This article introduces an open-source Java-based programming environment for creative coding of agglomerative systems using Internet-of-Things (IoT) technologies. Our software originally focused on digital signal processing of audio—including synthesis, sampling, granular sample playback, and a suite of basic effects—but composers now use it to interface with sensors and peripherals through general-purpose input/output and external networked systems. This article examines and addresses the strategies required to integrate novel embedded musical interfaces and creative coding paradigms through an IoT infrastructure. These include: the use of advanced tooling features of a professional integrated development environment as a composition or performance interface rather than just as a compiler; techniques to create media works using features such as autodetection of sensors; seamless and serverless communication among devices on the network; and uploading, updating, and running of new compositions to the device without interruption. Furthermore, we examined the difficulties many novice programmers experience when learning to write code, and we developed strategies to address these difficulties without restricting the potential available in the coding environment. We also examined and developed methods to monitor and debug devices over the network, allowing artists and programmers to set and retrieve current variable values to or from these devices during the performance and composition stages. Finally, we describe three types of art work that demonstrate how the software, called HappyBrackets, is being used in live-coding and dance performances, in interactive sound installations, and as an advanced composition and performance tool for multimedia works.

Introduction 3D printing has recently emerged as an alternative to cadaveric models in medical education. A growing body of research supports the use of 3D printing in this context and details the beneficial educational outcomes. Prevailing studies rely on participants’ stated preferences, but little is known about actual student preferences. Methods A mixed methods approach, consisting of structured observation and computer vision, was used to investigate medical students’ preferences and handling patterns when using 3D printed versus cadaveric models in a cardiac pathology practical skills workshop. Participants were presented with cadaveric samples and 3D printed replicas of congenital heart deformities. Results Analysis with computer vision found that students held cadaveric hearts for longer than 3D printed models (7.71 vs. 6.73 h), but this was not significant when comparing across the four workshops. Structured observation found that student preferences changed over the workshop, shifting from 3D printed to cadaveric over time. Interactions with the heart models (e.g., pipecleaners) were comparable. Conclusion We found that students had a slight preference for cadaveric hearts over 3D printed hearts. Notably, our study contrasts with other studies that report student preferences for 3D printed learning materials. Given the relative equivalence of the models, there is opportunity to leverage 3D printed learning materials (which are not scarce, unlike cadaveric materials) to provide equitable educational opportunities (e.g., in rural settings, where access to cadaveric hearts is less likely).

This article reports on a three and a half year design-led project investigating the use of open-ended learning to teach programming to students of interaction design. Our hypothesis is that a more open-ended approach to teaching programming, characterized by both creativity and self-reflection, would improve learning outcomes among our cohort of aspiring HCI practitioners. The objective of our design-led action research was to determine how to effectively embed open-endedness, student-led teaching, and self-reflection into an online programming class. Each of these notions has been studied separately before, but there is a dearth of published work into their actual design and implementation in practice. In service of that objective we present our contribution in two parts: a qualitatively-derived understanding of student attitudes toward open-ended blended learning, as well as a matching set of design principles for future open-ended HCI education. The project was motivated by a search for better educational outcomes, both in terms of student coding self-efficacy and quantitative metrics of cohort performance (e.g., failure rates). The first year programming course within our interaction design-focussed Bachelors program has had the highest failure rate of any core unit for over a decade. Unfortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic confounded any year-to-year quantitative comparison of the learning efficacy of our successive prototypes. There is simply no way to fairly compare the experiences of pre-pandemic and pandemic-affected student cohorts. However, the experience of teaching this material in face-to-face, fully online, and hybrid modalities throughout the pandemic has aided our qualitative exploration of why open-ended learning helps some students but seems to harm others. Through three sets of student interviews, platform data, and insights gained from both the instructional and platform design process, we show that open-ended learning can empower students, but can also exacerbate fears and anxieties around inadequacy and failure. Through seven semesters of iterating on our designs, interviewing students and reflecting on our interventions, we've developed a set of classroom-validated design principles for teaching programming to HCI students without strong computational backgrounds.

Your Move Sounds So Predictable is a semi-improvised two-player movement and sound game, based around a pair of bespoke motion-sensing sonic balls. Players pull a card and follow the instruction on where to place the ball in relation to their body. The sonic behavior of each ball has been programmed to exhibit a moderately complex and hard-to-predict set of responses to the user input that challenge the user's expectation and the experience of autonomy and causality. The balls also communicate with each other, adding additional causal flows. Each player explores this relationship between movement and sound through play, whilst at the same time attending to the emergent sonic composition created by the group. Chaos or harmony will ensue. CSS concepts• Human-centered computing~Auditory feedback • Human-centered computing~Gestural input • Applied computing~Sound and music computing

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