Tangible User Interfaces to Digitalize Real Environments

There are many essential activities focused on learning whose main objective is to stimulate cognitive abilities such as memory, reading, arithmetic, etc. However, performing these tasks is not always attractive to children. It is necessary to include a fun factor that motivates and encourages kids to perform the tasks. In this paper, we present a system that mixes real and digital factors for children to carry out cognitive stimulation and learning tasks in a simple and intuitive way. The system is based on distributed and tangible user interfaces. The users themselves are responsible for creating and designing tangible objects to interact with the system. The application runs on any mobile device. To interact with the system, children must only bring the previously created tangible object close to the mobile device. A preliminary evaluation was conducted to check the participants' satisfaction and motivation.