CHI 2010: Co-Designing for + with the iChild

Designing for the iChild – Allison Druin U of MD, Mona Leigh Guha U of MD, Jerry Alan Fails (Montclair)

Add’l dimensions in design now:
Partner location (collacted to distrbutied)
Scale of content (closed to infinite) – e.g. internet
Relationship to physical (dependent not deep, disconnected) – role of taking content onto mobile vs not

The iChild is…
Interactive, independent, international, information active, socially aware, highly mobile

Gary Marsden work in South Africa – pictures of kids with cell phones

http://people.cs.uct.ac.za/~gaz/research.html

Kids leapfrogging over old tech to new tech (kids in Africa didn’t have desktop computer, but have a cell phone)

Cooperative Inquiry:

• A method of design partnering with children – Druin, 1999
• Kids are researchers, adults are partners
• Techniques include sticky note critiquing, low tech prototyping, mixing ideas

Bonded Design techniques include:
Drawing, brainstorming, games, journaling, demonstrations, surveys

• Adults bring materials, short shots such as coming into school for selected period of time

Bluebells technique (Kelly et. A. 2006)

• Three phased design process:
• Before play (adults make decisions)
• During play (children)
• After play (adults)

Children as software designers (Kafai 1996, 1999)
Children become programmers of software, children are designers – not partners

#1: Co-designing for Mobility Technique:

Low tech prototypes with art supplies in small groups with high ratio of adults to children (working as partners – not observing)
Examples:

(1)     tangible flags: use tablets to enhance learning on field trips (Chipman et al. 2006)

(2)     mobile stories: use mobile devices for collaborative narrative system (Jerry Fails phd research)

Task: work on app or change ipad hardware for kid reporters – what does future ipad look like to enable you to be a kid reporter at this conference?

#2: Layered Elaboration Technique:

Groups create a storyboard to solve a problem
Groups iterate upon each other’s designs using transparencies
Groups share their ideas in “stand up” meetings

Example:
Interactive game designed to teach children about energy conservation (see note from conference proceedings)

#3: Distributed co-design

• Techniques for working with design partners who are not physically co-located, and may be working across time zones
• Depending on needs and resources of teams, can be done in variety of ways including:
• video co-design (video conference)
• eCo-design (send ideas via email “the hub” and adults are the “spokes” – doing elaboration from those ideas)

interactive co-design (new tech allow users to pass information)