Play with Tiles IoT Toolkit
Learn and invent for the Internet of Things
Zero experience required


Product development for the Internet of Things (IoT) is often pushed by advances in technology rather than human needs. We want to keep human drives at the center of IoT development by involving end-users into creative ideation and prototyping of novel products.
The Tiles project develops a methodology and a set of tools to accelerate collaborative learning, ideation and prototyping for the IoT.
Tiles IoT Cards Tiles IoT Cards are packs of cards with simple descriptions of IoT components, fun design missions and reflection lenses that help you to be creative, learn and invent novel IoT concepts. You can use the cards during research explorations, design exercises and school courses.
Tiles Workshop is a creative experience during which people with zero background in IoT use Tiles Cards together with design thinking techniques to ideate solutions to address specific domains (e.g. waste reduction, urban mobility, climate change).
Tiles IoT Stickers is an innovative prototyping platform to turn ideas generated with Tiles Cards into physical interactive prototypes. Stickers with sensors and actuators give superpowers to the everyday things you already own.
Tiles Toolkit is a research project at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology.
Tiles IoT Cards can be downloaded under Creative Commons BY-SA license.
Interested in how Tiles can be applyed to learn and design IoT technology for your organisation? Ask us!
Data channels cards list popular data services, social networks and sensor platforms. They inspire the design of augmented objects acting as avatars for digital services, e.g. a keychain that vibrate when a traffic alert is issued.
Things cards suggest a set of everyday, low-tech things. These are the objects that can be augmented with technology to become connected and interactive.
Human Actions and Feedbacks cards propose a number of interaction metaphors. They describe how people can interact with augmented things and how the things communicates information back to the user.
Missions cards propose twenty provocative design missions centred on human needs and desires. They aim at triggering design thinking by establishing a creative dialogue among players.
Criteria cards help users to reflect and evaluate their design outcomes by looking at their ideas through a set of nine critical lenses, acting as triggers for collaborative reflection. Criteria encourages trade-offs discussions and enable finding inspiration for future design iterations.
Tiles Workshop is a 2-hours design experience during which non-experts (e.g. fellow citizens, makers and kids) supervised by professionals collaboratively ideate an IoT invention (product, service or ecology). Throughout a set of six design thinking activities participants work with preassigned problem scenarios and Tiles IoT Cards to creatively converge towards an IoT product idea. The outcome of the workshop is a storyboard and elevator pitch ready to be used following steps like prototyping and business development. The Tiles Idea Generator board and experts supervision enforce and scaffold the actions of workshop participants.
The journey starts with a set of (problem) SCENARIOS and PERSONAS given to participants to choose from. Participants are in turn asked to choose and combine THINGS, DATA CHANNELS, HUMAN ACTIONS and FEEDBACKS relevant for the chosen scenario. Drawing on the chosen cards, participants elaborate an initial concept and sketch it out on a storyboard. Following, participants are asked to challenge their own ideas getting inspired by MISSIONS cards. A refined ideas in now visualised on the IDEA GENERATOR BOARD. Participants are then asked to collaboratively reflect and improve their concepts using CRITERIA cards and to prepare an elevator pitch to present their concept to the the audience (other participants, mentors, investors).
S. Mora, F. Gianni, M. Divitini. Tiles: A Card-based Ideation Toolkit for the Internet of Things. Proceedings of ACM Designing Interactive System conference (DIS), 2017. PDF
S. Mora, F. Gianni, S. Nichele. Introducing IoT Competencies to First-Year University Students With The Tiles Toolkit. Proceedings of the 7th Computer Science Education Research Conference, 2018. PDF
A. Mavroudi, M. Divitini, F. Gianni, S. Mora, D. Kvittem. Designing IoT applications in lower secondary schools. Global Engineering Education Conference (EDUCON), 2018. PDF
A. Mavroudi, M. Divitini, S. Mora, F. Gianni. Game-Based Learning for IoT: The Tiles Inventor Toolkit. Interactive Mobile Communication Technologies and Learning (IMCL), 2017. PDF
F. Gianni, L. Klecha, M. Divitini. Tiles-Reflection: Designing for Reflective Learning and Change Behaviour
in the Smart City. Conference on Smart Learning Ecosystems and Regional Development (SLERD), 2018. PDF
F. Gianni, S. Mora, M. Divitini. Rapid Prototyping Internet of Things Applications for Augmented Objects: The Tiles Toolkit Approach. Proceedings of European Conference on Ambient Intelligence (AMI), 2018. PDF
F. Gianni, S. Mora, M. Divitini. RapIoT toolkit: Rapid prototyping of collaborative Internet of Things applications. Future Generation Computer Systems, 2018. PDF
S. Mora, F. Gianni and M. Divitini. RapIoT Toolkit: Rapid Prototyping of Collaborative Internet of Things Applications. In proceedings of the International Conference on Collaboration Technologies and Systems (CTS), 2016. Outstanding Paper Award. PDF
- Tiles Cards vector files
- Repositories for IoT Stickers prototype hardware & firmware and RapIoT development environment .