Draw2Code: Low-Cost Tangible Programming for Creating AR Animations

Computational thinking is nowadays considered an essential skill in the K-12 educational curriculum. Many tangible computational kits designed for early childhood are either too expensive to benefit a wide range of children or only provide predetermined challenges with limited creative content creation opportunities. In this paper, we investigated low-cost and expressive tangible interfaces that foster computational literacy. We present Draw2Code, a paper-based computational kit for young children to create an interactive AR animation. Children use Draw2Code to make their paper drawing alive as an animated virtual sprite and control it using hand gestures. It exposes children to basic programming concepts through playful and tangible interaction. Results from our initial evaluation with nine child-parent dyads indicate that children ages 5 to 12 successfully used Draw2Code and played with Draw2Code in 33 minutes on average while creating 2 to 5 diverse AR animations based on their ideas. Throughout the session, all children were engaged in computational thinking concepts and practices and learned drawing and gesture-based interactions.