Transformative Technologies for Children: Going beyond ‘Good’

ACM SIGCHI Conference 2024 Hybrid Half-day Workshop

Second round deadline for submissions: 9th March 2024

Motivation

Against the backdrop of growing screen time, rising mental health issues, increasing loneliness, and general ill effects from technology use, it is time for the CHI community to consider how technology for children can be better than ‘good’. There are many examples of good technologies across research and commercial products, for technology to be more than ‘good’ it needs to have a transformative effect on children’s lives that lasts beyond a monetary positive experience. Such technology could, for example, build resilience, encourage compassion, promote inclusive behaviors, and improve overall happiness. This workshop will explore what better than ‘good’ technology may look like and create a manifesto for the CHI community to support Transformative Technologies for children in our work. More detialed motiviaition for this workshop can be found here.

Participation

To join our half-day hybrid workshop please submit your transformative designs, theoretical positions, measurement and evaluation tools, design techniques, lived experiences, and other work relevant to the workshop in a short paper (up to five pages CEURART format). Please email your submission as a pdf directly to dbfitton@uclan.ac.uk by 22nd Feb 2024 extended until 9th March 2024. Accepted papers will be published via https://ceur-ws.org/ after the workshop, authors will also be invited to submit to a special issue of the International Journal of Child-Computer Interaction. At least one author of each accepted submission must attend the workshop and all workshop participants must register for both the workshop and for at least one day of the CHI conference.

Programme

Introduction:Organizers introduce the workshop and explain the schedule
Framing the Problem:Guest speaker “Childhood in 2023” Explaining the key challenges that young people face
The Transformed Child Panel Discussion: Building on the key points from the previous presentation, participants answer the question What are the characteristics of a transformed child?
Sharing Contributions:Participants give 2-minute summaries of their papers/videos
Designing a Manifesto:Groups will explore the question “What does the technology have to do to be transformative?”
Defining a Manifesto:Groups come together to share, elucidate and prioritize issues identified through their discussion which contribute to a draft manifesto
RoadMap 1:Groups focus on topics identified previously and explore the question Where we are now and where we need to go?’
RoadMap 2:Groups and topics rotate
Plenary Panel Discussion:Outputs from group discussion are shared, key areas are identified, and a roadmap for future work in this area is agreed

Organizers

Dan Fitton is a Reader (Associate Professor) in User-Experience Design and works within the Child-Computer Interaction (CHiCI) research group at the University of Central Lancashire in the UK. He is particularly interested in techniques for involving children and teenagers in the co-design of new and novel interactive technologies, and in understanding how to create technology for younger users. His recent work has focused on understanding the deceptive design practices that young people encounter in their mobile apps and games (e.g. [7, 8]). He has led the organization and delivery of many successful workshops at ACM conferences in the past.
Janet C Read is a Professor of Child Computer Interaction at UCLan, Preston where she founded and directs the ChiCI group (www.chici.org). Recent work has focused on the ethics of including children in HCI research. A recent RAEng funded study highlighted to her the complex difficulties associated with the modern childhood and it is this perspective that she brings to this workshop.
Eva Eriksson, PhD, Associate professor in Interaction design at Aarhus University in Denmark. Eva specializes in developing technologies through participatory design in the field of child-computer interaction with a focus on public learning institutions. She has led several research projects focusing on scaffolding collaboration in children in special education.
Elizabeth (“Beth”) Bonsignore is an assistant research professor at the University of Maryland’s College of Information Studies and Human-Computer Interaction Lab (HCIL). Her research explores the design of interactive play and social experiences that promote new media literacies, arts-integrated science learning, and participatory culture. She co-designs and advocates with youth, families, and local communities with the goal of including and empowering youth historically underrepresented in STEM/computing to advance in these fields. Her recent collaborations with amazing graduate students have explored the challenges (and conundrum) of making participatory design as inclusive as possible through asset-based design and funds of identity (e.g., [4, 5, 15]).
Prof. Netta Iivari’s research interest concerns understanding and strengthening children’s participation in shaping and making their digital futures. Particularly she has addressed the topic of empowerment of children in and through design and making. Recently, she has specifically focused on critical design and making in collaboration with children, exploring a variety of critical, participatory, empowering, speculative design approaches, such as design fiction, design activism and theatre of the oppressed. She has collaborated with children to tackle the problem of bullying at school. She is interested in ethical, value-laden, and power and politics related aspects as intermingled with design.
Heidi Hartikainen is a postdoctoral researcher in Child-Computer Interaction. She is interested in the themes of activism and empowerment through technology design, especially concerning youth safety and security online. She draws from critical and participatory methods when engaging youth to critically examine emerging technologies and envision our technological futures.
Rhona Anne Dick currently is the Lead Education and Child Development at Lingokids. She has worked in the field of education for 14 years with a diverse range of nationalities and ages between 2 to 99 years old. She has held various positions from being teacher, Head of Department, teacher-trainer, course content developer, university course designer, curriculum designer through to educational game designer. Some of her qualifications include: Bachelor’s degree in Modern Languages, Postgraduate degree in Education with specialization in Language Learning, Master's in Instructional Design and Technology and Minor qualifications in Early Years Education and ESL Education. She has published articles in top Spanish and Mexican newspapers and magazines such as El Pais, ABC, Hola and Ser Padres on a broad range of educational topics and has served as an expert on Spain's popular radio stations, Cadena Ser and Onda Cero. The curriculum she designed at Lingokids has lead to several awards such as Good Housekeeping Parenting Award (2023), Kidscreen Awards for Best Learning App (2002) and (2003), Ed Tech Breakthrough Awards for Best Language Learning App (2023) and voted by Apple as the #1 app for teachers.

Outputs

From the workshop will deliver an IJCCI (Elsevier International Journal of Child-Compute Interaction) edition to showcase both the design ideas and research contributions from this workshop; workshop participants will be encouraged to extend and submit their contributions to this special issue. Post-workshop, the organizers will finalize the manifesto for the CHI community for supporting Transformative Technologies for Children, this will be published via https://ceur-ws.org (along with the other workshop contributions) and the organizers will seek dialog with relevant leaders within the CHI community around how we can take this agenda forward. The Roadmap for future work will also be finalized by the workshop organizers and shared on the workshop web site along with all the resources gathered during the workshop.