When Children Program Intelligent Environments: Lessons Learned from a Serious AR Game
This addresses the problem of limited insights into children as programmers of IEs, potentially enhancing their responsibility and independence, though it is incremental as it builds on prior work showing children can learn programming basics.
The study tackled whether children can program intelligent environments (IEs) by conducting a user study with 15 children aged 7-12 using a block-based AR game, and found that children understand and can program IEs, validating this capability.
While the body of research focusing on Intelligent Environments (IEs) programming by adults is steadily growing, informed insights about children as programmers of such environments are limited. Previous work already established that young children can learn programming basics. Yet, there is still a need to investigate whether this capability can be transferred in the context of IEs, since encouraging children to participate in the management of their intelligent surroundings can enhance responsibility, independence, and the spirit of cooperation. We performed a user study (N=15) with children aged 7-12, using a block-based, gamified AR spatial coding prototype allowing to manipulate smart artifacts in an Intelligent Living room. Our results validated that children understand and can indeed program IEs. Based on our findings, we contribute preliminary implications regarding the use of specific technologies and paradigms (e.g. AR, trigger-action programming) to inspire future systems that enable children to create enriching experiences in IEs.