SmartTiles: Designing Interactive “Room-Sized” Artifacts for Educational Computing

Nwanua Elumeze
Michael Eisenberg
Department of Computer Science
University of Colorado
Boulder, Colorado

Citation: Elumeze, Nwanua and Michael Eisenberg (2005). "SmartTiles: Designing Interactive “Room-Sized” Artifacts for Educational Computing ." Children, Youth and Environments 15 (1): 54-66. Retrieved [date] from http://www.colorado.edu/journals/cye/

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Abstract

Historically, the notion of design for educational computing has assumed that the “computer” in question is a desktop box. In this paper we describe a genre of educational computing in which the artifacts designed are “room-sized:” moderate-to-large-scale objects or furnishings with which children can interact in powerful or interesting ways. We describe a working prototype of one such system—SmartTiles, a system of large-scale programmable “tiles” that can endow surfaces such as walls with interesting, child-controlled dynamical behaviors. While SmartTiles is still at a relatively early stage of design—and has yet to be formally tested with children—it nonetheless illustrates a potentially important and novel genre of design for children’s environments. We contrast the notion of “room-sized educational artifacts” with related research directions in interface design and educational computing, and we discuss what we believe to be central issues in the design of such artifacts.

Keywords: SmartTiles, educational computing