ABSTRACT
Change is an inevitable part of a parent's role, whether due to their child's development, family life, or external events. To understand the information needs of parents navigating change, we studied the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic as a widely experienced disruption in the lives of parents and children. We interviewed 16 parents about their caregiving experience as the COVID-19 pandemic collapsed boundaries between home, school, and work. In particular, we asked about adjustments to behavioral care, or the social learning, supports, and interventions through which children develop social and emotional skills. We focused on parents of children already receiving accommodations and behavioral support from their school, to understand how disruptions in these services affected the role of the parent in meeting their child's individual needs. Applying role theory and the Kübler-Ross change curve, we describe the coping mechanisms that parents used to navigate the stages of change, as well as the information needs that remained unmet, despite their efforts. We discuss how practitioner-initiated and parent-centered supports can be designed around the lived experience of change, by accommodating a parent's capacity to accept and use help at different stages. © 2022 ACM.
ABSTRACT
Child health and well-being are declining in the U.S. with decreases in physical activity and preventive medical visits [19] and increases in child anxiety and depression, and especially since COVID-19. Children's health-related routines are developed and maintained within families to ensure that health-enhancing behaviors occur. In middle childhood, children have the capacity to be involved in tracking and planning routine health behaviors. However, technologies for family routines do not typically involve children's input. Additionally, children, parents, and researchers disagree on the extent to which technology should be a part of children's routines. Thus, it is important to study the role of technology in children's routines and the extent to which they want autonomy support. I apply a theoretical perspective that frames family routines as a form of collective behavior that renders health-related behaviors automatic, and that rely upon artifacts to prompt such automatic behaviors (e.g., teeth brushing). The dissertation uses an interview study and participatory design sessions with child-parent dyads to explore the nature of children's health-related routines in the digital age to better understand: (1) the role, if any, technology plays in family routine development, maintenance, and performance, (2) the impact of these uses on child health and well-being, (3) how parenting style influences these uses, (4) how children want technology to support their health and well-being, and (5) the extent to which children want technology to support autonomy in the development, maintenance, and performance of family routines. This dissertation will inform the design of family informatics tools that can provide autonomy support, which can positively influence child health and well-being. © 2022 Owner/Author.
ABSTRACT
Older adults can experience significant changes to their social networks as they age, triggering changes in their social connection practices. In this paper, we extend research on older adults' connectedness behaviors using a multimodal connectedness framing - that is, how they engage with others across platforms, devices, and modalities. Using the COVID-19 pandemic as a case study, we investigate how older adults navigate a major change or infrastructural breakdown in their social routines. We conducted a survey with 146 U.S.-based older adults (65+), and follow-up interviews with a subset of 23 survey respondents. Findings revealed the resilience and innovation with which older adults adapted their behaviors across multiple modalities to maintain social relationships and playfully connect with others in person and online. Using these findings, we propose that research on designing for aging extend beyond designing for connection in the smart home;we argue for a design agenda that prioritizes designing for smart relationships with the potential to persist across spaces via multimodal connectedness. © 2021 ACM.