, with a primary function that is not companionship.

Machine Learning services are integrated into various aspects of everyday life. Their underlying processes are typically black-boxed to increase ease-of-use. Consequently, children lack the opportunity to explore such processes and develop essential mental models. We present a gesture recognition research platform, designed to support learning from experience by uncovering Machine Learning building blocks: Data Labeling and Evaluation. Children used the platform to perform physical gestures, iterating between sampling and evaluation. Their understanding was tested in a pre/post experimental design, in three conditions: learning activity uncovering Data Labeling only, Evaluation only, or both. Our findings show that both building blocks are imperative to enhance children's understanding of basic Machine Learning concepts. Children were able to apply their new knowledge to everyday life context, including personally meaningful applications. We conclude that children's interaction with uncovered black boxes of Machine Learning contributes to a better understanding of the world around them.

Outdoor play is in decline, including its benefits to children's development. Coding, a typically indoor, screen-based activity, can potentially enrich outdoor play, serving as a rule-making medium. We present a coding platform that controls a programmable hardware device, enabling children to technologically-enhance their outdoor play experiences by inventing game ideas, coding them, and playing their games together with their friends. In the evaluation study, 24 children used the system to invent and play outdoor games. Results show children are able to bridge between the different domains of coding and outdoor play. They used the system to modify traditional games and invent new ones, enriching their outdoor experience. Children merged computational concepts with physical game elements, integrated physical outdoor properties as variables in their code, and were excited to see their code come to life. We conclude children can use coding to express their ideas by creating technologically-enhanced outdoor play experiences.

The biological prototyping revolution is in motion, and new tools are needed to empower HCI researchers, designers, makers, and bio-enthusiasts to experiment with live organisms. We present OpenLH, a liquid handling system that empowers users to conduct accurate and repetitive experiments with live biology in a sterile, open, and affordable way. OpenLH integrates a commercially available robotic arm with custom 3D printed parts, a modified pipette, and a visual block-based programming interface. The system is as accurate as commercial liquid handlers, capable of repetitive tasks in micro-scale accuracy, easy to operate, and supports multi-materials including biomaterials, microorganisms and cell cultures. We describe the system's technical implementation and two custom interfaces. We demonstrate the system's impact for the HCI community with two use cases that include experimentation with live biology in non-traditional fields: visual design using pigment-expressing E.coli, and beer brewing experiment using serial dilution in home context.

Machine Learning (ML) processes are integrated into devices and services that affect many aspects of daily life. As a result, basic understanding of ML concepts becomes essential for people of all ages, including children. We studied if 10--12 years old children can understand basic ML concepts through direct experience with a digital stick-like device, in a WoZ-based experiment. To assess children's understanding we applied an experimental design including a pretest, a gesture recognition training activity, and a posttest. The tests included validating children's understanding of the gesture training activity, other gesture detection processes, and application to ML processes in daily scenarios. Our findings suggest that children are able to understand basic ML concepts, and can even apply them to a new context. We conclude that ML learning activities should allow children to sample their own examples and evaluate them in an iterative way, and proper feedback should be designed to gradually scaffold understanding.

Outdoor play has known benefits for children's development, and studies show it is in decline. Heads-Up Games have been proposed as a possible solution, in some cases with an integrated coding platform to enrich play variety. In this pilot study we set out to evaluate a Scratch-based coding platform for outdoor play. The code primitives control digital features of a stick-like outdoor play object. We observed children's play patterns with the coding platform and with the play object, and report on three distinct patterns: "Basic Exploration", "Advanced Exploration", and "Game Invention". Our preliminary findings show that all children began with "Basic Exploration" and progressed either to "Advanced Exploration" or "Game Invention". With regards to outdoor play benefits, the "Game Invention" pattern was associated with more collaborative social interaction, physical activity, and "heads up" interaction. We discuss the implications for future coding platforms designed for outdoor play.

Parent-child interaction during a collaborative activity can empower children if parents are able to envision their child's mental state and regulate their behavior. However, this ability is a great challenge for many parents. We designed a simple tangible 'Awareness Object' (AO) intended to raise parents' awareness of the roles they can play and help them shift their focus to the interaction with their child. We present results from 12 parent-child interactions with the AO. Our qualitative analysis reveals that the AO raised parents' awareness of their roles during the activity and led to various types of reflection by both parents and children. In addition, the AO increased children's involvement in evaluating their parent's role, which some parents found intriguing while others found inappropriate. We conclude that a simple tangible interface can enhance parent-child interaction. However, this interaction is sensitive and should be approached with caution.

Outdoor play has been proven to be beneficial for children's development. HCI research on Heads-Up Games suggests that the well-known decline in outdoor play can be addressed by adding technology to such activities. However, outdoor play benefits such as social interaction, creative thinking, and physical activity may be compromised when digital features are added. We present the design & implementation of a novel digitally-enhanced outdoor-play prototype. Our evaluation with 48 children revealed that a non-digital version of the novel outdoor play object afforded social play and game invention. Evaluation of the digitally-enhanced version showed reduced collaborative social interaction and reduced creative thinking when compared with baseline. However, we showed that specific sensing and feedback features better supported outdoor play benefits. For example non-accumulated feedback was shown to increase collaborative play and creative thinking in comparison to accumulated feedback. We provide evidence-based recommendations for designers of outdoor play technologies.

Opening encounters are an integral element of everyday social interaction, and are essential for forming and maintaining social relationships between people. We present an abstract non-humanoid robotic object called the Greeting Machine, designed to communicate positive and negative social cues in the context of opening encounters. The design includes a small ball rolling on a larger dome, with a custom gear and lever mechanism that supports a variety of subtle movements. Gestures were designed with movement experts, and were evaluated using a physical first-person qualitative study. Our findings reveal that an abstract robot designed with no specific metaphor can effectively take part in opening encounters. Furthermore, a minimal brief movement, designed as an Approach or Avoid gesture, may be enough to evoke positive and negative experiences. The ability to create opening encounters with low Degree of Freedom abstract robots is promising, both due to the low complexity, low cost, and design flexibility of such devices, and due to the possible generalization of the Approach and Avoid gestures for a variety of morphologies.

We present the initial design process of Scratch Nodes, a sensor-based prototype designed to augment children's social-physical outdoor play. Scratch Nodes has two main components: a hardware device and a tablet-based coding environment. The prototype was designed for 8-12 year old children with the goal of encouraging physical play, social interaction, and "changing the rules" through coding. We extend prior work in the Heads-up Games (HUG) domain by adding a real-time coding environment that directly controls the hardware device, empowering children to change the game's rules in real-time. We argue that the combination of physical play, social interaction, and coding strikes the right balance between the societal need to increase outdoor play & enhance computational thinking skills on one hand and children's need to play, measure, and define their own rules on the other. We present our initial design and implementation process as well as our insights from a preliminary evaluation with six children who tested the prototype.

Making activities for children often take place at informal learning environments. In this context parents may join their children for co-making activity. It has been shown that this type of activity can be facilitated by educators that serve as mentors. In this paper we aim to explore parent-child interaction in the context of a co-making activity at home. Towards that end, we developed a dedicated kit that couples Automata-building with paper circuits. We also designed five activity cards as scaffolding for parents, to raise their awareness to mentoring principles. We present our design process, evaluation, and findings from eight parent-child co-making activities. Our qualitative analysis indicates the challenges and opportunities for parents as mentors in a co-making activity. We propose a two-dimensional scale that can help designers and maker-space practitioners better understand the different parental roles during a parent-child co-making activities, and the need for better tools and support materials for parents in that context.

This paper presents the design research process of CataKit, a construction kit for children inspired by catapults, Rube-Goldberg chain reaction machines, and mechanical automata. We set out to promote children's initiative, positive risk-taking, and procedural thinking, all in the context of their bedrooms. Our motivation is to contrast the rising smart home movement in industry, which we fear may decrease children's initiative if children's bedrooms become too automated. We describe our design research process with six children followed by a low fidelity prototype design and evaluation. We present the qualitative analysis of children's reactions to the prototype and show support for our initial goals: encourage systematic exploration of mechanical concepts and initiative over automation. We hope that construction kits like Catakit will empower children to develop curiosity about the mechanical world around them, to think about risk taking as a potentially positive experience, and to think more critically about initiative in the smart home era.

With domestic technology on the rise, the quantity and complexity of smart-home devices are becoming an important interaction design challenge. We present a novel design for a home control interface in the form of a social robot, commanded via tangible icons and giving feedback through expressive gestures. We experimentally compare the robot to three common smart-home interfaces: a voice-control loudspeaker; a wall-mounted touch-screen; and a mobile application. Our findings suggest that interfaces that rate higher on flow rate lower on usability, and vice versa. Participants' sense of control is highest using familiar interfaces, and lowest using voice control. Situation awareness is highest using the robot, and also lowest using voice control. These findings raise questions about voice control as a smart-home interface, and suggest that embodied social robots could provide for an engaging interface with high situation awareness, but also that their usability remains a considerable design challenge.

We study the experiences of high school student volunteers as mentors in a public makerspace for children. Based on interviews, we present the teenagers' varied backgrounds, doubts, and lessons learned. While most studies around maker activities have focused on learning of STEM subject matter, our findings point to an additional outcome, an empowerment in social competence. We discuss our insights about teenage mentorship in makerspaces and propose future research directions.

We describe the design process of “Vyo”, a personal assistant serving as a centralized interface for smart home devices. Building on the concepts of ubiquitous and engaging computing in the domestic environment, we identified five design goals for the home robot: engaging, unobtrusive, device-like, respectful, and reassuring. These goals led our design process, which included simultaneous iterative development of the robot's morphology, nonverbal behavior and interaction schemas. We continued with user-centered design research using puppet prototypes of the robot to assess and refine our design choices. The resulting robot, Vyo, straddles the boundary between a monitoring device and a socially expressive agent, and presents a number of novel design outcomes: The combination of TUI “phicons” with social robotics; gesture-related screen exposure; and a non-anthropomorphic monocular expressive face. We discuss how our design goals are expressed in the elements of the robot's final design.

Makerspaces of various models are forming all around the world. We present a model and case study of the Maketec, a public drop-in makerspace for children, run by teens. The Maketec model is designed to promote making and socializing opportunities for girls and boys of ages 9-14. It is based on three underlying principles: (1) "Low Floor/Wide Walls": construction kits and digital fabrication technologies that allow kids to invent and create with no prior knowledge or expertise; (2) "Unstructured Learning": no formal instructors, teens serve as mentors for kids, and promote a culture of self-driven learning through projects; and (3) "A Makerspace as a Third Place": the Maketec is free and managed by kids for kids in an effort to form a unique community of young makers. We report on interviews with four recurring visitors, and discuss our insights around the three principles and the proposed model.

The design of tangible and embedded assistive technologies poses unique challenges. We describe the challenges we encountered during the design of "DataSpoon", explain how we overcame them, and suggest design guidelines. DataSpoon is an instrumented spoon that monitors movement kinematics during self-feeding. Children with motor disorders often encounter difficulty mastering self-feeding. In order to treat them effectively, professional caregivers need to assess their movement kinematics. Currently, assessment is performed through observations and questionnaires. DataSpoon adds sensor-based data to this process. A validation study showed that data obtained from DataSpoon and from a 6-camera 3D motion capture system were similar. Our experience yielded three design guidelines: needs of both caregivers and children should be considered; distractions to direct caregiver-child interaction should be minimized; familiar-looking devices may alleviate concerns associated with unfamiliar technology.

We present the design and initial evaluation of Kip3, a social robotic device for students with ADHD that provides immediate feedback for inattention or impulsivity events. We designed a research platform comprised of a tablet-based Continuous Performance Test (CPT) that is used to assess inattention and impulsivity, and a socially expressive robotic device (Kip3) as feedback. We evaluated our platform with 10 students with ADHD in a within subject user study, and report that 9 out of 10 participants felt that Kip3 helped them regain focus, but wondered if it will be effective over time and how it will identify inattention in more complex situations outside the lab.

Children with Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) experience a deficit in cognitive processes responsible for goal-directed behaviors, known as executive functioning (EF). In an effort to assist them, we developed TangiPlan -- a prototype of a tangible assistive technology intended to improve EF during morning routines. TangiPlan was designed based on the following guidelines: implement intervention techniques recommended by experts; reduce conflicts with caregivers; avoid intrusion; support flexibility and autonomy. These design guidelines were implemented in a prototype consisting of six tangible objects, each representing a task that needs to be completed during a child's morning routine, and a tablet application for planning tasks and matching them with objects. An initial evaluation of the prototype with two case studies resulted in improved organization and time management, increased satisfaction, and fewer conflicts with parents during morning routines.

We present the design, implementation, and evaluation of a peripheral empathy-evoking robotic conversation companion, Kip1. The robot's function is to increase people's awareness to the effect of their behavior towards others, potentially leading to behavior change. Specifically, Kip1 is designed to promote non-aggressive conversation between people. It monitors the conversation's nonverbal aspects and maintains an emotional model of its reaction to the conversation. If the conversation seems calm, Kip1 responds by a gesture designed to communicate curious interest. If the conversation seems aggressive, Kip1 responds by a gesture designed to communicate fear. We describe the design process of Kip1, guided by the principles of peripheral and evocative. We detail its hardware and software systems, and a study evaluating the effects of the robot's autonomous behavior on couples' conversations. We find support for our design goals. A conversation companion reacting to the conversation led to more gaze attention, but not more verbal distraction, compared to a robot that moves but does not react to the conversation. This suggests that robotic devices could be designed as companions to human-human interaction without compromising the natural communication flow between people. Participants also rated the reacting robot as having significantly more social human character traits and as being significantly more similar to them. This points to the robot's potential to elicit people's empathy.

College students in the social sciences are required to learn quantitative research methods and statistics. Unfortunately, many fail to see the relevance of these courses, and are often anxious about them. In an effort to increase students' engagement in the research process, we developed Ruzo -- a mobile scientific inquiry platform. Ruzo enables instructors and students to create research projects as custom mobile apps, collect data on the go, and visualize the data using a web-based interactive tool. Ruzo was designed based on five guidelines, derived from interviews with domain experts: guide students through all stages of research; reduce anxiousness; encourage active learning; connect to students' everyday lives; and adapt the system to the needs of the instructor. A user study showed that Ruzo was easy to use, and students expressed interest in research, thereby demonstrating the potential of mobile technology to scaffold scientific inquiry.

We present Objects for Change (OFC), a set of design considerations based on established behavior change techniques that can serve designers of Tangible User Interfaces (TUI). We highlight empirical findings from behavior change literature, and show how to apply them to inherent TUI properties: (1) visibility and persistency, (2) locality, (3) tangible representation, and (4) affordances. We demonstrate how we applied OFC in the design of a TUI prototype aimed to promote behavior change in planning and organization tasks among youth diagnosed with ADHD.

We present the notion of Empathy Objects, ambient robotic devices accompanying human-human interaction. Empathy Objects respond to human behavior using physical gestures as nonverbal expressions of their "emotional states". The goal is to increase people's self-awareness to the emotional state of others, leading to behavior change. We demonstrate an Empathy Object prototype, Kip1, a conversation companion designed to promote non-aggressive conversation between people.

Many children with cerebral palsy (CP) encounter great difficulties mastering self-feeding. We set out to assess the self-feeding skills of young children with CP via a novel instrumented spoon that monitors upper extremity biomechanics involved in eating. We describe the initial stages of an iterative design process, consisting of a focus group with domain experts, and rapid-prototyping. We discuss the physical, assessment and safety requirements for the spoon. In addition, we explain the potential of tangible interfaces to provide professional caregivers with valuable information regarding each child.

Typically developing children usually master selffeeding by the age of three years. However, children with Cerebral Palsy and other developmental disabilities encounter great difficulties acquiring this instrumental ability. In an effort to motivate young eaters in the process of acquiring selffeeding abilities, we set out to develop ExciteTray a customized selffeeding assistive technology. We describe the initial stages of an iterative design process consisting of interviews with domain experts, rapidprototyping, and evaluations with children. Based on our findings, we formulated preliminary design principles for a selffeeding assistive technology: draw attention without causing distraction; motivate the child during the various stages of selffeeding; facilitate facetoface interaction between caregiver and child; adapt feedback to the cognitive and motor ability of each child. We explain how these principles were implemented in a prototype, discuss safety considerations and describe future work.

Children with Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) experience a deficit in cognitive processes responsible for purposeful goaldirected behaviors, known as executive functioning (EF). In an effort to improve EF, we are developing TangiPlan a set of tangible connected objects that represent tasks children perform during their morning routine. We describe the initial stages of a usercentered design process, consisting of interviews with both domain experts and potential users, followed by paper prototyping. Based on our findings, we formulated preliminary design principles for EF assistive technology: facilitate organization, time management and planning; involve caregivers in the process, but strive to reduce conflict; implement intervention techniques suggested by experts; avoid distraction by mobile phones; avoid intrusion. We discuss the benefits of implementing these principles with a tangible interface, present our prototype design, and describe future directions.

Family car rides can become a source of boredom for child passengers, and consequently cause tension inside the car. In an attempt to overcome this problem, we developed Mileys -- a novel in-car game that integrates location-based information, augmented reality and virtual characters. It is aimed to make car rides more interesting for child passengers, strengthen the bond between family members, encourage safe and ecological driving, and connect children with their environment instead of their entertainment devices. We evaluated Mileys with a six-week long field study, which revealed differences between children and parents regarding their desired in-car experience. Children wish to play enjoyable games, whereas parents view car rides as an opportunity for strengthening the bond between family members and for educating their children. Based on our findings, we identify five key challenges for in-car game design for children: different expectations by parents and children, undesired detachment, short interaction span, poor GPS reception, and motion sickness.

This paper introduces a new framework for thinking about tangible interfaces in education, with specific focus on abstract problem domains.Manipulatives are physical objects specifically designed to foster learning. We offer a new classification of Manipulatives: "Froebel-inspired Manipulatives" (FiMs) and "Montessori-inspired Manipulatives" (MiMs). We argue that FiMs are design materials, fostering modeling of real-world structures, while MiMs foster modeling of more abstract structures. We show that our classification extends to computationally enhanced versions of manipulatives.We present Digital MiMs - computationally enhanced building blocks. We describe two prototypical members of the Digital MiMs class: FlowBlocks and SystemBlocks, physical, modular interactive systems that serve as general-purpose modeling and simulation tools for dynamic behavior. We present findings from qualitative studies, and conclude that digital MiMs are accessible to young children, engaging, and encourage learning of abstract structures of dynamic behavior through an iterative process of hands-on modeling, simulating, and analogizing.

We present the latest prototype of System Blocks, a new interactive learning environment that facilitates hands-on modeling and simulation of systems concepts. System Blocks, by making processes visible and manipulable, can help students learn about the core concepts of systems at a younger age. K-12 schools rarely introduce students to core concepts of systems such as interconnectedness, positive and negative feedback, stocks and flows, or time delay. These concepts are considered "too hard" for pre-college students. Using System Blocks, 5th grade students with no prior instruction in systems were able to model and simulate systems, to interact with concepts such as net-flow dynamics and positive feedback, and to successfully connect the simulations to real-life examples.