Designing the internet of tangible things for outdoors environments with university students

The Internet of Things and, specifically, the Internet of Tangible Things (IoTT) create several opportunities, lately also for outdoors environments. However, people are often consumers of IoTT solutions and not protagonists of their creation. This paper presents research related to the idea of involving people as protagonists in the design of IoTT for outdoors environments. It explains how an innovative course of IoTT design was organised within a traditional university context, and how its workshop organisation enabled different students to become protagonists of IoTT design. It concludes by drawing general lessons for future editions of IoTT design workshops for outdoors environments

Gamified probes for cooperative learning: a case study

This paper advances the idea of tangible gamified probes for cooperative learning processes, which require synchronous in-presence and in-situ interactions. The paper focuses on gamified probes for promoting a sense of progression and control, as well as social relations in a cooperative learning process in classroom. It reports a case study in a primary school. The study employed gamified probes as early-design solutions: each probe had limited ad-hoc functionalities, tested in the field, and was flexible enough to enable different usages so as to inspire designers. Probes were also endowed with embedded micro-electronic components for enhancing their interaction with children and human-to-human interaction, besides for storing relevant interaction data. After reporting the study results, the paper discusses them, and it concludes reflecting on the design of future gamified probes for enhancing cooperative learning in classroom

From children's ideas to prototypes for the internet of things: a case study of cross-generational end-user design

A smart bracelet that reacts to a person's heartbeat. A smart bench that invites passers-by to sit close. These and others are smart things, part of the Internet of Things (IoT) and people's lives. However, people are mainly IoT consumers and rarely given the possibility of becoming IoT creators. This paper presents a case study concerning the design of smart things for outdoor environments, with end users as the main creators. Ideas of smart things were collaboratively conceptualised by child end-users with a card-based board game. Their ideas were taken up in the form of inspiration cards within a bachelor's first-year course, by students coming from different high schools. Students started from children's ideas as inspiration triggers and collaboratively evolved some of them into interactive smart-thing prototypes. The paper concludes by reflecting on its results and drawing lessons for future editions of cross-generational workshops related to IoT design with end users

From TurnTalk to ClassTalk: the emergence of tangibles for class conversations in primary school classrooms

Primary school curricula teach children conversation norms for promoting positive social interactions, such as turn-taking and turn reserving, while curricula discourage other aspects of conversations, such as overlapping in turns. However such norms are abstract and difficult to master. Recently, interactive tangible solutions (briefly, tangibles) have been used to sustain the scaffolding of conversation norms. This paper continues this line of investigation. It discusses how meta-design and action research complement each other and tackle trade-offs in designing tangibles for conversations in primary schools. It reports on the emergence and genesis of tangibles for class conversation, named ClassTalk. Then it focusses on usages and actions with ClassTalk in 2018 in primary school classes, and it discusses them in relation to children's and teachers' engagement and usages of tangibles. It concludes by reflecting on the entire experience, and considers trade-offs and lessons learnt for meta-design and action research, as well as for the design of such tangibles per se

From TurnTalk to ClassTalk:the emergence of tangibles for class conversations in primary school classrooms

Primary school curricula teach children conversation norms for promoting positive social interactions, such as turn-taking and turn reserving, while curricula discourage other aspects of conversations, such as overlapping in turns. However such norms are abstract and difficult to master. Recently, interactive tangible solutions (briefly, tangibles) have been used to sustain the scaffolding of conversation norms. This paper continues this line of investigation. It discusses how meta-design and action research complement each other and tackle trade-offs in designing tangibles for conversations in primary schools. It reports on the emergence and genesis of tangibles for class conversation, named ClassTalk. Then it focusses on usages and actions with ClassTalk in 2018 in primary school classes, and it discusses them in relation to children's and teachers' engagement and usages of tangibles. It concludes by reflecting on the entire experience, and considers trade-offs and lessons learnt for meta-design and action research, as well as for the design of such tangibles per se.</p

From TurnTalk to ClassTalk:the emergence of tangibles for class conversations in primary school classrooms

Primary school curricula teach children conversation norms for promoting positive social interactions, such as turn-taking and turn reserving, while curricula discourage other aspects of conversations, such as overlapping in turns. However such norms are abstract and difficult to master. Recently, interactive tangible solutions (briefly, tangibles) have been used to sustain the scaffolding of conversation norms. This paper continues this line of investigation. It discusses how meta-design and action research complement each other and tackle trade-offs in designing tangibles for conversations in primary schools. It reports on the emergence and genesis of tangibles for class conversation, named ClassTalk. Then it focusses on usages and actions with ClassTalk in 2018 in primary school classes, and it discusses them in relation to children's and teachers' engagement and usages of tangibles. It concludes by reflecting on the entire experience, and considers trade-offs and lessons learnt for meta-design and action research, as well as for the design of such tangibles per se.</p

Turn taking with turn-talk in group: Actions and reflections with children and teachers

Conversations are structured by norms for turn taking. Turn taking is practiced in primary schools, starting from 8 years of age, when turn taking is used for managing group conversations. Being rather abstract for children to master, teachers use physical objects to convey turn taking. However, such physical objects tend not to be effective with children. Past research indicates that interactive tangible objects (briefly, tangibles) might help primary school classes master turn taking and positively affect their conversation behaviours. The research of this paper pursues this idea and shows how a meta-design approach, based on action research, can help design tangibles for conveying turn taking in group. The paper focuses on several actions with TurnTalk in the same primary school classroom with 9–10 years old children, and it shows how actions led to benefits for the class and designers

Physical or on the cloud: Play with IoTgo and design smart things

Smart things, such as smart watches, are popular. Designing them requires technical skills and critical reflections in design, e.g., concerning safety risks due to their physical nature or data they exchange. Engaging end-users in design and reflections is thus complicated and yet beneficial, e.g., to make them aware of such risks. Play can help engage different end users, and especially teens. This paper reports on the latest evolution of the IoTgo playful toolkit for engaging different end users, and especially teens, in design and critical reflections. It presents a case-study across a pandemic with IoTgo used by teens and adults

Towards ICT support for elderly displaced people: Looking for natural gestures

In the aftermath of natural disaster ICT-based tools can support technology-erudite people but risk to sharpen the isolation of vulnerable population groups because, e.g., of grey digital divide. In this paper we discuss some usability studies performed after L’Aquila earthquake on elderly people at risk of social isolation, to single out interaction needs and platform requirements for easy-to-use elderly oriented tools ideally not requiring learning need. In particular, we focus our analysis on intuitiveness of multifinger gestures on tablets

From game design with children to game development with university students

This paper reports on the development of game design ideas by children. These were specified in structured informal documents and low-fidelity paper prototypes. University students were challenged to develop children's informal specifications of games into high-fidelity interactive prototypes, and to have these tested with children. What issues did university students encounter in children's informal specifications? This paper answers such questions by explaining the organization of the development process for students in as much details so as to allow for its analysis and replicability in different contexts