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[EN] Although a myriad of educational applications using tablets and multi-touch technology for kindergarten children have been developed in the last decade, most of these applications do not fully exploit multi-touch technology since the game world used is limited to the screen only. Considering a larger digital space in tablet-based educational scenarios would be beneficial since it would enable the design of engaging activities driven by curiosity, exploration, discovery and decisions on where the next action is situated in the digital virtual space by directional awareness. This paper therefore investigates kindergarten children's abilities to use a virtual world beyond the screen and evaluates three different types of visual prompts for communicating directional awareness. The results obtained show, firstly, that these specific users are able to use the space beyond the screen boundaries and that the evaluated prompts can effectively communicate information to kindergarten children. The paper also makes a set of recommendations to help designers choose the appropriate type of prompt for their application requirements., This work received financial support from Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness and was funded by the European Development Regional Fund (EDRF-FEDER) in the project TIN2014-60077-R (SUPEREMOS). This work is also supported by a pre-doctoral fellowship within the FPU program from the Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports to V. Nacher (FPU14/00136) and from GVA (ACIF/2014/214) to F. Garcia-Sanjuan.

[EN] A myriad of educational applications using tablets and multi-touch technology for kindergarten children have been developed in the last decade. However, despite the possible benefits of using visual prompts to communicate information to kindergarteners, these visual techniques have not been fully studied yet. This article therefore investigates kindergarten children¿s abilities to understand and follow several visual prompts about how to proceed and interact in a virtual 2D world. The results show that kindergarteners are able to effectively understand several visual prompts with different communication purposes despite being used simultaneously. The results also show that the use of the evaluated visual prompts to communicate data when playing reduces the number of interferences about technical nature fostering dialogues related to the learning activity guided by the instructors or caregivers. Hence, this work is a starting point for designing dialogic learning scenarios tailored to kindergarten children., This work is supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness and funded by the European Development Regional Fund (EDRF-FEDER) with Project TIN2014-60077-R; by VALi+d program from Conselleria d¿Educació, Cultura i Esport (Generalitat Valenciana) under the fellowship ACIF/2014/214, and by the FPU program from Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture, and Sport under the fellowship FPU14/00136

[EN] Children in hospital are subjected to multiple negative stimuli that may hinder their development and social interactions. Although game technologies are thought to improve children's experience in hospital, there is a lack of information on how they can be used effectively. This paper presents a systematic review of the literature on the existing approaches in this context to identify gaps for future research. A total of 1305 studies were identified, of which 75 were thoroughly analyzed according to our review protocol. The results show that the most common approach is to design mono-user games with traditional computers or monitor-based video consoles, which serve as a distractor or a motivator for physical rehabilitation for primary school children undergoing fearful procedures such as venipuncture, or those suffering chronic, neurological, or traumatic diseases/injures. We conclude that, on the one hand, game technologies seem to present physical and psychological benefits to pediatric patients, but more research is needed on this. On the other hand, future designers of games for pediatric hospitalization should consider: 1. The development for kindergarten patients and adolescents, 2. Address the psychological impact caused by long-term hospitalization, 3. Use collaboration as an effective game strategy to reduce patient isolation, 4. Have purposes other than distraction, such as socialization, coping with emotions, or fostering physical mobility, 5. Include parents/caregivers and hospital staff in the game activities; and 6. Exploit new technological artifacts such as robots and tangible interactive elements to encourage intrinsic motivation., This work is supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness and the European Development Regional Fund (EDRF-FEDER) with Project TIN2014-60077-R.

[EN] Gamification has been identified as an interesting technique to foster collaboration in educational contexts. However, there are not many approaches that tackle this in primary school learning environments. The most popular technologies in the classroom are still traditional video consoles and desktop computers, which complicate the design of collaborative activities since they are essentially mono-user. The recent popularization of handheld devices such as tablets and smartphones has made it possible to build affordable, scalable, and improvised collaborative gamifled activities by creating a multi-tablet environment. In this paper we present Quizbot, a collaborative gamifled quiz application to practice different subjects, which can be defined by educators beforehand. Two versions of the system are implemented: a tactile for tablets laid on a table, in which all the elements are digital; and a tangible in which the tablets are scattered on the floor and the components are both digital and physical objects. Both versions of Quizbot are evaluated and compared in a study with eighty primary-schooled children in terms of user experience and quality of collaboration supported. Results indicate that both versions of Quizbot are essentially equally fun and easy to use, and can effectively support collaboration, with the tangible version outperforming the other one with respect to make the children reach consensus after a discussion, split and parallelize work, and treat each other with more respect, but also presenting a poorer time management., We would like to thank Universitat Politecnica de Valencia's Summer School for their collaboration during the development of this study, as well as Colegio Internacional Ausias March for their support in the development of educational content., This work is supported by Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness and funded by the European Development Regional Fund (EDRF-FEDER) with Project TIN2014-60077-R. It is also supported by fellowship ACIF/2014/214 within the VALi+d program from Conselleria d’Educació, Cultura i Esport (Generalitat Valenciana), and by fellowship FPU14/00136 within the FPU program from Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture, and Sport

[EN] Collaborative problem solving (CPS) is an essential soft skill that should be fostered from a young age. Research shows that a good way of teaching such skills is through video games; however, the success and viability of this method may be affected by the technological platform used. In this work we propose a gameful approach to train CPS skills in the form of the CPSbot framework and describe a study involving 80 primary school children on user experience and acceptance of a game, Quizbot, using three different technological platforms: two purely digital (tabletop and handheld tablets) and another based on tangible interfaces and physical spaces. The results show that physical spaces proved to be more effective than the screen-based platforms in several ways, as well as being considered more fun and easier to use by the children. Finally, we propose a set of design considerations for future gameful CPS systems based on the observations made during this study., Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness and the European Regional Development Fund (project TIN2014-60077-R); Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport (with fellowship FPU14/00136) and Conselleria d'Educacio, Cultura i Esport (Generalitat Valenciana, Spain) (grant ACIF/2014/214).

[EN] The creation of artefacts and entities to be used in simulated worlds and games has been used in practice to foster creativity in informal activities. Motivational issues and entertainment have therefore been combined along with creative tasks. The systems with higher complexity and more creative capabilities are usually based on WIMP interfaces, which negatively impact on the role of collaboration and active participation. This paper summarizes the main findings and the authors' experiences in the project CreateWorlds, which relies on an interactive tabletop interface in order to support the creation of 2D games. Finally, the paper discusses some key challenges that will have to be addressed to support creative smart learning environments in the future., This work received financial support from the Spanish Ministry of Education under the National Strategic Program of Research and Project TIN2010-20488. Our thanks to Polimedia/UPV for the support in computer hardware. This work is also supported by fellowships APOSTD/2013/013 and ACIF/2014/214 within the VALi+d program from Consel·leria d’Educació, Cultura i Esport (Generalitat Valenciana), and the fellowship FPU13/03831 funded by MECD under FPU program.

[EN] Background Previous research has studied the effects of games in pediatric wards, but none of it has focused on the impact of the hospital¿s school staff on the psychosocial state of the children nor on the gameplay itself. Objectives To present the Tangibot application and evaluate its impact on the children¿s psychosocial state in the short term and the impact of the teacher on their psychosocial state, communications and coordination during the activity. Methods A study was conducted in a hospital classroom with 20 participants, who participated twice in the game: one with the teacher playing along and another without her. An observational scale was used by two evaluators in order to assess the impact on the children. Results and conclusions The study revealed that the teacher has an impact on the children¿s communication and coordination procedures but has no impact on the psychosocial state of the participants. The teacher¿s impact was found to be positive about communications. Dialogue management significantly improves when the communication includes the teacher, which means speaking turns are observed more consistently. Information pooling also improves, and the participants ask the teacher more questions. Consensus is also reached more often and more easily, but this does not reflect on the performance, as the time management is evidently worse when the teacher is present, as is also the joint task orientation. On the other hand, it was found that the teacher does not have an impact on the psychosocial state of the participants during the game, and that it is the game itself which changes their state over time. In the case of affection, which reflects the participants¿ emotions of joy or boredom, their state improved significantly after a few minutes of play. The same thing occurred for physical activity, interest in the activity and interaction between peers, which increased in value in the first part of the game, although physical activity and interaction were reduced towards the end. No changes were found throughout the game in the number of complaints, nervousness or satisfied comments, which remained very low for all these aspects, showing that the game distracted them from their various symptoms. Based on these results, future work will explore the effects of gamification on the overall hospitalization perception, with special focus on the social opportunities during the hospital stay, to provide ways for the children to meet others during their treatment, to make the experience less painful and reduce their feelings of isolation. Some game strategies should also be evaluated to determine the ones that provide the best opportunities to improve the children¿s hospital experience., This work is funded by the European Development Regional Fund (EDRF-FEDER) and supported by Spanish MINECO with Project TIN2014-60077-R-AR. The work of Jorge Montaner is supported by a national grant from the Spanish Ministry for Education (FPU17/03333). Special thanks to the staff of La Fe Hospital in Valencia who have collaborated in the experiment.

Differentiating between users that interact on a tabletop could be beneficial for collaborative tasks to support territoriality-oriented features such as a more efficient space management or a better presentation of the contents. In this paper, we design a novel algorithm for the user differentiation or segmentation based on the simultaneous manipulation of the controls. This is a potential differentiating factor that has remained unexplored so far, and in combination with other factors may become relevant to successfully accomplish such differentiation task. Basically it relies on the idea that users manipulate digital elements with a single hand, and hence, if two controls are being used at the same time, they most likely belong to different users. On the generic algorithm, three different versions have been implemented that include several heuristics to address the problem. The comparison under a simulated experiment shows that the heuristic involving more knowledge on distances on user controls performed better according to different goodness functions. This shows promising to further development and refinement of the approach by expanding it with other potential factors to eventually build a robust user differentiation subsystem., This work received financial support from the Spanish Ministry of Education under the National Strategic Program of Research and Project TSI2010-20488. Our thanks to the ASIC/Polimedia team for the support in computer hardware.

[EN] The ever increasing elderly population requires a revision of technology to make it usable and meaningful for them. Most applications take into account their reduced physical and cognitive abilities in order to provide assistive services, but this paper focuses on building technology to improve these capacities through cognitive games. We present Tangibot, a tangible-mediated robot aimed at enabling more intuitive and appealing interactions. A usability study conducted on subjects at three different levels of cognitive impairment (none, mild, and severe) reveals that it is usable and engaging for users with no or mild cognitive impairment, and even though it is less usable for persons with severe impairment, it triggers positive emotional reactions among them, which makes it promising for their use in therapeutic activities., This work is supported by Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness and funded by the European Development Regional Fund (EDRF-FEDER) with Project TIN2014-60077-R. It is also supported by fellowship ACIF/2014/214 within the VALi+d program from Conselleria d'Educacio, Cultura i Esport (Generalitat Valenciana), and by fellowship FPU14/00136 within the FPU program from Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture, and Sport.

This paper presents Airsteroids, a multi-player redesign of the classic arcade game Asteroids. The redesign makes use of handheld devices such as tablets and Smartphones and of MarkAirs, an around-device interaction (ADI) with fiducial markers that reduces occlusion on the screens and interference between users’ interactions., This work received financial support from Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness under the National Strategic Program of Research with Projects TIN2010-20488 and TIN2014-60077-R, and from Universitat Politècnica de València under Project UPV-FE-2014-24. It is also supported by fellowship ACIF/2014/214 within the VALi+d program from Conselleria d’Educació, Cultura i Esport (Generalitat Valenciana).

Entertainment technology increases children’s engagement in educational activities designed to develop abilities ranging from collaborative problem-solving and cognitive attention to self-esteem. However, little research has been done on designing educational and entertaining interactive technology for kindergarten children (up to 5 years old). Furthermore, most of the work in this area has considered traditional input devices such as the mouse and keyboard, which are not suitable for these very young children. More recently, other more intuitive means of interaction (touch and tangible interfaces) and advanced educational artifacts such as robots have emerged. In this work we therefore present a joint collaboration between technologists and kindergarten instructors to design and evaluate a technological platform using a mobile robot for kindergarten instruction, as well as an intuitive and user-friendly tangible user interface. The results obtained suggest the platform is not only usable by kindergarten children, but it also allows them to be fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity. In addition, the instructors reported that the system was well accepted and praised its versatility in use as a supporting tool for their everyday classroom activities., This work is funded by the European Development Regional Fund (EDRF-FEDER) and supported by Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness with Project TIN2014-60077-R, and from Universitat Politècnica de València under Project UPV-FE-2014-24. It is also supported by fellowship ACIF/2014/214within the VALi+d program from Conselleria d’Educació, Cultura i Esport (Generalitat Valenciana), and by fellowship FPU14/00136 within the FPU program from Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport.

Long-term and frequent hospitalized children are under high loads of emotional stress, which affects their well-being in addition to the illness they are suffering. This thesis proposes and will focus on an approach to use Multi-Display Environments (MDE) in pediatric hospitalization contexts to improve patients’ emotional intelligence so they can deal with the negative emotions produced by their situation., This work is supported by Spanish MINECO (TIN2010-20488 and TIN2014-60077-R), from Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV-FE-2014-24), and from GVA (APOSTD/2013/013 and ACIF/2014/214).

The continuous and rapidly increasing elderly population requires a revision of technology design in order to devise systems usable and meaningful for this social group. Most applications for ageing people are built to provide supporting services, taking into account the physical and cognitive abilities that decrease over time. However, this paper focuses on building technology to improve such capacities, or at least slow down their decline, through cognitive games. This is achieved by means of a digitally-augmented table-like surface that combines touch with tangible input for a more natural, intuitive, and appealing means of interaction. Its construction materials make it an affordable device likely to be used in retirement homes in the context of therapeutic activities, and its form factor enables a versatile, quick, and scalable configuration, as well as a socializing experience., This work received financial support from Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness under the National Strategic Program of Research and Project TIN2010-20488, and from Universitat Politécnica de Valencia under Project UPV-FE-2014-24. It is also supported by fellowships APOST D/2013/013 and ACIF/2014/214 within the VALi+d program from Conselleria d’Educació, Cultura i Esport (GVA).

International audience; Digital tabletops present numerous benefits in face-to-face collaboration environments. However, their integration in real settings is complicated by cost and fixed location. In this respect, building table-like environments using several handheld devices such as tablets or smartphones provides a promising alternative but is limited to touch interaction only. We propose instead another kind of “around-device” interaction (ADI) technique using the built-in front camera of these devices and fiducial frame markers, which presents advantages including better awareness and less interference. This paper contributes a first step in exploring the potential of this interaction technique by conducting a usability test comparing several ergonomic factors that may have an effect on the very first operation of the interaction: the acquisition of the marker.

[EN] Differentiating between users that interact simultaneously on a tabletop could be beneficial for collaborative tasks. Hence, the applications could support more effectively several territoriality-oriented features and they could provide a more efficient space management or a better presentation of the contents. This work presents a series of software factors which could be used to obtain such differentiation. Also, we design a novel algorithm for the controls segmentation according to their owner based on one of those factors: the simultaneous manipulation of controls. This is a potential differentiating factor that has remained unexplored so far, and in combination with others may become relevant to successfully accomplish such differentiation task. Basically it relies on the idea that users manipulate digital elements with a single hand, and therefore, if two controls are being used at the same time, they most likely belong to different users. On the generic algorithm, three different versions have been implemented that include several heuristics to address the problem. The comparison under a simulated experiment shows that the heuristic involving more knowledge on distances on user controls performed better according to different goodness functions. The results show this factor promising to further development and refinement of the approach by expanding it with other potential factors to eventually build a robust user differentiation subsystem, [ES] Diferenciar entre los usuarios que están trabajando simultáneamente entorno a una superficie interactiva podría ser beneficioso para tareas colaborativas. Así, las aplicaciones podrían soportar de manera más efectiva ciertos aspectos orientados a la territorialidad, a la gestión eficiente del espacio disponible y a la representación de los contenidos. En este trabajo se comenta una serie de factores software que podrían usarse para realizar dicha diferenciación, y se diseña un algoritmo para la agrupación de controles según su dueño basado en uno de estos factores: la manipulación simultánea de controles. Este factor no ha sido explorado en detalle hasta este momento, y, mediante su combinación con otros factores, podría resultar relevante para el objetivo buscado. Básicamente, se basa en la idea de que los usuarios suelen manipular los elementos de interfaz con una sola mano y, por lo tanto, dos controles que están siendo manipulados al mismo tiempo es muy probable que pertenezcan a usuarios distintos. Se han realizado tres versiones diferentes del algoritmo anterior, cada una basada en una heurística diferente. La comparación de las mismas bajo un experimento simulado muestra que la heurística que involucra más información sobre la distancia física entre los controles se comporta mejor de acuerdo a una serie de métricas definidas. Los resultados se muestran relevantes para seguir explorando y refinando este enfoque, expandiéndolo con otros factores potenciales, y así conseguir construir un subsistema de diferenciación potente y robusto.

In this paper we present TangiWheel, a collection manipulation widget for tabletop displays. Our implementation is flexible, allowing either multi-touch or interaction, or even a hybrid scheme to better suit user choice and convenience. Different TangiWheel aspects and features are compared with other existing widgets for collection manipulation. The study reveals that TangiWheel is the first proposal to support a hybrid input modality with large resemblance levels between touch and tangible interaction styles. Several experiments were conducted to evaluate the techniques used in each input scheme for a better understanding of tangible surface interfaces in complex tasks performed by a single user (e.g., involving a typical master-slave exploration pattern). The results show that tangibles perform significantly better than fingers, despite dealing with a greater number of interactions, in situations that require a large number of acquisitions and basic manipulation tasks such as establishing location and orientation. However, when users have to perform multiple exploration and selection operations that do not require previous basic manipulation tasks, for instance when collections are fixed in the interface layout, touch input is significantly better in terms of required time and number of actions. Finally, when a more elastic collection layout or more complex additional insertion or displacement operations are needed, the hybrid and tangible approaches clearly outperform finger-based interactions.. ©2012 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC & Science Press, China, The work is supported by the Ministry of Education of Spain under Grant No. TSI2010-20488. Alejandro Catala is supported by an FPU fellowship for pre-doctoral research staff training granted by the Ministry of Education of Spain with reference AP2006-00181.