The Road towards Friendly, Classroom-Centered Interactive Digital Contents Authoring

In this paper, we argue for the need of new kinds of visual, digital game authoring tools. The main goal for this project is to reconceptualization the programming of interactive digital contents, to minimize the coding aspects, and focus instead on the creative and design-like parts, leveraging on a tangible metaphor, so to empower teachers and pupils to create digital interactive content, expanding the creative affordances offered by digital games. The resulting tool is called Stick&Click, it is based on findings from our past research, and it targets the pedagogical practice of editing games that is currently common in Danish primary schools. The study is organized according to the research through design approach, and centers around user needs and experience. We discuss our explorations of the computational model behind Stick&Click, requirements and design principles, and alternative ways to visualize its user interface.