Introduction

Research in the Child Computer Interaction (CCI) and Interaction Design and Children (IDC) domain is predominantly focused around the design and evaluation of existing and novel interactive technologies, together with suitable methods that work with this unique user group. The majority of this research focuses on pre-teenage children between the ages of 4 and 11 leaving a large gap in literature for children within the high school age range of 12 and 17.

Methodologies specifically designed for working with children between 12 and 17 are rare, and methodologies themselves are often not the main focus of research studies involving this user group. It is the aim of this workshop to identify and highlight these methodologies bringing them to the forefront of future research with this unique and important user population, creating collaborations and momentum to fill these literature voids.

Research with Teenagers

Currently research with teenagers has featured to a small extent in the CCI and IDC communities as well as in the general CHI community. Examples include field studies (observations and interviews) with older teens [3], studies using contextual design to specifically understand teenagers [6], ethnographic methods, as used in the BuddySync project [11] and participatory approaches, including in design [7].

In these examples, and in many more across the research landscape, well-understood methods are used with little adaptation. The research community accepts that these well-used methods can be used with teenagers with little specialized consideration - this may well be the case and the authors of this workshop accept that as a possibility - but just as studies with think aloud revealed limitations as to its use with children [2], [1], so studies may be needed to ascertain what the limits are of well-used methods with teenagers.

The child computer interaction community has responded to the discovery that not all methods are suitable for use with children by proposing methods and tools that are specifically designed for young participants. These include adaptations of survey methods like the Fun Toolkit and Laddering [9], [13], methods for observing child-centered behavior, as seen in the work on physical games [12], approaches to assist in requirements gathering including the innovative Mission form Mars method [4] and new approaches to evaluation and problem discovery like peer tutoring [5].

The development of these new methods for child users and child participants was mainly driven by an understanding that children are both cognitively and physically different from adults. Children lack certain skills, like the ability to parse and understand complex question-answer products, are literal and so may not be able to differentiate between being asked to describe what something is versus what something does, and their activities and actions may be prompted by things not present in adult situations. The motivations of children are different from the motivations of adults - their attention spans might be shorter and their desire can be greater. Adding into this is the context of work with children where, more often than not, the studies and work might take place in a highly regulated place (like school) or a very supportive place (like home) [8].

Motivation for New Work

It is not all that clear to what extent teenagers might need special methods but we propose three situations which, in our opinion, support the development of this research area.

1. Teenagers are different cognitively and emotionally from adults. Recent research has evidenced that the teenage brain is in a state of continual change [10] and thus it behaves differently; significantly, the teenage brain is more willing to engage in risky behavior. Understanding the impact of this on teenage behaviors around usability testing, opinion reporting and designing is an area where the IDC and CHI communities should be considering as a rich new area to investigate. It can be hypothesized that some methods, especially those that have the opportunity to flirt with extreme responses and actions might not be well suited to teenage use. Designing these risky behaviors in, however, might also be possible were there to be methods specially constructed and designed for this age group.
2. Teenagers have childlike tendencies which should not discount some of the child-centered methods for this age group. Recent work has shown, for instance, that a variation of the Mission from Mars method could be used successfully with teenage children and in fact was appropriated with humor and imagination (in press). Capturing and using the honesty and frankness of teenagers is one area where evaluators and designers could focus work. In many situations, and given the right tools, teenagers may be the best evaluators of technologies, and with their imaginative risk taking minds, the best designers of products.
3. Teenagers have their own environments that, just as for the children, result in certain behaviors being supported. The collaborative nature of teenagers and their social infrastructures all create a landscape of chatter, a language of socialization and a 'crowd sourced' platform where the opinions of many come together to form the opinion of the mass. The possibility to understand this space, and to understand how to design for and within it, in terms of research methods is enticing but not yet studied. There may be new research methods that can use this teenage crowd to great effect.

Join in the Challenge

From the studies and rationale outlined above it is clear that there is a void on methods and on the understanding of methods that is waiting to be explored and filled. This workshop seeks to begin the process of understanding that void, of considering what needs to be done to fill it and of starting to add methods into it that have been shown to work with teenage users.

The workshop organizers seek insights in this space which will drive the research forward. Work that is submitted may include case studies that expose the need for new methods with associated requirements, new ideas based on theoretical underpinnings, research papers that examine a hypotheses, and position papers that define important areas for consideration.

References

1. Als, B.S., J.J. Jensen, and M.B. Skov. Comparison of think-aloud and constructive interaction in usability testing with children in IDC 2005. 2005. Colorado, US: ACM Press.
2. Baauw, E. and P. Markopoulos. A comparison of think-aloud and post-task interview for usability testing with children. in IDC 2004. 2004. College Park, Maryland, US.
3. Berg, S., A.S. Taylor, and R. Harper. Mobile Phones for the Next Generation: Device Designs for Teenagers. in CHI 2003. 2003. Ft Lauderdale, Florida: ACM Press.
4. Dindler, C., et al. Mission from Mars - A Method for Exploring User Requirements for Children in a Narrative Space. in IDC. 2005. Boulder, CO: ACM Press.
5. Höysniemi, J., P. Hämäläinen, and L. Turkki, Using Peer Tutoring in Evaluating the Usability of a Physically Interactive Computer Game. Interacting with Computers, 2003. 15(2): p. 203 - 225.
6. Kangas, E. and T. Kinnunen, Applying usercentered design to mobile application development. Commun. ACM, 2005. 48(7): p. 55- 59.
7. Labrune, J.-B. and W. Mackay, Telebeads: social network mnemonics for teenagers, in Proceedings of the 2006 conference on Interaction design and children 2006, ACM: Tampere, Finland. p. 57-64.
8. Read, J.C. and M.M. Bekker. The Nature of Child Computer Interaction. in HCI2011. 2011. Newcastle, UK: BCS.
9. Read, J.C. and S.J. MacFarlane. Using the Fun Toolkit and Other Survey Methods to Gather Opinions in Child Computer Interaction. in Interaction Design and Children, IDC2006. 2006. Tampere, Finland: ACM Press.
10. Ruder, D.B., A work in progress: The teen brai, in Harvard Magazine 2011.
11. Sacher, H. and G. Loudon, Uncovering the new wireless interaction paradigm. Interactions, 2002. 9(1): p. 17-23.
12. Soute, I., P. Markopoulos, and R. Magielse, Head up Games: Combining the best of both worlds by merging traditional and digital play. Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, 2010. 14(5): p. 435 - 444.
13. Zaman, B. and V.V. Abeele. Laddering with young children in User eXperience evaluations: theoretical groundings and a practical case. in IDC'10. 2010. ACM Press.