Exploring Feedback Modality Designs to Improve Young Children's Collaborative Actions

Tangible user interfaces offer the benefit of incorporating physical aspects in the interaction with digital systems, enriching how system information can be conveyed. We investigated how visual, haptic, and audio modalities influence young children’s joint actions. We used a design-based research method to design and develop a multi-sensory tangible device. Two kindergarten teachers and 31 children were involved in our design process. We tested the final prototype with 20 children aged 5-6 from three kindergartens. The main findings were: a) involving and getting approval from kindergarten teachers in the design process was essential; b) simultaneously providing visual and audio feedback might help improve children’s collaborative actions. Our study was an interdisciplinary research on human-computer interaction and children’s education, which contributed an empirical understanding of the factors influencing children collaboration and communication.