The imprisonment of parents has severe consequences for their relationship to their children. Thus, ensuring valuable contact between them is crucial for parent’s social rehabilitation and children’s development and well-being. However, visits are often not child-friendly and lack interaction. We see social VR as a means to address these issues. In this paper, we share findings of a user-centered design process of a virtual reality application that allows imprisoned parents to meet their children. Our pilot study with four dyads of children and imprisoned fathers revealed that both appreciated the virtual visits, felt close to each other, and had a positive emotional experience, although fathers missed physical contact. Children preferred VR’s playful and interactive nature compared to regular visits. Our research presents virtual visits as a suitable alternative to ensure valuable social interaction between prisoners and their children and contribute to the potential of immersive virtual social experiences for sensitive use cases.
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3706598.3714018
Screen time is ubiquitous in children's lives and has both positive and negative health impacts. Calls for developmentally appropriate design and restrictions on manipulative design are ongoing, yet children's and parents' perspectives to inform interventions are lacking. This research uses design workshops with children (n=16) and focus groups with their parents (n=17) to understand whether and how digital media could be more health-centered. Participants shared concerns that manipulative design may inhibit screen time limits and transitions, and present age-inappropriate content. Participants expressed strong interest in health-centered designs incorporating nudges, moderation, and controls. Children's self-generated designs aimed to reduce negative impacts by limiting screen time (e.g., time-related feedback, changed defaults), facilitating transitions (e.g., pause capabilities), minimizing age-inappropriate content (e.g., expanded shared controls), and reducing hurtful experiences (e.g., online video game moderation). To increase positive health impacts, participants suggested promoting physical activity (e.g., suggested screen breaks) within and away from digital media.
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3706598.3714039
As children increasingly consume media on devices, parents look for ways this usage can support learning and growth, especially in domains like social-emotional learning. We introduce eaSEL, a system that (a) integrates social-emotional learning (SEL) curricula into children’s video consumption by generating reflection activities and (b) facilitates parent-child discussions around digital media without requiring co-consumption of videos. We present a technical evaluation of our system’s ability to detect social-emotional moments within a transcript and to generate high-quality SEL-based activities for both children and parents. Through a user study with 𝑁 = 20 parent-child dyads, we find that after completing an eaSEL activity, children reflect more on the emotional content of videos. Furthermore, parents find that the tool promotes meaningful active engagement and could scaffold deeper conversations around content. Our work paves directions in how AI can support children’s social-emotional reflection of media and family connections in the digital age.
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3706598.3713405
Improving telepresence for children expands educational opportunities and connects faraway family. Yet, research about child-centered physical telepresence systems (tangible interfaces for telepresence) remains sparse, despite established benefits of tangible interaction for children. To address this gap, we collaborated with child designers (ages 8-12) over 2-years of online/1-year of hybrid participatory design. Together, we adapted one approach to physical telepresence (tabletop robots) for child users. Using a case study methodology, we explore how our tabletop telepresence robot platform influenced children’s connections with one another over the 3-year study. In our analysis, we compare four vignettes representing cooperation/conflict between children while using the platform; centering theories of ownership, collaboration, and co-design roles. Through this exploration of children’s interpersonal dynamics while using the platform, we uncover four key features of tabletop telepresence robots for children: (1) Anonymous Robot Control (2) Robot/Material Distribution, (3) Robot Form/Size, and (4) Robot Stewardship.
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3706598.3713746
Communication with child patients is challenging due to their developing ability to express emotions and symptoms. Additionally, healthcare providers often have limited time to offer resources to parents. By leveraging AI to facilitate free-form conversations, our study aims to design an AI-driven chatbot to bridge these gaps in child-parent-provider communication. We conducted two studies: 1) design sessions with 12 children with cancer and their parents, which informed the development of our chatbot, ARCH, and 2) an interview study with 15 pediatric care experts to identify potential challenges and refine ARCH's role in pediatric communication. Our findings highlight three key roles for ARCH: providing an expressive outlet for children, offering reassurance to parents, and serving as an assessment tool for providers. We conclude by discussing design considerations for AI-driven chatbots in pediatric communication, such as creating communication spaces, balancing the expectations of children and parents, and addressing potential cultural differences.
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3706598.3713134
Intergenerational co-creation using technology between grandparents and grandchildren can be challenging due to differences in technological familiarity. AI has emerged as a promising tool to support co-creative activities, offering flexibility and creative assistance, but its role in facilitating intergenerational connection remains underexplored. In this study, we conducted a user study with 29 grandparent-grandchild groups engaged in AI-supported story creation to examine how AI-assisted co-creation can foster meaningful intergenerational bonds. Our findings show that grandchildren managed the technical aspects, while grandparents contributed creative ideas and guided the storytelling. AI played a key role in structuring the activity, facilitating brainstorming, enhancing storytelling, and balancing the contributions of both generations. The process fostered mutual appreciation, with each generation recognizing the strengths of the other, leading to an engaging and cohesive co-creation process. We offer design implications for integrating AI into intergenerational co-creative activities, emphasizing how AI can enhance connection across skill levels and technological familiarity.
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3706598.3713718