A Tangible User Interface as Interaction and Presentation Device to a Social Learning Software

This Birds-of-Feather paper presents an interesting use case for networked sensor nodes as part of a tangible user interface (TUI) in the context of a learning appliance. The software called "Fear Not!" shows different bulling scenarios to children. At the end of each scenario, the spectators are asked for advice to the victim of the story how to cope with situations. Our objective is to investigate how different input devices and interaction techniques affect social learning. The display cube (Terrenghi et al., 2005 and Kranz et al., 2005) is an appropriate sensor-node based user interface to present different options on each side of the cube and to select an option by turning the preferred option on the top and simply shaking the cube. The display cube is a networked sensing system that is connected via RF and UDP to the application logic. In this paper we describe both the technical implementation of the cube as well as information about our social learning software and the integration of the display cube as interaction and presentation device.