Historically, educational manipulatives have profoundly influenced the way people make sense of the world. The major 20th c. art movements were directly informed by the Kindergarten Gifts.

Kindergarten giftsPeas work gift & Buckminster Fuller

Kindergarten giftsPaper parquetry gift and Frank Lloyd Wright

The UI’s that are created for children may have the greatest impact on our culture’s development.

Just as 19th c. Kindergarten gifts foreshadowed 20th c. Art and design, today’s UI’s that enable children to do computational design may give us insight to how future generations will conceive of computers.

Some systems allow children to create computer programs and control structures.

Curlybot (Frei ‘00)

LEGO Mindstorms®

Elec. Blocks (Wyeth ‘02)

Flow Blocks (Zuckerman ‘05)

Tangible interfaces for learning can allow children to sculpt or paint with dynamic natural processes.

I/O Brush (Ryokai ‘04)Topobo (Raffle and Parkes ‘04)

People will create materials with dynamic behavior.

What will we design? How will an evolution in materials influence our conception of a user interface?

Super Cilia Skin (Raffle, Tichenor, Joachim ‘02)