Tango cards: a card-based design tool for informing the design of tangible learning games

For over thirty years researchers have suggested that both tangible user interfaces and digital games have potential to support learning. Each domain now has a well-developed body of literature about how to design them to enable learning benefits. What is needed is a way to bring this knowledge, which is often lengthy, dense, and jargon laden to design practice. To address this need, we designed Tango Cards--a card-based design tool. In this paper we report on the design and evaluation of the cards. We found that Tango Cards enabled a variety of uses that made design knowledge about tangible learning games accessible to designers. We identify and discuss how specific card features support or limit use by designers. We draw on our findings to set forth design considerations that may support others to create design tools (card-based or alike) that make academic design knowledge accessible to designers.