Designing a Tangible Interface to "Force" Children Collaboration

Abstract

Tangible technology provides opportunities to design collaborative interactions which allow children to engage in highly collaborative activities. Unfortunately, there are few guidelines on structuring children's interdependent collaboration with tangible technologies. In this study, we designed and developed a tangible game named MemorINO to "force"children to collaborate. We conducted a classroom study with 23 children and 3 kindergarten teachers. Our investigation revealed two main findings: (1) We could design interactive constraints with tangible technologies to "force"children to attend collaborative activities naturally and interdependently; (2) Tangible environments could help children have good engagements, especially for similar-age group children. Our findings could provide practical guidance on designing tangible interfaces to help children learn to collaborate.