The aim of this paper is to explore techniques to design specific
gestures with children to improve the interaction design of a Full-
Body Interaction Learning Environment. This exploratory case
study is part of the EcoSystem Project, a learning environment
aimed at supporting children’s understanding of environmental
issues related to air-pollution. In order to involve children in the
design of the physical interaction with the system, we used two
different techniques to facilitate the design ...
The aim of this paper is to explore techniques to design specific
gestures with children to improve the interaction design of a Full-
Body Interaction Learning Environment. This exploratory case
study is part of the EcoSystem Project, a learning environment
aimed at supporting children’s understanding of environmental
issues related to air-pollution. In order to involve children in the
design of the physical interaction with the system, we used two
different techniques to facilitate the design of gestures: “sketching
through the body” and “sketching with puppets”. The results
indicate that children adopted different strategies to design
gestures for each technique. Within them, the most effective
approach was related to the switch between performing gestures
with their own bodies and simulating those gestures with puppets.
This finding indicates the potential of those Participatory Design
methods which combine multi-modal resources as instruments to
allow children to reflect upon their own knowledge and express it
more precisely.
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