Hi,

I’m looking for projects and people who thinking about visual programming and multitouch.  If you know anyone who work and investigate on such a project to create mt-applications with a mt-device feel free to contact me via pn or write in this thread.

Thx

One of my former students did a project with Mitch Resnick at the MIT media Lab’s Lifelong Kindergarten Group that extended the scratch programming language for children into physical space using fiducials. Not exactly multi-touch but dealing with many of the same issues…

Unfortunately, I do not see the example up at the LLK project page, but there may be some useful papers if you dig around.

http://llk.media.mit.edu/projects.php

The brickits and building-block programming projects are similar ones from that group as well.

Thank you for the links. I checked out the brickits and building-block project, but i think that’s not what I’m looking for. But on the web page of the Dynamic Media Institute, I found a visual programming project. This looks really exciting, so I would be really happy if you have more information about it.

are you talking about the project by Mahesh Gudapakkam? That is actually the student I was referring to in the links above.

While he was working on his thesis he got very interested in visual programming languages and hooked up with Mitch Resnick on the scratch project. I think that scratch may serve as a useful example for you as it is limited in scale. I can imagine using it on a multi-touch surface in a way that I cannot imagine using Max/MSP or another more fully featured language without major modifications.

Some of Mitch’s earlier projects—like the lego mindstorms interface—might be helpful as well.

Mahesh’s project focused upon teaching core programming concepts, and visualizing those concepts—he spent many months just thinking about for loops—for non programmers. He did not create a full language, per se… he simply created a kit of parts common to all languages that could then be manipulated to create visual results.

I don’t have access to a full PDF of his thesis right now, but I can ask him to send me one if you like…

what is your goal for this project? are you looking to retrofit an existing language (like PD)? or are you going to create a language from scratch?

Yes, I mean the project “A Learner-Centered Approach to Teaching Programming” by Mahesh Gudapakkam.  In our own project we want neither retrofit an existing language nor to create a complete new. Instead, we think about a mix of visual framework and visual programming to create Multitouch application. That’s the reason why I looking for an easy way to combine different components and logic elements directly in an intuitive way. I started with vvvv, which is also a visual programming language like Max/MSP. But our focus is on designing interfaces plus includes of gestures and logic elements in a limited complexity.

Is no one here, who think about that?

A visual programming language made for children to create games, running on the Xbox, using a game controller for input.

I have Numpty Physics on my Nokia n800 internet tablet, and Crayon Physics on my HP TouchSmart PC. Both are designed for single touch, and are fun to play. Since my TouchSmart can handle duo-touch input, I wondered what Crayon Physics might be like if it supported two players at once.

I’ve use Crayon Physics Deluxe with several of the students I work with who have severe autism. It is amazing how well they can figure out solutions for the levels. It would be even better if it could be enabled for duo-touch. It supports joint attention, which is a very important social interaction skill for young people with autism to develop.