research-article

Programs in the Palm of your Hand: How Live Programming Shapes Children's Interactions with Physical Computing Devices

Authors:

Lautaro Cabrera,

John H. Maloney,

David WeintropAuthors Info & Claims

IDC '19: Proceedings of the 18th ACM International Conference on Interaction Design and Children

Pages 227 - 236

https://doi.org/10.1145/3311927.3323138

Published: 12 June 2019 Publication History

Abstract

As physical computing devices proliferate, researchers and educators push to make them more engaging to learners. One approach is to make the act of programming them more interactive and responsive via live programming so that program edits are immediately reflected in the behavior of the physical device. To understand the impact of live programming on interactions with physical computing devices, we conducted a comparative study where children ages 11-15 programmed a BBC micro:bit device using either the MicroBlocks live programming environment or MakeCode, the micro:bit default environment. Results show that MicroBlocks users spent more time interacting directly with the physical device while showing different patterns of interaction compared to MakeCode users. We also found variations in the differences between environments related to activity structures. This paper contributes to the growing body of literature on how the design of interfaces---like programming environments---for physical computing devices shapes emerging interaction patterns.

References

[1]

J. Maloney, M. Resnick, N. Rusk, B. Silverman, and E. Eastmond, "The Scratch Programming Language and Environment," ACM Trans. Comput. Educ., vol. 10, no. 4, pp. 1--15, 2010.

Digital Library

[2]

P. Blikstein, "Gears of Our Childhood: Constructionist Toolkits, Robotics, and Physical Computing, Past and Future," in IDC '13, 2013, pp. 173--182.

Digital Library

[3]

F. Martin, B. Mikhak, M. Resnick, B. Silverman, and R. Berg, "To Mindstorms and Beyond: Evolution of a Construction Kit for Magical Machines," in Robots for kids, San Francisco, CA: Morgan Kaufmann Publishers Inc, 2000, pp. 9--33.

Digital Library

[4]

T. S. Mcnerney, "From turtles to Tangible Programming Bricks: explorations in physical language design," Pers Ubiquit Comput, vol. 8, pp. 326--337, 2004.

[5]

F. Martin, R. Sargent, and B. Silverman, "Programmable Bricks: Toys to think with," IBM Syst. J., vol. 35, no. 3&4, pp. 443--452, 1996.

Digital Library

[6]

R. Sargent, M. Resnick, F. Martin, and B. Silverman, "Building and Learning with Programmable Bricks," in Constructionism in Practice: Designing, Thinking, and Learning in a Digital World, Y. B. Kafai and M. Resnick, Eds. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1966, pp. 161--173.

[7]

M. Resnick et al., "Digital manipulatives: New toys to think with," in Proceedings of the CHI '98 conference, 1998.

Digital Library

[8]

M. Resnick, R. Berg, and M. Eisenberg, "Beyond Black Boxes: Bringing Transparency and Aesthetics Back to Scientific Investigation," J. Learn. Sci., vol. 9, no. 1, pp. 7--30, 2000.

[9]

P. Frei, V. Su, B. Mikhak, and H. Ishii, "Curlybot: designing a new class of computational toys," Proc. SIGCHI Conf. Hum. factors Comput. Syst., 2000.

Digital Library

[10]

A. Sipitakiat, P. Blikstein, and D. P. Cavallo, "GoGo Board: Augmenting Programmable Bricks for Economically Challenged Audiences," in In Proceedings of the International Conference of the Learning Sciences, 2003, no. 617.

Digital Library

[11]

A. Sipitakiat and P. Blikstein, "Think globally, build locally: a technological platform for low-cost, open-source, locally-assembled programmable bricks for education," Proc. fourth Int. Conf. Tangible, Embed. embodied Interact. - TEI '10, 2010.

Digital Library

[12]

M. Resnick and B. Silverman, "Some Reflections on Designing Construction Kits for Kids," in IDC 2005, 2005.

Digital Library

[13]

H. Raffle, A. Parkes, and H. Ishii, "Topobo: a constructive assembly system with kinetic memory," Proc. SIGCHI Conf. ..., 2004.

Digital Library

[14]

E. Schweikardt and M. D. Gross, "roBlocks: A Robotic Construction Kit for Mathematics and Science Education," in ICMI '06, 2006, pp. 6--9.

Digital Library

[15]

J. Yu and R. Roque, "A Survey of Computational Kits for Young Children," in IDC 2018, 2018, pp. 289--299.

Digital Library

[16]

T. Lauwers and I. Nourbakhsh, "Designing the Finch: Creating a Robot Aligned to Computer Science Concepts," Proc. Twenty-Fourth AAAI Conf. Artif. Intell., 2010.

[17]

F. Hu, A. Zekelman, M. Horn, and F. Judd, "Strawbies: Explorations in Tangible Programming," in Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Interaction Design and Children, 2015, pp. 410--413.

Digital Library

[18]

A. Sullivan, M. Elkin, and M. U. Bers, "KIBO Robot Demo: Engaging Young Children in Programming and Engineering," Proc. 14th Int. Conf. Interact. Des. Child. - IDC '15, 2015.

Digital Library

[19]

S. Papert, "Mindstorms: Computers, children, and powerful ideas," NY Basic Books, 1980.

Digital Library

[20]

B. Y. D. Bau, J. Gray, C. Kelleher, J. Sheldon, and F. Turbak, "Learnable Programming: Blocks and Beyond," Commun. ACM, vol. 60, no. 6, pp. 72--80, 2017.

Digital Library

[21]

M. Resnick et al., "Scratch: Programming for All," Commun. ACM, vol. 52, no. 11, pp. 60--67, 2009.

Digital Library

[22]

S. Cooper, W. Dann, and R. Pausch, "ALICE: A 3-D Tool for Introductory Programming Concepts," in CCSC '00 Proceedings of the fifth annual CCSC northeastern conference on The journal of computing in small colleges, 2000, vol. 5, pp. 108--117.

Digital Library

[23]

N. Fraser, "Ten Things We've Learned from Blockly," in IEEE Blocks and Beyond Workshop, 2015, pp. 49--50.

Digital Library

[24]

J. Goode and J. Margolis, "Exploring Computer Science: A Case Study of School Reform," ACM Trans. Comput. Educ., vol. 11, no. 2, pp. 1--16, 2011.

Digital Library

[25]

Code.org, "Teach Computer Science," 2019. {Online}. Available: https://studio.code.org/courses?view=teacher. {Accessed: 04-Aug-2019}.

[26]

C. Duncan, T. Bell, and S. Tanimoto, "Should your 8-year-old learn coding?," in Proceedings of the 9th Workshop in Primary and Secondary Computing Education, 2014, pp. 60--69.

Digital Library

[27]

D. Weintrop and U. Wilensky, "To Block or not to Block, That is the Question: Students' Perceptions of Blocks-based Programming," in IDC '15, 2015, pp. 199--208.

Digital Library

[28]

T. W. Price and T. Barnes, "Comparing Textual and Block Interfaces in a Novice Programming Environment," in ICER'15, 2015.

Digital Library

[29]

D. Weintrop and U. R. I. Wilensky, "Comparing Block-Based and Text-Based Programming in High School Computer Science Classrooms," ACM Trans. Comput. Educ., vol. 18, no. 1, pp. 1--25, 2017.

Digital Library

[30]

D. Weintrop, H. Killen, and B. Franke, "Blocks or Text? How Programming Language Modality Makes a Difference in Assessing Underrepresented Populations," in ICLS 2018, 2018, pp. 328--335.

[31]

S. Dasgupta, S. M. Clements, Y. Abdulrahman, C. Willis-ford, and M. Resnick, "Extending Scratch: New Pathways into Programming," in 2015 IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing (VL/HCC), 2015.

[32]

P. Rein, S. Ramson, J. Lincke, R. Hirschfeld, and T. Pape, "Exploratory and Live, Programming and Coding: A Literature Study Comparing Perspectives on Liveness," Art, Sci. Eng. Program., vol. 3, no. 1, 2019.

[33]

J. H. Maloney and R. B. Smith, "Directness and Liveness in the Morphic User Interface Construction Environment," in UIST '95, 1995, pp. 21--28.

Digital Library

[34]

I. E. Sutherland, "Sketch Pad a Man-machine Graphical Communication System," in Proceedings of the SHARE Design Automation Workshop, 1964, p. 6.329--6.346.

Digital Library

[35]

J. Kubelka, R. Robbes, and A. Bergel, "The Road to Live Programming: Insights From the Practice," in ICSE, 2018.

Digital Library

[36]

N. Collins, A. McLean, J. Rohrhuber, and A. Ward, "Live coding in laptop performance," Organised Sound, vol. 8, no. 3, 2003.

Digital Library

[37]

A. F. Blackwell and N. Collins, "The Programming Language as a Musical Instrument," in Psychology of Programming Languages Interest Group, 2005.

[38]

C. M. Hancock, "Real-Time Programming and the Big Ideas of Computational Literacy," 2003.

[39]

S. L. Tanimoto, "VIVA: A visual language for image processing," J. Vis. Lang. Comput., vol. 1, no. 2, pp. 127--139, 1990.

Digital Library

[40]

D. W. Sandberg, "Smalltalk and exploratory programming," ACM SIGPLAN Not., vol. 23, no. 10, pp. 85--92, 1988.

Digital Library

[41]

S. L. Tanimoto, "A Perspective on the Evolution of Live Programming," in LIVE '13 Proceedings of the 1st International Workshop on Live Programming, 2013, pp. 31--34.

Digital Library

[42]

S. Burckhardt et al., "It's Alive! Continuous Feedback in UI Programming," in PLDI '13, 2013, pp. 95--104.

Digital Library

[43]

N. Collins, A. Mclean, J. Rohrhuber, and A. Ward, "Live coding in laptop performance," Organised Sound, vol. 8, no. 3, pp. 321--329, 2003.

Digital Library

[44]

S. Mcdirmid, "Living it up with a Live Programming Language," in OOPSLA, 2007, pp. 623--637.

Digital Library

[45]

H. Tsukamoto, Y. Takemura, H. Nagumo, I. Ikeda, A. Monden, and K. Matsumoto, "Programming Education for Primary Schoolchildren Using a Textual Programming Language," in 2015 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE), 2015, pp. 1--7.

Digital Library

[46]

J. P. Kramer, J. Kurz, T. Karrer, and J. Borchers, "How live coding affects developers' coding behavior," in Proceedings of IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing, VL/HCC, 2014, pp. 5--8.

[47]

B. Victor, "Learnable Programming," 2012. {Online}. Available: http://worrydream.com/LearnableProgramming/.

[48]

C. D. Hundhausen and J. L. Brown, "An experimental study of the impact of visual semantic feedback on novice programming," J. Vis. Lang. Comput., vol. 18, no. 6, pp. 537--559, 2007.

Digital Library

[49]

J. Wakefield, "BBC gives children mini-computers in Make it Digital scheme," BBC:News, 2015. {Online}. Available: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-31834927.

[50]

S. Sentance, J. Waite, S. Hodges, E. Macleod, and L. E. Yeomans, "'Creating cool stuff' -- Pupils' experience of the BBC micro:bit," in Proceedings of the 48th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education: SIGCSE 2017, 2017.

Digital Library

[51]

J. Curtis and C. Hopping, "Foundation aims to ship 100 million micro:bits," ITPRO, 2016.

[52]

BBC, "Two million BBC micro:bits distributed globally," 2018. {Online}. Available: https://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/latestnews/2018/two-million-bbc-micro-bits-distributed-globally.

[53]

J. H. Maloney, M. Nagle, and J. Mönig, "GP: A General Purpose Blocks-Based Language.," in Proceedings of the 2017 ACM SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education, 2017, pp. 739--739.

Digital Library

[54]

B. Harvey and J. Mönig, "Bringing 'no ceiling' to Scratch: Can one language serve kids and computer scientists?," in Proceedings of Constructionism 2010 Conference, 2010, pp. 1--10.

[55]

Authors, "Authors." 2019.

[56]

T. Ball, J. Bishop, and J. Finney, "Multi-Platform Computing for Physical Devices via MakeCode and CODAL," in ACM/IEEE 40th International Conference on Software Engineering: Companion Proceedings Multi-Platform, 2018, pp. 552--553.

Digital Library

[57]

R. C. Bogdan and S. K. Biklen, "Qualitative Data Analysis and Interpretation," in Qualitative Research in Education: An Introduction to Theories and Methods, 5th Editio., Pearson, 2007, p. 336.

[58]

A. Stefik and S. Siebert, "An Empirical Investigation into Programming Language Syntax," ACM Trans. Comput. Educ., 2013.

Digital Library

[59]

H. Lieberman and C. Fry, "Bridging the gulf between code and behavior in programming," Proc. SIGCHI Conf. Hum. factors Comput. Syst. - CHI '95, 1995.

Digital Library

[60]

D. A. Fields, Y. B. Kafai, T. Nakajima, and J. Goode, "Teaching Practices for Making E-Textiles in High School Computing Classrooms," in Proceedings of the 7th Annual Conference on Creativity and Fabrication in Education, 2017, p. 5:1--5:8.

Digital Library

Cited By

Rode JBarkhuus LIoannou A(2024)Exploring Gender, Computational Making and E-Textiles using the BBC Micro:bitExtended Abstracts of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613905.3644056(1-9)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3613905.3644056
Ferdowsi KHuang RJames MPolikarpova NLerner S(2024)Validating AI-Generated Code with Live ProgrammingProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642495(1-8)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3613904.3642495
Huang RGuo PLerner S(2024)UNFOLD: Enabling Live Programming for Debugging GUI Applications2024 IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing (VL/HCC)10.1109/VL/HCC60511.2024.00041(306-316)Online publication date: 2-Sep-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/VL/HCC60511.2024.00041
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Programs in the Palm of your Hand: How Live Programming Shapes Children's Interactions with Physical Computing Devices
1. Human-centered computing
  1. Interaction design
    1. Empirical studies in interaction design

Recommendations

Installation to teach energy conservation to kids through tangible objects in an outdoor environment
IITM '10: Proceedings of the First International Conference on Intelligent Interactive Technologies and Multimedia

This paper presents a design case of an interactive installation in a contextual outdoor environment for helping kids learn about how to save energy in their day to day life activities. Playful Interaction, physical movement and manipulation of tangible ...
Toddler Techie Touch Generation
CHI PLAY '18: Proceedings of the 2018 Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play

This paper reports on a study of the interaction skills of forty-two children, between the ages of eighteen months to forty-two months, in using touch devices. A majority of the children had used a touch device previously and had prior experience with ...
Acting by hand: Informing interaction design for the periphery of people's attention

Interactions in and with the physical world have enabled us to perform everyday activities in the periphery of our attention. Even though digital technologies are becoming increasingly present in the everyday environment, interaction with these ...

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

IDC '19: Proceedings of the 18th ACM International Conference on Interaction Design and Children

June 2019

787 pages

ISBN:9781450366908

DOI:10.1145/3311927

General Chair:
Jerry Alan Fails
Boise State University, USA

Copyright © 2019 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

Sponsors

SIGCHI: ACM Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 12 June 2019

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Request Permissions

Check for updates

Author Tags

Qualifiers

Research-article
Research
Refereed limited

Conference

IDC '19

Sponsor:

SIGCHI

IDC '19: Interaction Design and Children

June 12 - 15, 2019

ID, Boise, USA

Acceptance Rates

IDC '19 Paper Acceptance Rate 41 of 124 submissions, 33%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 172 of 578 submissions, 30%

Upcoming Conference

IDC '25

Sponsor:
sigchi

Interaction Design and Children

June 23 - 26, 2025

Reykjavik , Iceland

Contributors

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

19
Total Citations
View Citations
380
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)26
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)3

Reflects downloads up to 26 Jan 2025

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

Rode JBarkhuus LIoannou A(2024)Exploring Gender, Computational Making and E-Textiles using the BBC Micro:bitExtended Abstracts of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613905.3644056(1-9)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3613905.3644056
Ferdowsi KHuang RJames MPolikarpova NLerner S(2024)Validating AI-Generated Code with Live ProgrammingProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642495(1-8)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3613904.3642495
Huang RGuo PLerner S(2024)UNFOLD: Enabling Live Programming for Debugging GUI Applications2024 IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing (VL/HCC)10.1109/VL/HCC60511.2024.00041(306-316)Online publication date: 2-Sep-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/VL/HCC60511.2024.00041
Moran RZabala G(2024)On the Importance of Live Programming and Short Feedback Loops for Educational RoboticsRobotics in Education10.1007/978-3-031-67059-6_7(65-76)Online publication date: 27-Sep-2024
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-67059-6_7
Gerosa AKallia MCutts Q(2023)A Systematic Literature Review on Physical and Action Based Activities in Computing Education for Early Years and PrimaryProceedings of the 18th WiPSCE Conference on Primary and Secondary Computing Education Research10.1145/3605468.3605500(1-10)Online publication date: 27-Sep-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3605468.3605500
Garcia DFries MBall MFox PGelosi DMock LDastur DBriccetti DKahn BDoyle MStephenson BDorn BSoh LBattestilli L(2023)BJC SparksProceedings of the 54th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education V. 110.1145/3545945.3569842(451-457)Online publication date: 2-Mar-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3545945.3569842
Wang GZhao JVan Kleek MShadbolt N(2023)12 Ways to Empower: Designing for Children’s Digital AutonomyProceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3544548.3580935(1-27)Online publication date: 19-Apr-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3544548.3580935
Zhang MLi JLin YJin QWang D(2023)CoAR-Maze: empowering children’s collaborative tangible programming in augmented realityCCF Transactions on Pervasive Computing and Interaction10.1007/s42486-023-00135-85:4(396-410)Online publication date: 1-Sep-2023
https://doi.org/10.1007/s42486-023-00135-8
Wang DZhao YFeng S(2022)AR-C&P: A Tangible Programming for Children Based Augmented RealityProceedings of the Tenth International Symposium of Chinese CHI10.1145/3565698.3565778(141-150)Online publication date: 22-Oct-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3565698.3565778
Brocker ASchäfer RRemy CVoelker SBorchers J(2022)Flowboard: How Seamless, Live, Flow-Based Programming Impacts Learning to Code for Embedded ElectronicsACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction10.1145/353301530:1(1-36)Online publication date: 2-Aug-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3533015
Show More Cited By

View Options

Login options

Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

Full Access

Get this Publication

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

eReader

View online with eReader.

Figures

Tables

Media

View Table of Conten