TangiTinker: AI-Assisted End-User Tinkering with Interactive Tangibles
In revision, 2026.
Overview
Creating interactive tangible experiences often requires expertise in electronics, physical prototyping, and programming. TangiTinker is an AI-assisted tinkering kit that combines reusable modular hardware with a conversational interface, allowing users to specify, test, and revise physical behaviors through natural language. Users can preview a behavior, follow assembly guidance, and try it on a physical artifact.
We evaluated TangiTinker with 17 participants with little or no electronics experience, including six adolescents and eleven adults. Participants explored a wearable display, a musical box, and a smart plate without needing to wire individual components or write code. Alongside completing assigned tasks, participants experimented with new behaviors and tested the system’s capabilities.
When results differed from their intentions because of system interpretations or hardware constraints, participants revised prompts and adapted their ideas. Physical feedback helped them develop and refine what they wanted to make, although some outcomes remained partial or mismatched. The study shows how AI-assisted tangible authoring can support iterative exploration within a prepared hardware design space, and identifies opportunities to make constraints and paths for revision clearer.