Voice-based Conversational Agents (CAs) are increasingly being used by children. Through a review of 38 research papers, this work maps trends, themes, and methods of empirical research on children and CAs in HCI research over the last decade. A thematic analysis of the research found that work in this domain focuses on seven key topics: ascribing human-like qualities to CAs, CAs’ support of children’s learning, the use and role of CAs in the home and family context, CAs’ support of children’s play, children’s storytelling with CA, issues concerning the collection of information revealed by CAs, and CAs designed for children with differing abilities. Based on our findings, we identify the needs to account for children's intersectional identities and linguistic and cultural diversity and theories from multiple disciples in the design of CAs, develop heuristics for child-centric interaction with CAs, to investigate implications of CAs on social cognition and interpersonal relationships, and to examine and design for multi-party interactions with CAs for different domains and contexts.
https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3491102.3502016
Educational technologies offer benefits in the classroom but there are barriers to their successful integration, including teachers’ pedagogical beliefs and their skills and experience. Participatory Design (PD) approaches offer one way in which teachers can be directly involved in the design of classroom technologies, however PD processes alone fail to address the challenges of integrating technology within existing practices. In this paper we propose co-teaching as a novel form of co-design practice. We describe a two year longitudinal Co-Teaching project resulting in the development and use of three digital designs for the classroom. Using the TPACK model to guide our reflections we offer insights into the ways that co-teaching can support the design and integration of educational technologies. We suggest that co-teaching as a form of co-design practice offers a way to move teachers from passive adopters of technology to active participants in the design and integration of educational technologies.
https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3491102.3517667
Social robots are increasingly introduced into children's lives as educational and social companions, yet little is known about how these products might best be introduced to their environments. The emergence of the ``unboxing'' phenomenon in media suggests that introduction is key to technology adoption where initial impressions are made. To better understand this phenomenon toward designing a positive unboxing experience in the context of social robots for children, we conducted three field studies with families of children aged 8 to 13: (1) an exploratory free-play activity ($n=12$); (2) a co-design session ($n=11$) that informed the development of a prototype box and a curated unboxing experience; and (3) a user study ($n=9$) that evaluated children's experiences. Our findings suggest the unboxing experience of social robots can be improved through the design of a creative aesthetic experience that engages the child socially to guide initial interactions and foster a positive child-robot relationship.
https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3491102.3501955
Children are being presented with augmented reality (AR) in different contexts, such as education and gaming. However, little is known about how children conceptualize AR, especially AR headsets. Prior work has shown that children's interaction behaviors and expectations of technological devices can be quite different from adults'. It is important to understand children's mental models of AR headsets to design more effective experiences for them. To elicit children's perceptions, we conducted four participatory design sessions with ten children on designing content for imaginary AR headsets. We found that children expect AR systems to be highly intelligent and to recognize and virtually transform surroundings to create immersive environments. Also, children are in favor of using these devices for difficult tasks but prefer to work on their own for easy tasks. Our work contributes new understanding on how children comprehend AR headsets and provides recommendations for designing future headsets for children.
https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3491102.3501979