Children s Acceptance of a Collaborative Problem Solving Game Based on Physical Versus Digital Learning Spaces

[EN] Collaborative problem solving (CPS) is an essential soft skill that should be fostered from a young age. Research shows that a good way of teaching such skills is through video games; however, the success and viability of this method may be affected by the technological platform used. In this work we propose a gameful approach to train CPS skills in the form of the CPSbot framework and describe a study involving 80 primary school children on user experience and acceptance of a game, Quizbot, using three different technological platforms: two purely digital (tabletop and handheld tablets) and another based on tangible interfaces and physical spaces. The results show that physical spaces proved to be more effective than the screen-based platforms in several ways, as well as being considered more fun and easier to use by the children. Finally, we propose a set of design considerations for future gameful CPS systems based on the observations made during this study.Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness and the European Regional Development Fund (project TIN2014-60077-R); Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport (with fellowship FPU14/00136) and Conselleria d'Educacio, Cultura i Esport (Generalitat Valenciana, Spain) (grant ACIF/2014/214).Jurdi, S.; García Sanjuan, F.; Nácher-Soler, VE.; Jaén Martínez, FJ. (2018). Children s Acceptance of a Collaborative Problem Solving Game Based on Physical Versus Digital Learning Spaces. Interacting with Computers. 30(3):187-206. https://doi.org/10.1093/iwc/iwy006S18720630

Interactive technologies for preschool game-based instruction: Experiences and future challenges

This is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication in Entertainment Computing. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in Entertainment Computing, vol. 17 (2016). DOI 10.1016/j.entcom.2016.07.001.[EN] According to current kindergarten curricula, game play is an important basis for children development and it is the main driving force when designing educational activities during early childhood. This paper presents a review of the current state of the art of game technologies that support pre-kindergarten and kindergarten children development. Moreover, the most emergent technologies for developing educational games for preschool children are identified and a set of future challenges are discussed. The main goal of this work is to review the state of the art in interactive technologies which will help educators, game designers and Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) experts in the area of game-based kindergarten instruction. 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This work received financial support from Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness and funded by the European Development Regional Fund (EDRF-FEDER) with the project TIN2014-60077-R (SUPEREMOS). This work is also supported by a predoctoral fellowship within the FPU program from the Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports to V. Nacher (FPU14/00136) and from GVA (ACIF/2014/214) to F. Garcia-Sanjuan.Nácher-Soler, VE.; García Sanjuan, F.; Jaén Martínez, FJ. (2016). Interactive technologies for preschool game-based instruction: Experiences and future challenges. Entertainment Computing. 17:19-29. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.entcom.2016.07.001S19291

KINDERTIVITY: Using Interactive Surfaces to Foster Creativity in Pre-kindergarten Children

© Owner/Author 2015. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here for your personal use. Not for redistribution. The definitive Version of Record was published in {Interacción '15 Proceedings of the XVI International Conference on Human Computer Interactionhttp://dx.doi.org/10.1145/10.1145/2829875.2829881Taking into account the existent educative and pedagogical techniques, which have proved its effectiveness to foster the innovation and creativity, this thesis poses to develop, experiment and evaluate a new technological framework based on interactive surfaces to be applied in the context of preschool education. The goal is to facilitate the three factors required for creative learning: knowledge, creative thinking and motivation but taking into account the cognitive and interaction limitations of these very young users.Work supported by the MINECO (grants TIN2010-20488 and TIN2014-60077-R) and from GVA (ACIF/2015/075).Nácher-Soler, VE.; Jaén Martínez, FJ. (2015). KINDERTIVITY: Using Interactive Surfaces to Foster Creativity in Pre-kindergarten Children. ACM. https://doi.org/10.1145/2829875.2829881SBuxton, B. Multi-touch systems that I have known and loved. 2013. http://billbuxton.com/multitouchOverview.html.Catala, A., Jaen, J., van Dijk, B., and Jordà, S. Exploring tabletops as an effective tool to foster creativity traits. In Proc. of TEI'12, pp. 143--150.Comisión Europea. Conclusiones del Consejo de 12 de mayo de 2009 sobre un marco estratégico para la cooperación europea en el ámbito de la educación y la formación («ET 2020»). 2009.Common Sense Media. Zero to Eight: Childrens Media Use in America 2013. 2013.Cropley, A.J. Creativity in Education and Learning: A Guide for Teachers and Educators. Kogan Page, (2001).Damon, W., Lerner, R.M., Kuhn, D., and Siegler, R.S., eds. Handbook of Child Psychology, Volume 2, Cognition, Perception, and Language. Wiley, 2006.Fleck, R., Rogers, Y., Yuill, N., et al. Actions speak loudly with words. Proc. of ITS'09, pp. 189--196.Helmes, J., Cao, X., Lindley, S.E., and Sellen, A. Developing the story. Proc. of ITS'09, pp. 49--52.Hourcade, J.P. Interaction Design and Children. Foundations and Trends® in Human-Computer Interaction 1, 4 (2007), 277--392.Johnson, L., Adams, S., and Cummins, M. The NMC Horizon Report: 2012 K-12. The New Media Consortium, Austin, Texas, 2012.Khandelwal, M. and Mazalek, A. Teaching table: a tangible mentor for pre-k math education. Proc. of TEI'07, 191--194.Mansor, E.I., De Angeli, A., and De Bruijn, O. Little fingers on the tabletop: A usability evaluation in the kindergarten. Proc. of TABLETOP'08, 93--96.Nacher, V., Jaen, J., & Catala, A. (2014). Exploring Visual Cues for Intuitive Communicability of Touch Gestures to Pre-kindergarten Children. Proc. of ITS'14, 159--162.Nacher, V., Jaen, J., Navarro, E., Catala, A., and González, P. Multi-touch gestures for pre-kindergarten children. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies 73 (2015), 37--51.Nacher, V., Jaen, J., Catala, A., Navarro, E., and Gonzalez, P. Improving Pre-Kindergarten Touch Performance. Proc. of ITS '14, 163--166..Rick, J., Francois, P., Fields, B., Fleck, R., Yuill, N., and Carr, A. Lo-fi prototyping to design interactive-tabletop applications for children. Proc. of IDC'10, pp. 138--146.Rick, J. and Rogers, Y. From DigiQuilt to DigiTile: Adapting educational technology to a multi-touch table. Proc. of TABLETOP'08, pp. 73--80.Sluis, R.J.W., Weevers, I., van Schijndel, C.H.G.J., Kolos-Mazuryk, L., Fitrianie, S., and Martens, J.B.O.S. Read-It: Five-to-seven-year-old children learn to read in a tabletop environment. Proc. of IDC'04, pp. 73--80.Smith, S.P., Burd, E., and Rick, J. Developing, evaluating and deploying multi-touch systems. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies 70, 10 (2012), 653--656

Exploring Direct Communication and Manipulation on Interactive Surfaces to Foster Novelty in a Creative Learning Environment

[EN] Information technology has supported learning in many different ways as improvements in communication, virtual environment embodiment and even mobility has allowed remote discussion and collaboration in exploring topics and developing ideas. However, learning environments often lack validation studies related to the grounding technology being used and do not consider creativity as a factor despite being essential for ideas generation and innovation processes which push human development. Moreover, computer-mediated communication quite often limits the effective expression of ideas between peers because technology may be a barrier rather than an aid. Taking this into consideration, this paper proposes the use of interactive surfaces as a promising technology to develop future creative learning environments. An exploratory experiment with 22 teenagers has been conducted. The experiment consisted of reflection, discussion and creation processes in which participants created entities with basic building blocks. The environment based on the interactive surface was compared to a completely tangible approach based on a tabletop with wooden blocks. A creativity model is used in the evaluation in terms of novelty, flexibility and fluency of thinking and motivation. The results showed that creations' novelty is significantly higher in the digital environment and also higher collaboration degree was observed so that this technology should be considered in the development of future learning environments to support creativity.This work was funded by the Spanish Ministry of Education under project TSI2010-20488. Our thanks to the Alaquas city council, the clubhouse’s managers, and also to Polimedia for the support in computer hardware. A. Catalá is supported by a FPU fellowship with reference AP2006-00181.Catalá Bolós, A.; García Sanjuan, F.; Azorín Vicente, JP.; Jaén Martínez, FJ.; Mocholi Agües, JA. (2012). Exploring Direct Communication and Manipulation on Interactive Surfaces to Foster Novelty in a Creative Learning Environment. International Journal of Computer Science Research and Application. 2(1):15-24. http://hdl.handle.net/10251/35236S15242

TangiWheel: A widget for manipulating collections on tabletop displays supporting hybrid Input modality

In this paper we present TangiWheel, a collection manipulation widget for tabletop displays. Our implementation is flexible, allowing either multi-touch or interaction, or even a hybrid scheme to better suit user choice and convenience. Different TangiWheel aspects and features are compared with other existing widgets for collection manipulation. The study reveals that TangiWheel is the first proposal to support a hybrid input modality with large resemblance levels between touch and tangible interaction styles. Several experiments were conducted to evaluate the techniques used in each input scheme for a better understanding of tangible surface interfaces in complex tasks performed by a single user (e.g., involving a typical master-slave exploration pattern). The results show that tangibles perform significantly better than fingers, despite dealing with a greater number of interactions, in situations that require a large number of acquisitions and basic manipulation tasks such as establishing location and orientation. However, when users have to perform multiple exploration and selection operations that do not require previous basic manipulation tasks, for instance when collections are fixed in the interface layout, touch input is significantly better in terms of required time and number of actions. Finally, when a more elastic collection layout or more complex additional insertion or displacement operations are needed, the hybrid and tangible approaches clearly outperform finger-based interactions.. ©2012 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC & Science Press, ChinaThe work is supported by the Ministry of Education of Spain under Grant No. TSI2010-20488. Alejandro Catala is supported by an FPU fellowship for pre-doctoral research staff training granted by the Ministry of Education of Spain with reference AP2006-00181.Catalá Bolós, A.; García Sanjuan, F.; Jaén Martínez, FJ.; Mocholi Agües, JA. (2012). TangiWheel: A widget for manipulating collections on tabletop displays supporting hybrid Input modality. Journal of Computer Science and Technology. 27(4):811-829. doi:10.1007/s11390-012-1266-4S811829274Jordà S, Geiger G, Alonso M, Kaltenbrunner M. The reacTable: Exploring the synergy between live music performance and tabletop tangible interfaces. In Proc. TEI 2007, Baton Rouge, LA, USA, Feb. 15-17, 2007, pp.139–146.Vandoren P, van Laerhoven T, Claesen L, Taelman J, Raymaekers C, van Reeth F. IntuPaint: Bridging the gap between physical and digital painting. In Proc. TABLETOP2008, Amterdam, the Netherlands, Oct. 1-3, 2008, pp.65–72.Schöning J, Hecht B, Raubal M, Krüger A, Marsh M, Rohs M. Improving interaction with virtual globes through spatial thinking: Helping users ask “why?”. In Proc. IUI 2008, Canary Islans, Spain, Jan. 13-16, 2008, pp.129–138.Fitzmaurice GW, BuxtonW. An empirical evaluation of graspable user interfaces: Towards specialized, space-multiplexed input. In Proc. CHI 1997, Atlanta, USA, March 22-27, 1997, pp.43–50.Tuddenham P, Kirk D, Izadi S. Graspables revisited: Multitouch vs. tangible input for tabletop displays in acquisition and manipulation tasks. In Proc. CHI 2010, Atlanta, USA, April 10-15, 2010, pp.2223–2232.Lucchi A, Jermann P, Zufferey G, Dillenbourg P. An empirical evaluation of touch and tangible interfaces for tabletop displays. In Proc. TEI 2010, Cambridge, USA, Jan. 25-27, 2010, pp.177–184.Fitzmaurice G W, Ishii H, Buxton W. Bricks: Laying the foundations for graspable user interfaces. In Proc. CHI 1995, Denver, USA, May 7-11, 1995, pp.442–449.Ishii H, Ullmer B. Tangible bits: Towards seamless interfaces between people, bits and atoms. In Proc. CHI 1997, Atlanta, USA, March 22-27, 1997, pp.234–241.Ullmer B, Ishii H, Glas D. mediaBlocks: Physical containers, transports, and controls for online media. In Proc. SIGGRAPH1998, Orlando, USA, July 19-24, 1998, pp.379–386.Shen C, Hancock M S, Forlines C, Vernier F D. CoR2Ds: Context-rooted rotatable draggables for tabletop interaction. In Proc. CHI 2005, Portland, USA, April 2-7, 2005, pp.1781–1784.Lepinski G J, Grossman T, Fitzmaurice G. The design and evaluation of multitouch marking menus. In Proc. CHI 2010, Atlanta, USA, April 10-15, 2010, pp.2233–2242.Accot J, Zhai S. Beyond Fitts’ law: Models for trajectorybased HCI tasks. In Proc. CHI 1997, Atlanta, USA, March 22-27, 1997, pp.295–302.Song H, Kim B, Lee B, Seo J. A comparative evaluation on tree visualization methods for hierarchical structures with large fan-outs. In Proc. CHI 2010, Atlanta, USA, April 10-15, 2010, pp.223–232.Bailly G, Lecolinet E, Nigay L. Wave menus: Improving the novice mode of hierarchical marking menus. In Proc. INTERACT2007, Río de Janeiro, Brazil, Sept. 10-14, 2007, pp.475–488.Zhao S, Agrawala M, Hinckley K. Zone and polygon menus: Using relative position to increase the breadth of multi-stroke marking menus. In Proc. CHI 2006, Montreal, Canada, April 24-27, 2006, pp.1077–1086.Patten J, Recht B, Ishii H. Interaction techniques for musical performance with tabletop tangible interfaces. In Proc. ACE2006, Hollywood, USA, Jun. 14-16, 2006, Article No.27.Weiss M, Wagner J, Jansen Y, Jennings R, Khoshabeh R, Hollan J D, Borchers J. SLAP widgets: Bridging the gap between virtual and physical controls on tabletops. In Proc. CHI 2009, Boston, USA, April 4-9, 2009, pp.481–490.Hancock M, Hilliges O, Collins C, Baur D, Carpendale S. Exploring tangible and direct touch interfaces for manipulating 2D and 3D information on a digital table. In Proc. ITS 2009, Banff, Canada, Nov. 23-25, pp.77–84.Hilliges O, Baur D, Butz A. Photohelix: Browsing, sorting and sharing digital photo collections. In Proc. Horizontal Interactive Human-Computer Systems (TABLETOP2007), Newport, Rhode Island, USA, Oct. 10-12, 2007, pp.87–94.Hesselmann T, Flöring S, Schmidt M. Stacked half-Pie menus: Navigating nested menus on interactive tabletops. In Proc. ITS 2009, Banff, Canada, Nov. 23-25, 2009, pp.173–180.Gallardo D, Jordà S. Tangible jukebox: Back to palpable music. In Proc. TEI 2010, Boston, USA, Jan. 25-27, 2010, pp.199–202.Fishkin K. A taxonomy for and analysis of tangible interfaces. Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, 2004, 8(5): 347–358.Catala A, Jaen J, Martinez-Villaronga A A, Mocholi J A. AGORAS: Exploring creative learning on tangible user interfaces. In Proc. COMPSAC 2011, Munich, Germany, July 18-22, 2011, pp.326–335.Catala A, Garcia-Sanjuan F, Azorin J, Jaen J, Mocholi J A. Exploring direct communication and manipulation on interactive surfaces to foster novelty in a creative learning environment. IJCSRA, 2012, 2(1): 15–24.Catala A, Jaen J, van Dijk B, Jord`a S. Exploring tabletops as an effective tool to foster creativity traits. In Proc. TEI 2012, Kingston, Canada, Feb. 19-22, 2012, pp.143–150.Hopkins D. Directional selection is easy as pie menus. In: The Usenix Association Newsletter, 1987, 12(5): 103.Microsoft Surface User Experience Guidelines. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff318692.aspx , May 2011.Maydak M, Stromer R, Mackay H A, Stoddard L T. Stimulus classes in matching to sample and sequence production: The emergence of numeric relations. Research in Developmental Disabilities, 1995, 16(3): 179–204

Learning Musical Contour on a Tabletop

Many successful tabletop applications for music making have been developed, and the technology has been investigated from different perspectives. Yet, to date, despite optimistic claims regarding their potential as learning tools, their role in helping people to explore, acquire, and rea- son about musical concepts has been sparsely researched. We have developed an exploratory study around a simple tabletop application that allows people to make music using a visual representation of melodic contour. Our aim is to understand whether and how such system might help peo- ple to reason about music in terms of contour while at the same time affording an enjoyable music making experience to musically untrained people. Our findings suggest that the system has potential as a learning tool, especially for beginners, but tutoring is still necessary to acquire, use, and express concepts precisely

User-defined semantics for the design of IoT systems enabling smart interactive experiences

© The Author(s) 2020. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.Automation in computing systems has always been considered a valuable solution to unburden the user. Internet of Things (IoT) technology best suits automation in different domains, such as home automation, retail, industry, and transportation, to name but a few. While these domains are strongly characterized by implicit user interaction, more recently, automation has been adopted also for the provision of interactive and immersive experiences that actively involve the users. IoT technology thus becomes the key for Smart Interactive Experiences (SIEs), i.e., immersive automated experiences created by orchestrating different devices to enable smart environments to fluidly react to the final users’ behavior. There are domains, e.g., cultural heritage, where these systems and the SIEs can support and provide several benefits. However, experts of such domains, while intrigued by the opportunity to induce SIEs, are facing tough challenges in their everyday work activities when they are required to automate and orchestrate IoT devices without the necessary coding skills. This paper presents a design approach that tries to overcome these difficulties thanks to the adoption of ontologies for defining Event-Condition-Action rules. More specifically, the approach enables domain experts to identify and specify properties of IoT devices through a user-defined semantics that, being closer to the domain experts’ background, facilitates them in automating the IoT devices behavior. We also present a study comparing three different interaction paradigms conceived to support the specification of user-defined semantics through a “transparent” use of ontologies. Based on the results of this study, we work out some lessons learned on how the proposed paradigms help domain experts express their semantics, which in turn facilitates the creation of interactive applications enabling SIEs.Peer reviewedFinal Published versio

Kindertivity: Usability and Communicability Strategies for Interactive Surfaces and Pre-Kindergarten Children

Tesis por compendio[ES] La tecnología multi-táctil se ha convertido en una de las más emergentes tras experimentar un enorme crecimiento desde sus pasos iniciales en los años ochenta hasta su amplia aceptación y uso en la actualidad. Por una parte, la tecnología multi-táctil se basa en el estilo de interacción de manipulación directa el cual proporciona a los usuarios la ventaja de ver los objetos y las acciones de interés, sustituir comandos escritos por acciones de señalado y, además, permite la realización de acciones rápidas, reversibles e incrementales evitando el uso de instrucciones complejas. Por otra parte, diversos trabajos han evaluado las virtudes derivadas de utilizar conjuntamente la manipulación directa con el toque directo mostrando que es posible evitar los problemas inherentes a otras técnicas de interacción como el ratón y el teclado. Por lo tanto, aprovechando la interacción natural e intuitiva proporcionada por la tecnología multi-táctil, ésta parece una forma ideal para dar soporte a la creación de escenarios educativos dirigidos a niños en edad preescolar. Sin embargo, a pesar de la existencia de diversos estudios que evalúan la idoneidad de utilizar el estilo de interacción de manipulación directa, existe una falta de trabajos abordando el uso dispositivos basados en superficies táctiles con niños de una temprana edad. Asimismo, en la actualidad existe una creciente tendencia a diseñar aplicaciones educativas y lúdicas dirigidas a niños en edad preescolar utilizando dispositivos multi-táctiles como los teléfonos inteligentes o las tabletas. Además, diversos informes señalan que los niños son usuarios frecuentes de este tipo de dispositivos y los utilizan incluso antes de ser capaces de hablar. Sin embargo, a pesar de este crecimiento en el uso de la tecnología multi-táctil y su aparente idoneidad para ser utilizado en el desarrollo de aplicaciones educativas para niños en edad preescolar, no existen unas interacciones universales y estandarizadas para preescolares a la hora de utilizar dispositivos táctiles ya que habitualmente sólo se utilizan dos gestos básicos (básicamente, el toque con un dedo para seleccionar y el arrastre con un dedo para el movimiento). Por lo tanto, existe una clara necesidad de llevar a cabo estudios empíricos para contribuir y avanzar en el diseño de aplicaciones que den un soporte adecuado y encaje con las habilidades de los niños en su temprano desarrollo. Por tanto, esta tesis propone, diseña y evalúa diversas estrategias de usabilidad y comunicabilidad adaptadas a los niños en edad preescolar para establecer la base para el diseño y desarrollo de futuras aplicaciones basadas en dispositivos táctiles dirigidas a preescolares. Estas estrategias llevarán a la adecuada definición de guías de diseño que permitirán a los niños aprovechar al máximo la tecnología multi-táctil, harán posible el desarrollo de nuevas y atractivas aplicaciones y, eventualmente, también podrán ayudar al desarrollo cognitivo y motor de los niños.[CA] La tecnologia multi-tàctil s'ha convertit en una de les més emergents després d'experimentar un enorme creixement des dels seus passos inicials als anys vuitanta fins l'actualitat on es àmpliament acceptada i utilitzada. D'una banda, la tecnologia multi-tàctil es basa en l'estil d'interacció de manipulació directa, el qual proporciona als usuaris l'avantatge de veure els objectes i les accions d'interès, substituir comandos escrits per accions d'assenyalament i, a més, permet la realització d'accions, ràpides, reversibles i incrementals evitant l'ús d'instruccions complexes. D'altra banda, diversos treballs han avaluat les virtuts derivades d'utilitzar conjuntament la manipulació directa amb el toc directe mostrant que és possible evitar els problemes inherents a altres tècniques d'interacció com el ratolí i el teclat. Per tant, aprofitant la interacció natural i intuïtiva proporcionada per la tecnologia multi-tàctil, aquesta sembla una forma ideal per donar suport a la creació d'escenaris educatius per a xiquets en edat preescolar. No obstant això, malgrat l'existència de diversos estudis que avaluen la idoneïtat d'utilitzar l'estil d'interacció de manipulació directa, existeix una manca de treballs abordant l'ús de dispositius basats en superfícies tàctils amb xiquets d'edat primerenca. Així mateix, en l'actualitat existeix una creixent tendència a dissenyar aplicacions educatives i lúdiques dirigides a xiquets en edat preescolar utilitzant dispositius tàctils com els telèfons intel¿ligents o les tauletes. A més, diversos informes assenyalen que els xiquets són usuaris freqüents d'aquests tipus de dispositius i els utilitzen fins i tot abans de ser capaços de parlar. Malgrat aquest creixement en l'ús de la tecnologia multi-tàctil i la seua aparent idoneïtat per a ser utilitzada en el desenvolupament d'aplicacions educatives per a xiquets en edat preescolar, no existeixen unes interaccions universals i estandarditzades per a preescolars a l'hora d'utilitzar dispositius tàctils ja que habitualment només s'utilitzen dos gestos bàsics (bàsicament, el toc amb un dit per a seleccionar i l'arrossegament amb un dit per al moviment). Per tant, hi ha una clara necessitat de dur a terme estudis empírics per a contribuir i avançar en el disseny d'aplicacions que donen un suport adequat i s'ajusten amb les habilitats dels xiquets en el seu primerenc desenvolupament. Per tant, la tesi proposa, dissenya i avalua diverses estratègies de usabilitat i comunicabilitat adaptades als xiquets en edat preescolar per tal d'establir la base per al disseny i desenvolupament de futures aplicacions basades en dispositius tàctils dirigides a preescolars. Aquestes estratègies portaran a l'adequada definició de guies de disseny que permetran als xiquets aprofitar al màxim la tecnologia multi-tàctil, faran possible el desenvolupament de noves i atractives aplicacions i, eventualment, podran també ajudar al desenvolupament cognitiu i motor dels xiquets.[EN] Multi-touch technology has become one of the most emergent technologies and has had an enormous growth since its initial steps in the eighties to be widespread accepted and used in the present. On the one hand, multi-touch technology relies on the direct manipulation interaction style which gives users the advantage to view the objects and actions of interest, replace typed commands by pointing actions and to perform rapid, reversible and incremental actions avoiding using complex instructions. On the other hand, several works have evaluated the virtues when joining direct manipulation with direct-touching showing that it solves the problems inherent in other interaction devices, such as those involving mouse or keyboard. Hence, taking advantage of the intuitive and natural interaction provided by multi-touch technology it seems an ideal way to support educational scenarios targeted to kindergarten children. Although several works have assessed the suitability of using the direct manipulation style with children, there is a lack of works addressing the use of touchscreen devices by this specific type of users. Moreover, there is a growing trend of designing educational and playful applications targeted to kindergarten children based on touchscreen devices such as smartphones and tablets. In addition, several reports point out that children use touchscreen devices even before they are able to speak and they are frequent users of devices such as smartphones and tablets. However, despite this growth in the use of multi-touch technology by children and its apparent suitability to be used to develop applications targeted to young children, there is a lack of standardized and universally accepted interactions for young children when using touchscreen devices since only two basic gestures are commonly used (basically, consisting of only one-finger touch for selection and one-finger drag for movement). Hence, there is a need of carrying out empirical studies to help and advance in the design of applications that adequately support and fit with children's development and skills. Therefore, this thesis proposes, designs and evaluates several usability and communicability strategies tailored to children in their early development stage to establish the design and development of future applications targeted to kindergarten children. These strategies will lead to define appropriate design strategies that enable infants to take full advantage of multi-touch technology, would make it possible to develop attractive new applications and, eventually, could also aid children's cognitive and motor development.Nácher Soler, VE. (2019). Kindertivity: Usability and Communicability Strategies for Interactive Surfaces and Pre-Kindergarten Children [Tesis doctoral no publicada]. Universitat Politècnica de València. https://doi.org/10.4995/Thesis/10251/116833TESISCompendi

Examining The Implications Of Tabletop Roleplaying Games For Use In Leadership Development: An Integrative Review

Role-playing games are frequently used within the social sciences to study several aspects of the human experience and development. Existing research suggests that role-playing games encourage the development of critical and strategic decision-making, teamwork, and creative thinking, all behaviors integral to the development of lasting leadership competencies. This integrative review theorizes using TRPG roleplay games as unconventional tools for skill development and examines the implications for leadership applications. This inductive approach revealed a comprehensive picture of the importance of TRPGs integration into leadership development programs. It is at the intersection between creativity and leadership where organizational leaders have the potential to develop creativity training interventions to enhance and increase leaders’ creative potential and emotional creativity. Keywords: Dungeons and Dragons, leadership development, change management, TRPGs, creativity