Tangible Computing

Around the turn of the century, the emerging idea of Tangible User Interfaces (TUIs) captured the imaginations of many in the Human-Computer Interaction research community. TUIs sought to break interaction with computers away from screens and single-purpose input devices such as mice and keyboards. Instead, TUIs take advantage of intuitive interaction with objects and artifacts from the physical world. This chapter reviews the history of the CS education research community’s exploration of tangible interaction for computer programming. We also discuss why tangible computing matters now and how we see it shaping the future landscape of computing education. The chapter will touch on physical computing and robotics, but our main emphasis will be on the use of tangible technologies to support computer programming in and with the physical world.