Designing Tools that Allows Children in the Early Childhood to Program Robots

TítuloDesigning Tools that Allows Children in the Early Childhood to Program Robots
Tipo de publicaciónConference Paper
Año de publicación
2017
Autores
Kryscia Ramírez-Benavides
Gustavo López
Luis A. Guerrero
Panayiotis Zaphiris
Andri Ioannou
Conference Name
Learning and Collaboration Technologies. Technology in Education
Fecha de publicación
05/2017
Editorial
Springer International Publishing
Conference Location
Cham
Número ISBN
978-3-319-58515-4
URL
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-58515-4_7
DOI
10.1007/978-3-319-58515-4_7
Palabras clave
early childhood education
Interaction design
Programming robots
Programming tool
User interfaces and Human computer interaction
User-Centered Design
Resumen

This paper describes the design and evaluation process of two mobile programming assistance tools that allow children in the early childhood to develop programs and execute them using robots. The tools are called TITIBOTS and TITIBOTS Colab which incorporates collaboration. The tools have icon-based interfaces and integrate visual programming, robotics, and mobile devices as one tool. The main issues and lessons learned during the design process are described. The methodology used in this project was User-Centered Design (UCD) process. The tools were developed and evaluated applying participatory-design, experience prototyping, and usability testing. The final product are two simple, intuitive, and easy to use tools, for children between 4 and 6 years old. The results were promising: children liked the applications and were willing to continue using it to program robots for solving specific tasks.