Child–Computer Interaction: From a systematic review towards an integrated understanding of interaction design methods for children

in International Journal of Child - Computer Interaction (2021), 100398

Child–Computer Interaction (CCI) is a steadily growing field that focuses on children as a prominent and emergent user group. For more than twenty years, the Interaction Design for Children (IDC ... [more ▼]

Child–Computer Interaction (CCI) is a steadily growing field that focuses on children as a prominent and emergent user group. For more than twenty years, the Interaction Design for Children (IDC) community has developed, extended, and advanced research and design methods for children’s involvement in designing and evaluating interactive technologies. However, as the CCI field evolves, the need arises for an integrated understanding of interaction design methods currently applied. To that end, we analyzed 272 full papers across a selection of journals and conference venues from 2005 to 2020. Our review contributes to the literature on this topic by (1) examining a holistic child population, including developmentally diverse children and children from 0 to 18 years old, (2) illustrating the interplay of children’s and adults’ roles across different methods, and (3) identifying patterns of triangulation in the methods applied while taking recent ethical debates about children’s involvement in design into account. While we found that most studies were conducted in natural settings, we observed a preference for evaluating interactive artifacts at a single point in time. Method triangulation was applied in two-thirds of the papers, with a preference for qualitative methods. Researchers used triangulation predominantly with respect to mainstream methods that were not specifically developed for child participants, such as user observation combined with semi-structured interviews or activity logging. However, the CCI field employs a wide variety of creative design methods which engage children more actively in the design process by having them take on roles such as informant and design partner. In turn, we see that more passive children’s roles, e.g., user or tester, are more often linked to an expert mindset by the adult. Adults take on a wider spectrum of roles in the design process when addressing specific developmental groups, such as children with autism spectrum disorder. We conclude with a critical discussion about the constraints involved in conducting CCI research and discuss implications that can inform future methodological advances in the field and underlying challenges. [less ▲]

Experimenter Effects in Children Using the Smileyometer Scale

Scientific Conference (2020, November 19)

Researchers in the social sciences like human-computer interaction face novel challenges concerning the development of methods and tools for evaluating interactive technology with children. One of these ... [more ▼]

Researchers in the social sciences like human-computer interaction face novel challenges concerning the development of methods and tools for evaluating interactive technology with children. One of these challenges is related to the validity and reliability of user experience measurement tools. Scale designs, like the Smileyometer, have been proven to contain biases such as the tendency for children to rate almost every technology as great. This explorative paper discusses a possible effect of two experimenter styles on the distribution of 6-8 years old pupils' ratings (N= 73) to the Smileyometer. We administered the scale before and after a tablet-based assessment in two schools. Experimenter 1 employed a child-directed speech compared to a monotone speech of Experimenter 2. While brilliant (5 out of 5) was the most frequent answer option in all conditions, the mean scores were higher and associated with a lower variability across both conditions for Experimenter 2. We discuss a possible experimenter effect in the Smileyometer and implications for evaluating children’s user experiences. [less ▲]

User Experience challenges for designing and evaluating Computer-Based Assessments for children

in Proceedings of IDC '19, the 18th ACM International Conference on Interaction Design and Children (2019, June 12)

Computer-Based Assessment (CBA), i.e., the use of computers instead of paper & pencil for testing purposes is now increasingly used, both in education and in the workforce. Along with this trend, several ... [more ▼]

Computer-Based Assessment (CBA), i.e., the use of computers instead of paper & pencil for testing purposes is now increasingly used, both in education and in the workforce. Along with this trend, several issues regarding the usage of computers in assessment can be raised. With respect to CBA, test validity and acceptance appear at stake during interacting with a complex assessment system. For instance, individual differences in computer literacy (i.e. ability to handle technology) might cause different outcomes that are not related to the problem-solving task. Prior investigation has shown that there is a scarcity of research on the User Experience (UX) in the context of CBA, also due to a focus on adult users. This doctoral thesis aims to adapt and develop new evaluation methods from the Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) field, applied in the context of CBA. The contributions will result in the development of best practices guidelines for both research and practitioners by adopting design and evaluation methods drawn from the field of Child-computer Interaction (CCI). [less ▲]