Eric Rosenbaum

Examining values: an analysis of nine years of IDC research

Explicitly examining the values held by a research community provides a tool in which participants can define its culture, conduct informed research, and reflect on their design process. We conducted a content analysis of the values expressed in the full text of IDC papers between 2002 and 2010, as well as a survey of the first authors of these papers. We discuss the types of contributions IDC papers make, the behaviors and qualities they seek to support in children, the audience for which IDC designs, the role of the child in creating these designs, the theories and models that inform this research, and the criteria that inform IDCs technical design choices. Based on our findings, we discuss trends, core values, and implications for the community and highlight opportunities for future IDC contributions.

Singing Fingers: fingerpainting with sound

Singing Fingers is a new system that allows children to fingerpaint with sound. You paint by touching a screen with a finger, but color only emerges if you make a sound at the same time. By touching the painting again, you can play back the sound. This creates a new level of accessibility for recording, playback and remixing of sound. We describe several ways in which Singing Fingers can be used, including music making, exploration of sound, and interactive storytelling.

Glowdoodle: a medium for expressive inquiry

Expressive inquiry is a process of exploration and discovery within an artistic medium that supports both intuitive play and iterative experimentation. Glowdoodle is a system that enables people to paint with light using objects in their environment, see the results as they paint, and share their creations on the web. I describe properties of systems that support expressive inquiry, illustrate them with glowdoodle as an example, and describe diverse examples of glowdoodle creations.

Twinkle: programming with color

Twinkle allows anyone to program using colors in the real world. Twinkle uses a color sensor to read colors from arrangements of objects, drawings, or collages. Those colors are then mapped to certain outputs, like sounds, graphics, or robotic movements. Color patterns can even be used to control the color sensor itself, closing the loop. The result is that you can program a computer or a robot, or compose a musical score, just by drawing on a piece of paper with crayons. Of course its not limited to crayons. You could build your program with Lego bricks, arrange your program with the multi colored leaves of early Fall, or think of any collection of objects in the world as a program: from a striped shirt to a handful of M&Ms. In the limit, several interesting new programming concepts emerge from this paradigm: commands are no longer discrete and rigid but mixable and smearable; the program counter becomes visible, handheld, and nondeterministic; and when the color sensor becomes the program counter the application space and the programming space become intertwined.

Engaging students in science controversy through an augmented reality role-playing game

POSIT (developing Public Opinions on Science using Information Technology) is an augmented reality role-playing game for networked handheld computers. It is designed to improve engagement in science controversies and develop skills in evaluating evidence and forming arguments. Groups of high school or college students investigate a scenario based on a fictionalized science controversy. They gather evidence from virtual characters and items situated in real locations and compete to develop the most persuasive arguments. Preliminary results suggest that this is a promising approach and further design experiments are needed.