State machines are child's play
Michael Philetus Weller, Ellen Yi–Luen, Mark D. Gross · 2009
We developed Escape Machine, a puzzle game in which children control the behavior of characters in a maze by manipulating a tangible state machine built with Posey, our computationally-enhanced hub-and-strut construction kit. We observed children ages nine to eleven playing the game in several sessions. The qualitative results of this observation validate the promise of Posey and Escape Machine to engage children in manipulating algorithmic specifications for behavior.