Paper Playground is an open-source project for collaboratively creating multimodal web experiences by means of mapping code to real pieces of paper and manipulating the code in your physical space. Everything runs on your machine and you can collaborate locally or using a hosting service to collaborate over projects with others in your shared space.
While Paper Playground can support many uses, our aim to support a community interested in bringing physical interaction as a means to collaboratively solve problems in codesigning technology.
Paper Playground is based on the Paper Programs open-source project and has been extended to incorporate SceneryStack, the development stack used by PhET Interactive Simulations as a robust 2D scene creator and to add multimodal capabilities. The project focuses on enabling quick prototyping of web projects based in JavaScript. In creating Paper Playground, we are developing with a particular emphasis on easy addition of multimodal display such as audio features (e.g., sounds and sonifications), spoken description, and other non-visual features that are often difficult to design and develop alongside visual elements in complex web projects. Learn more on the Multimodal Codesign page.
See the Paper Playground website for all the details on how to get started at https://phetsims.github.io/paper-land/.
Paper Playground is built around a few key components that work together seamlessly:
- Program Creation Systems: Design and iterate on your programs with ease using abstracted program components in Creator.
- Computer Vision: Our tool detects your dot-encoded paper programs using a webcam, merging the digital and physical realms.
- Execution and Display: See your code come to life on screen, with outputs displayed in real-time.
- Collaboration: Shared databases allow for asynchronous collaboration, whether you’re working locally or online.
You’ll interact with Paper Playground through three main interfaces:
- Camera: Detects your paper programs using an attached camera device.
- Interactive Display: Shows the results of your programs, which can be interacted with virtually or projected.
- Creator: A low-code interface where you design your programs, step by step.
Head over to the docs website to get started and learn the interface.
This software is covered under the MIT License.