Full papers
| Youth as Peer Auditors: Engaging Teenagers with Algorithm Auditing of Machine Learning Applications |
| Luis Morales-Navarro, Yasmin Kafai, Vedya Konda, Danaë Metaxa |
| As artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML) applications become more pervasive in youth lives, supporting them to interact, design, and evaluate applications is crucial. This paper positions youth as auditors of their peers’ ML-powered applications to better understand algorithmic systems’ opaque inner workings and external impacts. In a two-week workshop, 13 youth (ages 14-15) designed and audited ML-powered applications. We analyzed pre/post clinical interviews in which youth were presented with auditing tasks. The analyses show that all youth identified algorithmic biases and inferred dataset and model design issues. Youth also discussed algorithmic justice and ML model improvements. Furthermore, youth reflected that auditing provided them new perspectives on model functionality and ideas to improve their own models. This work contributes (1) a conceptualization of algorithm auditing for youth; and (2) empirical evidence of the potential benefits of auditing. We discuss potential uses of algorithm auditing in learning and CCI research. |
| Inclusive Child Engagement in HCI: Exploring Ocean Health with Schoolchildren |
| Janet Read, Matthew Horton, Dan Fitton, John King, Gavin Sim, Julie Allen, Ioannis Doumanis Tony Graham Dongjie Xu Michelle Tierney Mark Lochrie Scott, MacKenzie |
| In a ten-week project with nine school classes across REMOVED, we explored ocean health with IT-enabled solutions. We describe the activities carried out under headings of participation, learning, and design. Participation activities, which included recruitment, focused on setting the parameters for children’s inclusion and ensuring they understood how data might be used, and that handing in artefacts to the research team was their choice. Learning happened in an environment of contextual relevance that enabled children to develop data literacy whilst we could explore relevant research questions. Design was a journey from individual to whole-class design, while developing engineering thinking and social cohesion. We reflect on the journey showing that children learned from the activities and acquired a new enthusiasm for their local coastline. We reflect on how our inclusive approach can broaden HCI research to wider communities of children and encourage others to apply our model. |
| Design Thinking Activities for K-12 Students: Multi-Modal Data Explanations on Coding Performance |
Isabella Possaghi, Feiran Zhang, Kshitij Sharma, Sofia Papavlasopoulou |
| Design thinking (DT) and computational activities foster children’s knowledge capital for 21st-century literacies. The analysis of these activities often overlooks affective and behavioural states despite their significance in providing insights into children’s learning processes. Typically, these states and their changes are self-reported, lacking real-time capturing. Moreover, inquiries via Multi-Modal Data (MMD) for more comprehensive views are underrepresented in the current literature. We, therefore, conducted a DT activity focusing on coding engaging 33 children (aged 10 to 12) and analysed measurements including learning gain (from knowledge tests), and behavioural and affective states (from physiological sensors, video and voice recordings). Our results show that engagement and confusion exhibit positive correlations between MMD measurements and learning gain, while stress, frustration and anger stand out as detrimental for it. By mapping transitions in states experienced by the children, we unravelled negative learning scenarios that should be limited, along with positive indicators of increased performance. |
| “Are you smart?”: Children’s Understanding of “Smart” Technologies |
| Kai Quander, Tanzila Milky, Natalie Aponte, Natalia Caceres Carrascal, Julia Woodward |
| Although children are increasingly using smart technology, there is limited knowledge on what children define as “smart” for technology. Understanding what children expect as “smart” would ensure more effective positive experiences with smart devices. To investigate children’s expectations, we conducted five participatory design sessions with 10 children focused on designing smart technology. The children also interacted with four commercial smart devices (i.e., robot, AR headset, voice assistant, tablet with AR applications) and judged them on intelligence. We found that children expect smart technologies to have advanced intelligence, human-like characteristics, immersive experiences, and serve multiple purposes. Furthermore, children thought smart devices should be difficult and complex to make. We also observed negative interactions with current smart devices, such as physical device limitations. The insights gained from this study can inform the design and development of future smart technology devices, ensuring they are engaging and aligned with children’s needs and preferences. |
| Applying children’s rights to digital products: Exploring competing priorities in design |
| Kruakae Pothong, Sonia Livingstone, Angela Colvert, Larissa Pschetz |
| Despite efforts to promote children’s rights in digital environments, a gap remains between principles and practice. To understand this gap and identify possible solutions, we examine whether and how designers embed children’s rights when developing digital products and services. Using the child rights-informed ‘Playful by Design’ (PbD) principles and associated card pack as discussion probes in workshops with 30 designers from diverse companies, we identify designers’ understanding of children’s rights, their workplace requirements for implementing them, and the competing professional and commercial priorities they face in designing for children’s play. The findings reveal the challenges of embedding rights-based principles into product design. Notably, designers may believe that children’s rights are sufficiently realised by protecting children from risk, without balancing protection with rights to provision and participation. Further, designers also require a compelling rationale and practical means of addressing the challenges of implementing children’s rights in commercial design settings. |
| Promoting Equitable Learning Outcomes for Underserved Students in Open-Ended Learning Environments |
| Joyce Fonteles, Celestine Akpanoko, Pamela Wisniewski, Gautam Biswas |
| Computer-Based Open-Ended Learning Environments (OELEs) are designed to challenge learners to independently solve complex problems; however, students who struggle are potentially overlooked as the impetus of OELE research is to demonstrate overall learning gains. To address this gap, we take a social justice-based approach by studying 99 sixth grade students who participated in a week-long classroom study. We first assessed learning outcomes across all then identified 20 students who failed to do well. We qualitatively analyzed video recordings of their interactions with the OELE to understand why they struggled, and also analyzed interface issues that inhibited their learning. Five themes emerged: challenges in knowledge acquisition, challenges in scaffolding learning, disregarding system guidance, not leveraging supporting tools, and getting discouraged by incorrect answers. Based on our findings, we make design recommendations for OELEs to better support underserved learners, recognizing that failure is an important catalyst for motivating improvements in child-centered design. |
| Learning from Learning – Design-Based Research Practices in Child-Computer Interaction |
| Olof Torgersson, Gökçe Elif Baykal, Eva Eriksson |
| Inspired by the use of design-based research (DBR) in the learning sciences, in this paper, we discuss the promise of applying DBR in Child-Computer Interaction (CCI). As much research in CCI is related to learning interventions and educational contexts, we believe that DBR can be highly relevant for CCI, but that it has not yet reached its full potential in the field. We argue that DBR as a research approach can help mature the field, by explicitly grounding research design and interventions in theory, foster better impact beyond project completion, and bridge theory and practice through clarified knowledge contributions. Grounded in the characteristics of DBR, and based on a scoping review, this paper provides a timely snapshot of DBR literature, practices and research contributions in CCI research. Based on this, we will discuss further implications and opportunities of DBR in the CCI field. |
| Creating Personas of Parents of Young Children Based on Balancing Priorities |
| Flannery Currin, Juan Pablo Hourcade |
| Parents balance conflicting concerns and hopes with respect to children’s technology use. While prior work documented many of these concerns and hopes, a better understanding of how parents prioritize these considerations with respect to one another could help design technologies for children that better address parents’ needs. We constructed a set of statements based on existing literature. 49 parents of 3-8-year-old children completed a Q-sort activity with these statements, from which we developed three parent personas with distinct attitudes toward technologies aimed at children. We contribute the item set, parent suggestions for additional items, three parent personas, and initial persona validation through a focus group study. We discuss how researchers could 1) use these personas to check for missing perspectives or as aids in participatory design work and 2) use the Q-sort method to create personas based on other populations and contexts. |
| Technologies Supporting Social Play in Neurodiverse Groups of Children |
| Katharina Werner, Kay Kender, Laura Scheepmaker, Christopher Frauenberger |
| This paper reports on the evaluation of digital play things that scaffold social play. We have engaged two neurodiverse groups of children in a participatory design process to explore meaningful technologies in their co-located play experiences. The resultinges are systems composed of multiple connected artefacts that aim to strike the balance between structure and ambiguity to allow children to interpret social play in their own way, while providing structures that offer a common frame for interaction. We report on the two systems, MusicPads and LightSpaces, and their comparative and participatory evaluation, in which we assessed the impact of these technologies on the playing experience of children, and collected the children’s own reflections. Our results suggest that technologies indeed can play an important supporting role when designed as boundary objects across disparate needs and ideas of play. Building on this, we discuss implications for design and evaluation. |
| Autistic expression beyond the verbal – Studying minimally verbal autistic children’s embodied interactions with screen-based technology |
| Sanyukta Singh, Cara Wilson |
| Off-the-shelf screen-based technologies like smartphones and iPads are used daily in Indian households. However, there has been limited research discussing whether these technologies cater to the design needs of minimally verbal autistic children in India. In this paper, we present and discuss design recommendations for adapting screen devices to fit the contextual and multimodal needs of minimally verbal autistic children. We studied Indian autistic children’s daily interactions with screen devices through video interaction analysis and interviewed primary caregivers for a deeper understanding of their self-expressive behaviours. Through the findings, this paper highlights how autistic children self-express their design needs employing non-verbal modalities of sounds, touch and body movements while interacting with screen devices. Based on the findings, we discuss future opportunities to involve minimally verbal autistic children in the design of screen-based technologies by adapting design approaches to better suit their multimodal and sensory needs. |
| From Viewers to Teachers: Child-Led Teaching Strategies and Family Participation in YouTube How-Tos |
| Zhenyao Cai, Shiyao Wei |
| In video media platforms, children are predominantly consumers and learners of educational content. However, they can also be content creators and educators. Existing research has delved into children’s behavior in engaging audiences as YouTube video creators, while our study specifically investigates children as teachers in tutorial videos. We conducted a content analysis of 129 YouTube how-to videos featuring children to understand their teaching behaviors and family involvement. We found that children showed several learning by teaching behaviors, such as discussing materials and procedures and addressing an imagined audience directly. However, they less frequently discussed the principle behind the task, asked the audience questions, or reflected on the task. We also found varying levels of parental engagement. While parents safeguarded, guided, reminded, and taught, they talked less about principles and tended to explain rather than ask questions. We also discussed a number of implications for future research and design based on the findings. |
| Radical Constructivist Cooperative Inquiry Framework: Learning within Design |
| Ekta Shokeen, Caro Williams-Pierce |
| This paper presents the Radical Constructivist Cooperative Inquiry (RCCI) framework, synthesized from the theoretical foundations of Collaborative Inquiry and Radical Constructivism, to reveal the process of children’s learning from and within design activities. The RCCI framework is based on six pillars, as we consider learning in design to be: Child-Centered, Dynamic, Iterative, and Collaborative, with Representations and Outcomes. We provide examples for each pillar from an empirical study we conducted in collaboration with a public library to support children in learning design. This paper responds to calls from the field to increase the theoretical grounding of learning and provides a novel synthesized framework that design educators can use to understand children’s learning in design experiences. |
| Investigating the Impact of Monetization on Children’s Experience With Mobile Games |
| Dan Fitton, Scott MacKenzie, Janet Read |
| Monetization is fundamental to free-to-play mobile games, typically in the form of advertising placed within gameplay. Monetization within digital games is linked to deceptive design, and other ethically dubious practices such as loot-boxes. However, it is unclear what impact monetization has on the overall player experience. This research measured the experience and player performance in an experimental Pong-inspired game in three conditions: no advertising, static-interstitial advertising, and video-advertising. A between-subjects study was carried out with 95 participants aged 9-11 years playing the game in one of the three conditions, then completing the FunQ questionnaire. Results showed that while the static-interstitial advertising condition had a negative impact on player experience and player performance the video-advertising condition did not. Findings were ‘reported back’ to a group of the original child participants, feedback gathered during this session showed that children understood the findings and were able to contribute both additional insights and ideas for future research. |
| MoodGems: Designing for the Well-being of Children with ADHD and their Families at Home |
| Evropi Stefanidi , Jonathan Wassmann, Paweł W. Woźniak, Gunnar Spellmeyer, Yvonne Rogers Jasmin Niess |
| Many existing technologies for ADHD children and their caregivers focus on symptom management rather than overall well-being, often without involving them as technology co-designers and co-users. To explore how to design systems that integrate into their home and routines, we contribute the iterative design of MoodGems, a situated, modular, and portable set of displays, that allows children to record and share their data with their families. The evaluation also uncovered necessary refinements in the system’s design. We contribute design implications for technologies that empower ADHD children and integrate into their homes, and discuss therapists’ role in technologies that address ADHD families’ lived experiences. |
| Meet MicroCode: a Live and Portable Programming Tool for the BBC micro:bit |
| Kobi Hartley, Elisa Rubegni, Lorraine Underwood, Joe Finney, Thomas Ball, Steve Hodges Eric Anderson Peli de Halleux James Devine Michał Moskal |
| Physical computing has emerged as an effective approach to introducing computing and coding to students. One of the most popular enabling tools is the BBC micro:bit, well-known for its positive impact on teaching programming and driving engagement in the classroom. We extend these benefits by developing a new approach to coding with micro:bit: MicroCode. Unlike other experiences, MicroCode couples the micro:bit with a low-cost handheld accessory to enable live and portable programming via an on-device visual programming language; no separate host computer is needed. We present the design of MicroCode and the findings of a study in which we investigated teachers’ perspectives and children’s experiences. We interviewed five primary school teachers and evaluated MicroCode with 60 children aged 10-11. Our findings show that MicroCode raised children’s engagement and stimulated the development of a strong sense of agency, while teachers felt empowered to adopt situated and cross-curricular learning approaches. |
| A Playful Path to Sustainability: Synthesizing design strategies for children’s environmental sustainability learning through game-centred interventions |
| Raghad Albar, Andrea Gauthier, Asimina Vasalou |
| The climate crisis has created a time of great uncertainty for children and their futures, raising need for new approaches that support children to learn about environmental sustainability (ES) and prepare them for living with climate impacts. Systematic reviews of IDC have highlighted instances of game-centred interventions (i.e., game-based learning (GBL), gamification, and game-authoring) that offer meaningful ES learning opportunities, but there is not yet a comprehensive synthesis of how this is achieved. Our paper reports on a systematic review of 39 interventions to interrogate how game-centred interventions are designed to foster children’s ES learning. Our results contribute four themes: “GBL genres fostering distinct forms of ES understanding”, “gamification as a reinforcer to children’s sustainable action”, “game-authoring allowing children to voice their perspectives to critical audiences”, and “transversal skills embedded in games-centred interventions”. Based on these findings, the paper proposes design implications for future research in games interventions and ES. |
| Expert Insights on Robots for Safeguarding Children: How (not) and Why (not)? |
| Leigh Levinson, Nida Itrat Abbasi , Selma Sabanovic, Hatice Gunes |
| To investigate a robot’s role in children’s welfare and safety, we conducted interviews with 8 Subject Matter Experts and Professionals (SMEs) across the disciplines of robotics, child technology, psychology, and psychiatry disciplines. Through qualitative analysis, we synthesize the challenges of safeguarding, compounding limitations, and potential solutions for involving robots in safeguarding as broadly defined in SME interviews. While they agree robots should not be responsible for making judgement calls, the experts also identified the ways robots can be a valuable addition to the safeguarding team. However, more conversations spanning disciplines need to occur to inform policy and legal frameworks that will better establish a robot’s role in intimate spaces in children’s lives. While this line of inquiry is specific to robots in safeguarding, many of the themes reflect the nuances of finding appropriate places for child-robot interactions in the context of children’s welfare. |
| Personally Targeted Risk vs. Humor: How Online Risk Perceptions of Youth vs. Third-Party Annotators Differ based on Privately Shared Media on Instagram |
| Jinkyung Park, Joshua Gracie, Ashwaq Alsoubai Afsaneh Razi, Pamela Wisniewski |
| While risk is highly subjective, especially when it comes to the private online interactions of youth, third-party annotations are often performed to identify risky content. Therefore, we conducted a mixed-methods study to examine if, how, and why risk perceptions might differ between youth and third-party annotators who were research assistants (RAs). We first asked 100 youth to share their Instagram private messages and flag media that made them feel unsafe. Then, we had RAs annotate the same media to identify what they thought was unsafe or risky. Compared to RAs, youth tended to flag images as risky when they perceived targeted harassment towards them or unwanted solicitations from strangers. In contrast, RAs were more likely to risk-flag sexual images with a humorous undertone shared among friends. Our findings highlight the differences between how online risks are perceived by youth compared to RAs. We provide recommendations for assessing online risks based on multiple perspectives to inform future youth-centered risk mitigation approaches. |
| Bridges, Glitter, and *Spaceship Noises*: Young Children’s Design Ideas for Communication Across Distance |
| Benett Axtell, Cheng Yin Zhu, Carman Neustaedter |
| Young children (3-5 years old) benefit from social connections with distance-separated grandparents and other family, but can struggle to connect in common digital settings like Zoom calls due to asymmetric needs of different generations. Additionally, they cannot currently engage independently with asynchronous family communication, such as texting or sharing media, because existing technologies rely on literacy and technical skills beyond their development. In this paper, we present the results of a co-design probe with 12 young children, collecting and analyzing their ideas for independent communications technologies. Our probe is based on age-appropriate pedagogy, using make-believe play and an original story about astronauts to create a design space that supported their agency as designers. Our young designers’ detailed ideas incorporated broader systems of communication. From those ideas, we present design considerations, including making connection and transmission across devices transparent and integrating learning about wireless communication into their everyday use. |
| `Bee and I need diversity!” Break Filter Bubbles in Recommendation Systems through Embodied AI Learning |
Xiaofei Zhou, Yushan Zhou, Yunfan Gong, Zhenyao Cai, Annie Qiu, Qinqin Xiao, Alissa Antle, Zhen Bai |
| BeeTrap utilizes embodied metaphors (e.g., NEAR-FAR, ITERATION) and analogies (bee pollination) to bridge abstract AI concepts with sensory-motor experiences and familiar STEM contexts. To evaluate our design’s effectiveness and accessibility for a broad range of children, we introduced BeeTrap in a four-day summer camp for middle-school students from underrepresented backgrounds in STEM. Results from pre- & post-tests and interviews show that BeeTrap developed students’ technical understanding of AI recommendations, empowered them to break filter bubbles, and helped them foster new personal and societal perspectives around AI technologies. |
| Is Your Family Ready for VR? Ethical Concerns and Considerations in Children’s VR Usage |
| Qiao Jin, Saba Kawas, Stuti Arora, Ye Yuan Svetlana Yarosh |
| Virtual Reality (VR) has emerged as a transformative technology to revolutionize the education, socialization, and entertainment. However, alongside its promising applications, concerns about potential risks, particularly for young children, have surfaced. We conducted a survey and interview study with 55 parents and 67 children aged 7-13, to identify ethical concerns and design considerations for VR usage in youth populations. This study contributes to the HCI communty by providing empirical insights into the ethical concerns surrounding children’s VR usage, as viewed from both children’s and their parents’ perspectives. These insights stem directly from their perceptions of the risks, benefits, and considerations associated with VR across various usage scenarios. Additionally, our research offers valuable design and research implications for the development of responsible VR practices that balance the advantages and potential risks for children and their families. |
| High-performing Groups during Children’s Collaborative Coding Activities: What Can Multimodal Data Tell Us? |
| Feiran Zhang, Isabella Possaghi, Kshitij Sharma, Sofia Papavlasopoulou |
| Nowadays, learning activities have become more interactive and collaborative than ever before. However, it remains unclear what makes the group perform differently in such a learning context. With the empowerment of multimodal data (MMD), we conducted a field study involving 12 groups of children who collaborated during two-day-long classroom activities. This paper reports on a quantitative analysis and temporal explanation concerning the relation between children’s performance and their group-level MMD measurements during a collaborative coding session in a design thinking activity. We computed each group’s performance based on the created artefacts and compared the groups with better performance than the others. The results demonstrate that high-performing groups show more joint engagement, joint visual attention, and joint emotional intensity of delight, while low-performing groups show significantly more joint emotional intensity of frustration. In addition, the evolution over the four temporal phases showed different patterns between high and low-performing groups. Finally, this paper discusses design and theoretical implications for educators, researchers and practitioners. |
| Transformative agency – the next step towards children’s computational empowerment |
| Netta Iivari, Ole Iversen, Rachel Smith, Marie-Monique Schaper, Leena Ventä-Olkkonen, Heidi Hartikainen, Sumita Sharma, Marianne Kinnula, Essi Lehto, Jenni Holappa, Tonja Molin-Juustila |
| We suggest that transformative agency is brought to the forefront of Participatory Design (PD) in Child-Computer Interaction (CCI) research to scaffold children’s active engagement in matters related to digital technology and its effects on society. Based on Cultural-Historical Activity Theory we define children’s transformative agency as their ability to actively change their own matters, their shared matters, or even societal matters for the better and more just society. The paper reports on a framework for analyzing PD research with children to focus specifically on transformative agency in PD research according to children’s actions of resisting, explicating, envisioning, committing to action and taking action. We demonstrate how PD can support these modes of engagement by providing vignettes from international PD research with children of different ages and in different categories of PD work. Based on the vignettes, we provide a set of additional PD aims to consider when integrating the scaffolding of transformative agency explicitly in PD work with children. We propose that a focus on children’s transformative agency will contribute significantly to the maturing field of Computational Empowerment in CCI as an extension of the current PD work with children. |
| Iteratively Designing a Mobile App for Measuring In-Group Out-Group Bias with Preschool Children |
| Anne Elsässer , Anna Riedmann, Patrick Schneider, Christina Felfe, Birgit Lugrin |
| The phenomena of in-group favoritism and out-group discrimination arise as early as preschool age. Living in increasingly diverse societies, it is therefore important to research these behaviors with children of that age. However, there exists no widely applicable tool that allows to measure in-group out-group bias in young children. |
| In this contribution, we present a mobile app and its iterative implementation process, designed to measure in-group out-group bias in preschool children. The content of the app is based on theoretical knowledge from measuring in-group out-group biases with adults and adapted and digitized for young children. We applied a user-centered design approach and therefore conducted usability tests with the target age group. In addition, we conducted a comparative study to investigate the integration of a virtual peer that supports children using the app. By iteratively improving the app, children rated the final version highly and found it easy to use. Finally, we applied a test retest procedure to show that the measure resulting from our app represents a valid and reliable measure of preschool children’s in-group out-group bias. |
| Investigating Attention and Normative Dissociation in Children’s Online Social Games |
| Amanda Baughan, Yue Fu, Emily Izenman, Samuel Schwamm, Dania Alsabeh, Nicole Powell, Elizabeth Hunt, Michael Rich, David Bickham, Jenny Radesky, Alexis Hiniker |
| Children’s video games are controversial for their deeply engrossing nature. We conducted an interview and observational study with 17 eight-to-thirteen-year-olds to examine how they deploy their attention while gaming. In sessions of approximately 60-75 minutes, a research assistant toured either Roblox or Minecraft, following the lead of a child participant. We analyzed a segment of these interviews to understand participants’ patterns of normative dissociation – experiences of complete cognitive absorption to the point of pausing processing of the environment – as they played, as well as their disengagement experiences. Our analysis revealed that many of our participants had experiences that fit the model of normative dissociation. Participants reported becoming deeply absorbed in games to the point of losing track of time and not paying attention to their surroundings. We find that the design of games may influence patterns of children’s normative dissociation, and in particular, user-paced traveling through the game environments and game-initiated pauses allowed children to more easily attend to stimuli outside of the game. We recommend an expansion of parental controls for children’s games to include collaborative time management tools to help children disengage more easily. |
| ContextQ: Generated Questions to Support Meaningful Parent-Child Dialogue While Co-Reading |
| Griffin Dietz Smith, Siddhartha Prasad, Matt Davidson, Leah Findlater, R. Benjamin Shapiro |
| Much of early literacy education happens at home with caretakers reading books to young children, yet over a third of children entering kindergarten lack critical reading readiness skills. Prior research has demonstrated how having dialogue with children during co-reading can develop these competencies, but most adult readers are unsure if and how to lead effective conversations. We present ContextQ, a tablet-based reading application to unobtrusively present auto-generated dialogic questions to caretakers to support this dialogic reading practice. An ablation study demonstrates how our method of encoding educator expertise into the question generation pipeline can produce high-quality output; and through a user study with 12 parent-child dyads (child age: 4–6), we demonstrate that this system can serve as a guide for parents in leading contextually meaningful dialogue, leading to significantly more conversational turns from both the parent and the child and to deeper conversations with connections to the child’s everyday life. |
| Understanding Adult Stakeholder Perspectives on the Ethics of Extended Reality Technologies with a Focus on Young Children and Children in Rural Areas |
| Juan Pablo Hourcade, Summer Schmuecker, Delaney Norris, Flannery Currin |
| This paper presents the qualitative analysis of 24 sessions conducted with parents, teachers, medical professionals, and other stakeholders with the goal of learning about the ethics of extended reality (XR) technologies with a focus on young children and rural areas. The sessions included discussions of fears and hopes with respect to technologies and children based on prior literature, in-depth consideration of a broad range of potential use scenarios, explanations of how XR headsets work, and use of commercially available headsets. An inductive analysis of notes from sessions resulted in a data structure with the following aggregate dimensions: 1.) privacy and safety; 2.) managing content; 3.) developmental, physical, and behavioral impacts; 4.) broad concerns about emerging technologies; 5.) balancing XR and reality; and 6.) contextual considerations. We include details on each of these aggregate dimensions as well as a grounded model derived from them, providing examples of how these dimensions interact with each other to influence stakeholder perspectives on the ethics of specific uses of XR. |
| “I Just Don’t Care Enough To Be Interested”: Teens’ Moment-By-Moment Experiences on Instagram |
| Rotem Landesman, Jina Yoon, JaeWon Kim, Daniela Munoz Lopez, Lucia Magis-Weinberg, Alexis Hiniker, Katie Davis |
| Prior research links teens’ social media use to a reduction in their sense of well-being. The current study investigates how design mediates this link, with an overarching goal of designing better social media experiences for teens. We conducted a mixed-method study with teens (N=25, Mage= 16.5 years) to investigate their moment-by-moment experiences and emotional states while using Instagram. Our analysis showed that teens’ experiences on Instagram often entailed sifting through a “content soup” dominated by uninteresting, irrelevant content. Boredom served as a reason to enter Instagram, a justification to leave, and as a dominant feeling during a session. The promise of social connection was the main motivator for teens to use Instagram. Teens developed strategies to maintain a state of emotional equilibrium as they sought moments of connection with friends: (1) Feed gatekeeping, (2) Backpedaling away from negative content, (3) Choosing to hide like-counts, and (4) Avoiding notification whiplash. |
| A Systematic Review of the Probes Method in Research with Children and Families |
| Seray Ibrahim, Alissa Antle, Julie Kientz, Graham Pullin, Petr Slovak |
| Since their introduction, there has been wide discussion about how probes are used in human computer interaction (HCI) research. This variation can be problematic for researchers and designers who plan on using probes in the child computer interaction space, as it can be difficult to know which approach is best suited to address their design situation. In this review, we surveyed the ways that HCI researchers have used probes in studies with children and families. Based on 25 articles, we analysed the methodological decisions that researchers have taken in their empirical studies, relating to: a.) the goals for using the probes, b.) the probe itself, c.) participant involvement, and d.) the data and data use. Based on our methodological findings, we highlight four key tensions—including probes as sources of information versus creative input–and consider questions that can guide decision making for developing probes studies with children and families. |
| ArticuMotion: Towards Assessing Motor Speech Disorders via Gamification |
| Ghada Alsebayel, Mahsa Nasri, Caleb Myers, Giovanni Troiano, Elaheh Hatamimajoumerd Sarah Ostadabbas Kristen Allison Casper Harteveld |
| Assessing speech disorders in early childhood is challenging, and Speech-Language Pathologists (SLPs) play a key role in addressing such a challenge. However, tools to assess speech disorders are often not child-friendly, and SLPs struggle to keep young patients engaged. We introduce ArticuMotion, a child-friendly app that supports the assessment of speech disorders while engaging children in gamified experiences. ArticuMotion allows SLPs to collect visual data that can help identify motor speech disorders while engaging children with a gamified clinical assessment, consisting of uttering specific words (e.g., Buy Bobby a Puppy) while playing as astronauts or in a zoo safari. We run participatory design to co-design ArticuMotion with SLPs and test the resulting product in a user study with nine preschool children. ArticuMotion has promise as a gamified assessment for motor speech disorders and shows a potential avenue for designing clinical tools that are useful while being child-friendly. |
| Bridging the Gaps: Participatory Science Communication and Dissemination With and for Children |
| Bieke Zaman, Emilie Bossens, Priscilla Van Even |
| This paper addresses a critical gap within the Interaction Design and Children (IDC) community, known for its use of participatory methods, by investigating the application of such approaches in science communication and dissemination with and for children. Through a case study with a cross-disciplinary literature review, we examine a participatory design process aimed at developing a research dissemination strategy through a multi-stakeholder approach. Our findings underscore the interconnectedness of what is communicated (content) and how it is presented (form). Key considerations of research ethics, child-led research, and children’s rights and benefits motivated why particular design decisions were made (rationale). We argue for comprehensive training of the next generation of IDC scholars in meaningful participatory science communication and dissemination, supporting positive impacts on children’s lives and bridging the gap between IDC research, practice, and broader societal engagement. |
| From Pirate Islands to Routing Tables: Investigating Intermediate Representations in Concreteness Fading through AR Learning |
| Anthony Trory, Kate Howland, Judith Good, Benedict du Boulay |
| With the recent surge of interest in computing education for younger children, concrete representations (such as visualisations and physical manipulatives) have enabled children to understand concepts that, in abstract form, may otherwise be considered too advanced. Introducing children to computing concepts in a concrete way may be more engaging, and necessary at younger ages, but there is also a need for effective methods for progressing from this towards abstract understanding. Concreteness fading approaches have previously been applied in computing contexts with some success, but questions remain about how to design learning environments that most effectively support this progression, including the role of the intermediate representation stages. This paper presents an augmented reality (AR) environment for learning introductory topics in computer networks using a concreteness fading approach. An evaluation study with 59 children aged 9-10 investigated the effect of a gradual fading of concrete representations across through an increased number of intermediate representation stages, using a between-groups pre-test / post-test design. Three groups were compared: concrete -> concrete -> abstract (“two-step”), concrete -> intermediate – > abstract (“three-step”), and concrete -> concrete/intermediate -> intermediate -> intermediate/abstract -> abstract (“five step”). The results showed a statistically significant difference between the two-step and three-step groups, in favour of three-step, which confirms the value of explicitly linking mutual referents in the intermediate stage when moving from concrete to abstract representations. No statistically significant difference was found between the three-step and five-step groups, suggesting that increasing the number of intermediate stages further does not significantly improve the learning outcomes. We discuss the implications of these findings for the design of educational technology for children. |
| “Why is Everything in the Cloud?”:Co-Designing Visual Cues Representing Data Processes with Children |
| Kaiwen Sun, Ritesh Kanchi, Frances Marie Tabio, Ello Li-Neishin Co, Mandy Wu, Susan Gelman, Jenny Radesky, Florian Schaub, Jason Yip |
| Children struggle to understand hidden data processes (e.g. inferences) and related privacy implications (e.g. profiling). Children use visual cues to reason about technical processes in digital products, sometimes drawing inaccurate conclusions when interface cues are vague or absent. We conducted five consecutive participatory design sessions with children (ages 7–12), probing their perceptions of visual cues and data processes; and iteratively design and review new visual cues with them. We found that children conceptualized data collection concretely, lacked awareness of its pervasive nature, showed selective understanding of data inferences, and recognized certain visual cues (e.g., loading, cloud) without explaining their symbolic meanings. Our design of “symbolic’’ and “concrete’’ two visual cues styles utilizing icons and metaphors helped children understand data flows among places. Our work contributes to developing comprehensible visual cues for children that support data and privacy literacy. We discuss design and policy implications of our findings. |
| Navigating Academic Transition: Unveiling Mental Health Challenges in the Shift from High School to University |
| Noverah Khan, Syeda Rida Fatima, Kanza Aijaz, Suleman Shahid |
| In this paper, we explore the various mental health concerns among high school students, particularly those transitioning to university, within the context of the Global South. The study addresses the carry-over effects of social and emotional concerns, recognizing that unresolved issues from high school can compound the challenges faced by students in adapting to university life. In response to our findings, we developed a wellness application named WellConn, which is tailored to provide more effective and efficient care to students aged 14-18 who are struggling with mental health issues. The primary goal of WellConn is to mitigate uncertainties surrounding mental health concerns among students and address the delayed care-giving process that often occurs during the transition to university. This intervention aims to support students in navigating the new university environment while addressing both pre-existing concerns from high school and emerging issues during the transitional period. |