Designing a Collaborative Finger Painting Application for Children

Abstract

We describe the design and implementation of a collaborative, computer-based finger painting program for children using a new hardware input device called a Multi-Touch Surface (MTS). The MTS uses a flat surface about the size of a keyboard to track multiple, simultaneous finger motions, which we transform into paint strokes on a screen. We describe related work and explain how our program design was guided by the suggestions of children. We discuss the hardware and software of the MTS and the challenges of designing our program. Finally, we present the Finger Painting Table, a collaborative, embedded application built using the MTS, and discuss future work. KEYWORDS: Multi-Touch Surface, Finger Painting, Children, Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW), Educational Application, Single Display Groupware (SDG) (Also corss-referenced as HCIL-TR-2000-17) (Also cross-referenced as UMIACS-TR-2000-66)