The Webkit tangible user interface: a case study of iterative prototyping

Here we describe our 18-month iterative-design program to create Webkit, a tangible user interface (TUI) to help school children learn argumentation skills - an English National Curriculum requirement. The goal was to have Webkit disappear into the environment such that the teachers and students remained focused on the learning activity. However, the school children wouldn't be allowed to evaluate our prototypes unless we showed that the classroom time allocated to our research simultaneously helped teach the curriculum. To achieve this, we developed a form of user-centered design called curriculum-focused design. When we used CFD, the curriculum and student needs motivated not just the final technology but also our design process.