ABSTRACT
Having a healthy social life is an important part of our mental health, especially when it comes to children. Kids need to feel a connection between the environments in which they both live and play. In the last two years, COVID-19 pandemic has impacted our lives both personally and professionally. Because of the pandemic, meeting people in physical locations has been problematic. This situation has only amplified the need to foster connections. Technology plays a crucial role in helping children stay connected, however, we have found that children are more accepting of this when they are allowed to be able to take more active role in developing these platforms. Creating virtual environments, for example, has been shown to increase the interest of children in reaching out to their friends and family, and connecting with others across time zones, languages, and cultures. The children's Idea Booklet, from the 2022 ACM Interaction Design and Children (IDC) Research & Design Challenge identified significant interest in children using VR headset technology to connect with friends and family. Our research team, KidsTeam, built on these ideas to design KidConnect VR. KidConnect VR allows kids to connect with others via a virtual environment. This environment can be built to look like their surrounding area. In the virtual world, children can play, chat, and even study with friends. © 2022 Owner/Author.
ABSTRACT
The role that technology plays in supporting children at school and at home is more prominent than ever before due to the global COVID-19 pandemic. This has prompted us to focus the 6th International and Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Children & Recommender and Information Retrieval Systems (KidRec) workshop on what the lasting changes will be to the design and development of child information retrieval systems. After two years, are information retrieval systems used more in and out of the classroom? Are they more interactive, more or less personalized? What is the impact on the research and business community? Are there long-term and unexpected changes on the design, ethics, and algorithms? The primary goal of our workshop continues to be to build community by bringing together researchers, practitioners, and other stakeholders from various backgrounds and disciplines to understand and advance information retrieval systems for children. © 2022 Owner/Author.
ABSTRACT
In this workshop, we invite researchers, practitioners and designers to reflect on ethical issues arising from Distributed Participatory Design (DPD) research with children. As participatory design research practices require rethinking and innovative adaptation in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, distributed, asynchronous and online (D)PD approaches may provide solutions to participation barriers. However, in light of this adaptation, additional ethical complexities may arise. Ongoing collaborative discussion is required to identify and address the different types of ethical issues which may arise when planning and conducting DPD projects with children. This workshop builds on previous workshops held at IDC 2021 and 2020, which provided insights into developing a protocol for a world-wide DPD project with children. © 2022 Owner/Author.
ABSTRACT
In this workshop, we invite researchers and practitioners as participants in co-designing the protocol for the world's largest Distributed Participatory Design (DPD) project with children. Participatory Design-whose inclusive benefits are broadly recognised in design-can be very challenging, especially when involving children. The current COVID-19 pandemic has given rise to further barriers to PD with such groups. Recent key barriers include social distancing and government-imposed social restrictions due to the additional health risks to vulnerable children and their families. This disrupts traditional in-person PD (which involves close socio-emotional and often physical collaboration between participants and researchers). However, alongside such barriers, we have identified opportunities for new and augmented approaches to PD across distributed geographies, backgrounds, ages and abilities. We invite the CCI community to examine Distributed Participatory Design (DPD) as a solution for overcoming these new barriers, during and after COVID-19. Together, we offer new ways to think about DPD, and unpick some of its ambiguities. This workshop builds on work conducted in a similar workshop in IDC 2020, and this year will focus on the planning and design of the protocol for the world's largest DPD project with children. © 2021 Owner/Author.