MIT App Inventor: Enabling Personal Mobile Computing

TL;DR

MIT App Inventor is a user-friendly visual programming tool that democratizes mobile app development, enabling individuals to create personalized Android applications and fostering digital literacy.

Contribution

This paper introduces MIT App Inventor as a novel drag-and-drop platform that simplifies mobile app creation and promotes personal mobile computing and digital literacy.

Findings

Enhanced development capabilities since MIT acquisition

Supports personalized and meaningful mobile app creation

Fosters digital literacy across diverse users

Abstract

MIT App Inventor is a drag-and-drop visual programming tool for designing and building fully functional mobile apps for Android. App Inventor promotes a new era of personal mobile computing in which people are empowered to design, create, and use personally meaningful mobile technology solutions for their daily lives, in endlessly unique situations. App Inventor's intuitive programming metaphor and incremental development capabilities allow the developer to focus on the logic for programming an app rather than the syntax of the coding language, fostering digital literacy for all. Since it was moved from Google to MIT, a number of improvements have been added, and research projects are underway.