A gestural interface for practicing children's spatial skills

Yuan Yao, Po Tsung Chiu, Wai Tat Fu

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

Abstract

We present a novel gestural interface for an educational 3D construction game that helps children practice and learn spatial reasoning skills. Previous research shows that having well-developed spatial reasoning skills is crucial to the success in the STEM fields. Our game requires the player to create a number of 3D target objects by moving, rotating, and assembling smaller pieces in the right way through a gestural interface. The gestures were designed with enhancing the user experience and effectiveness of learning in mind, by having a congruent mapping between hand gestures and spatial operations. The initial results of the preliminary study we conducted with the children show that the interface has the potential to be used for practicing spatial reasoning skills with the game. We also discuss how the study can lead to the development of a theoretical framework for designing gestural interfaces for educational games that leverage the benefit of embodied interactions. Copyright is held by the owner/author(s).

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationIUI 2017 - Companion of the 22nd International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces
PublisherAssociation for Computing Machinery
Pages43-47
Number of pages5
ISBN (Electronic)9781450348935
DOIs
StatePublished - Mar 7 2017
Event22nd International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces, IUI 2017 - Limassol, Cyprus
Duration: Mar 13 2017Mar 16 2017

Publication series

NameInternational Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces, Proceedings IUI

Other

Other22nd International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces, IUI 2017
Country/TerritoryCyprus
CityLimassol
Period3/13/173/16/17

Keywords

  • 3D interaction
  • Children
  • Gestural interface
  • Spatial reasoning
  • Video game

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Software
  • Human-Computer Interaction

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