Tangible interaction and tabletops: new horizons for children's games

Marco, Javier; Cerezo, Eva; Baldassarri, Sandra

doi:10.1504/ijart.2012.046272

Cited by 15 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 19 publications

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“…In related literature, we classify existing RPTs for smart toys into smart devices [1,4,5], AR-based platforms [6,7,8], mobile-based platforms [8,9,10,11], and modular toolkits [12]. In Table 1, we detail RPTs from the literature, including related products and licenses, and compare them with the IoT4Fun Toolkit.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Future versions of IoT4Fun can benefit from miniaturization, robustness, and reliability improvements. As a means to demonstrate adequacy with elicited requirements, in Section 3, we first compare IoT4Fun features with other RPTs from literature and industry [1,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12]. In Section 4, we introduce IoT4Fun, a toolkit that combines embedded, modular, and plug-and-play approaches.…”

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confidence: 99%

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IoT4Fun Rapid Prototyping Toolkit for Smart Toys

Albuquerque

Kelner

Nogueira

et al. 2020

Proceedings of the Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences

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Rapid prototyping tools turn the design of smart toys faster and easier for creative teams. Appropriate tools for smart toys should meet a list of requirements, which include distributed data collection and adaptability for assorted toy shapes and size. The IoT4Fun toolkit innovates by mixing the embedded, modular, and plugand-play approaches. It supports motion tracking data, wireless communication, and contactless identification. IoT4Fun demonstrates its effectiveness to design a variety of smart toy solutions by fitting into a hula-hoop toy until spherical, cubic, and wearable shapes. Solutions connect with either mobile applications or other toys and play rules range from open-ended to closed behaviors. End-users exhaustively tested developed solutions, and technical assessment evaluates their integrity after playtesting sessions. Results show comparative data on battery consumption and vulnerabilities threats for data security and privacy of each design. Future versions of IoT4Fun can benefit from miniaturization, robustness, and reliability improvements. As a means to demonstrate adequacy with elicited requirements, in Section 3, we first compare IoT4Fun features with other RPTs from literature and industry [1,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12]. In Section 4, we introduce IoT4Fun, a toolkit that combines embedded, modular, and plug-and-play approaches. The first approach aims to embed the same RPT into different physical toys. Modularity permits better distribution of the hardware components and allows creators to decide which modules are essential to their solutions. The plug-andplay approach offers a rapid and easy-to-use experience for the creators to manage the modules. IoT4Fun uses Printed-Circuit Board (PCB) manufacture to favor miniaturization and robustness. It collects real-time motion tracking information, supports wireless communication with devices, and contactless identification of objects or users. Besides, it offers visual, auditory, and tactile feedback and permits programming all play behaviors using Arduino IDE. In Section 5, we detail how a group of 27 graduate students embedded IoT4Fun into five smart toy prototypes. Students selected RPT modules that were suitable for their designs. Prototypes present a variety of shapes and sizes (e.g., a hula-hoop toy, a plush toy, a hand-sized cube, a large box, and a glove). Solutions either connect with mobile applications or with tagged objects, and programmed behaviors range from openended play to closed-rules. A total of 40 end-users (23 males/17 females) exhaustively tested the prototypes in playtesting sessions. In Section 6, we check for the

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Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

IoT4Fun Rapid Prototyping Toolkit for Smart Toys

Albuquerque

Kelner

Nogueira

et al. 2020

Proceedings of the Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences

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“…The objective of our work is to explore the affordances of hybrid tabletop games, in terms of usability, user experience, and physical colocated playing in education environments. In this context we decided to create the NIKVision tabletop and a set of tangible games [13] designed to support co-located gaming around the table with a tangible interaction approach based on toy manipulation. The design and development of hybrid tabletop games for children involves the integration of physical, virtual, and social aspects, thus introducing new design and technical challenges during the prototyping process.…”

Section: Eai Endorsed Transactions Onmentioning

confidence: 99%

Innovative interfaces for Serious Games

Marco¹,

Cerezo²,

Baldassarri³

2015

EAI Endorsed Transactions on Game-Based Learning

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The tangible interaction approach has, in recent years, become a promising alternative to tactile interaction for very young children. Children playing with Tangible User Interfaces (TUI) are motivated by the novel and digital environment and benefit from the same values as conventional physical playing. Young children build their mental image of the world through action and motor responses and, with physical handling, they become conscious of reality. Within TUIs, digitally augmented surfaces (interactive blackboards and tabletops) are becoming popular in educative environments. Tabletop devices are horizontal surfaces capable of supporting interaction and image feedback on their surface, and are especially interesting for reinforcing face-to-face social relations and group activities. However, most of current children-oriented applications for tabletops are based on tactile interaction, thus losing the benefits of physical playing. The paper describes our experiences building tangible tabletops, and designing tangible games and toys. In particular, we present NIKVision, a tabletop device intended to give leisure and fun while reinforcing physical manipulation and colocated gaming for 3-6 year old children. Several hybrid (physical/digital) games based on the manipulation of passive and active toys have been developed for NIKVision. From our experience several useful lessons can be extracted. Among them, the necessity of bridging the gap between designers and developers making it easier the prototyping of tabletop games stands out. To tackle this difficulty a toolkit for the prototyping of tabletop games called ToyVision has been created. The toolkit supports designers to fully explore the physical feasibilities of the manipulation of physical playing pieces, while minimizing the technical difficulties of implementing tabletop games based on physical manipulation. This way, NIKVision and ToyVision are becoming powerful tools to develop innovative serious games.

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“…In conclusion, the prototyping of active manipulations requires advanced electronic skills. Several commercial and open-hardware toolkits have appeared to provide these processes [12,33,2]. These hardware toolkits contain a set of electronic microcontrollers, sensors and actuators which can be used by designers to easily assemble and embed the sensors and actuators into conventional objects, and to connect them to a computer system.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Lowering the threshold and raising the ceiling of tangible expressiveness in hybrid board-games

Marco

Cerezo

Baldassarri

2014

Multimed Tools Appl

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Tabletop devices offer an attractive environment for the creation of hybrid boardgames that seamlessly integrate physical and digital interaction. However, the prototyping of Tangible User Interfaces involves the integration of physical and virtual aspects, challenging both designers and developers, and hindering the rapid exploration of richer physical interactions with the game. Although the recent appearance of tabletop frameworks has helped to lower the threshold for coding tangible tabletop applications, the cost is a serious limitation on the degree of expressiveness of the tangible interaction. This paper presents "ToyVision", a software framework for the prototyping of tabletop games based on the manipulation of conventional playing pieces. ToyVision architecture is based on a Widget layer of abstraction that is able to express the manipulation of playing pieces in the context of the game. This Widget layer supports a wide range of passive and active manipulations with conventional objects. Designers and developers can visually model all passive and active manipulations involved in their game concepts in a Graphic Assistant, and test them immediately in a tabletop device. The paper also describes a set of evaluation sessions which demonstrate that ToyVision has been effective in lowering the threshold of developing applications for tabletop devices, while being sufficiently expressive to give support to innovative concepts for hybrid games that fully explore the tangible feasibilities of conventional playing pieces.

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Tangible interaction and tabletops: new horizons for children's games

Cited by 15 publications

References 19 publications

IoT4Fun Rapid Prototyping Toolkit for Smart Toys

IoT4Fun Rapid Prototyping Toolkit for Smart Toys

Innovative interfaces for Serious Games

Lowering the threshold and raising the ceiling of tangible expressiveness in hybrid board-games

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