Programming is an effective way to foster children’s computational thinking. We present AR-Maze, which is a novel tangible programming tool using Augmented Reality (AR) technology for young children. AR-Maze superposes constant feedback on the physical world and maintains a positive, low-cost learning environment. Using this system, children could create their own programs by arranging programming blocks and debug or execute the code with a mobile device. In addition, they will be able to learn fundamental programming concepts, such as parameters, loop logic, debug, etc. We design and implement this system, as well as conduct a preliminary user study and analyze the results, which can guide a better design of AR-Maze. With this work, we intend to help children programming in an interesting and intuitive way.

Cite this paper: Qiao Jin, Danli Wang, Xiaozhou Deng, Nan Zheng, and Steve Chiu. 2018. AR-maze: a tangible programming tool for children based on AR technology. In Proceedings of the 17th ACM Conference on Interaction Design and Children (IDC ’18). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 611–616. https://doi.org/10.1145/3202185.3210784