Since smart speakers were introduced to the Indian markets at the end of 2017, they have been adopted by hundreds of thousands households in India. While the scholarship has examined the long-term use of voice-based devices in western contexts, little is known about user behavior in India -- one of the fastest-growing smart speaker markets in the Asian Pacific region. Therefore, this study aims to explore how members families in India integrate Google Home into their daily lives. To this end, we collected long-term Google Home activity logs from 20 households and conducted interviews with one member from each generation in every household. Our findings shed light on the unique daily use patterns of adults and children, the users' approaches to, and challenges in learning to use, the devices, and factors that impact users' continued use or abandonment of the devices. We conclude the paper by discussing the implications of our findings and by proposing relevant design recommendations.
https://doi.org/10.1145/3479495
Language and cultural barriers critically threaten the social relationships between grandparents and grandchildren in immigrant families. Cultural exchange activities, like shared storytelling, can foster these crucial connections. However, existing barriers make these seemingly routine interactions challenging for families to navigate. The resulting intergenerational drift places grandparents at high risk of sustained social isolation from their families. Past works have presented technology-mediated supports for grandparent-grandchild social interactions in non-immigrant families and have found that these interventions do foster stronger connections in both physically close and distant multigenerational families. We explore how to support the specific needs of immigrant families through Magic Thing participatory design workshops with grandchildren and grandparents together in order to reveal the social interactions that would support their cultural exchange. We use the Magic Thing to move the standard dialogic grandparent-grandchild relationship into a trialogic one, creating space for comfortable social connection and storytelling through the shared creation of the design. We find that technology-mediated support of intergenerational immigrant cultural exchange must be designed for this trialogic process, consider the role of expressing values as a form of meta-commentary on a story, and shift the perspective on existing “barriers” to consider how they might foster further engagement.
Parental control apps, which are mobile apps that allow parents to monitor and restrict their children's activities online, are becoming increasingly adopted by parents as a means of safeguarding their children's online safety. However, it is not clear whether these apps are always beneficial or effective in what they aim to do; for instance, the overuse of restriction and surveillance has been found to undermine parent-child relationship and children's sense of autonomy. While previous research has categorised and taken inventory of key features of popular parental control apps, they have not systematically analysed the ways such features were designed or realised in such apps, or in particular how aspects of such designs might relate to parents and children's experiences with such apps. In this work, we investigate this gap, asking specifically: how might children's and parents' perceptions be related to how parental control features were designed? To investigate this question, we conducted an analysis of 58 top Android parental control apps designed for the purpose of promoting children's online safety, finding three major axes of variation in how key restriction and monitoring features were realised: granularity, feedback/transparency, and parent-child communications support. To relate these axes to perceived benefits and problems, we then analysed 3264 app reviews to identify references to aspects of the each of the axes above, to understand children's and parents' views of how such dimensions related to their experiences with these apps. Our findings led towards 1) an understanding of how parental control apps realise their functionalities differently along three axes of variation, 2) an analysis of exactly the ways that such variation influences children's and parents' perceptions, respectively of the usefulness or effectiveness of these apps, and finally 3) an identification of design recommendations and opportunities for future apps by contextualising our findings within existing digital parenting theories.
Concerns about child physical and digital safety are emerging with families' adoption of smart home technologies such as robot vacuums and smart speakers. To better understand parents' definitions and perceptions of child safety regarding smart home technologies, we interviewed 23 parents who are smart home adopters. We contribute insights into parents' perceptions of the physical and digital safety risks smart home technologies pose to children, and how such perceptions formed and changed across three phases. In acquiring smart home devices, parents already considered whether the device could cause physical harm to their children or pose privacy and security risks. Once children become active users of smart home technologies, parents however reported encountering unanticipated physical safety risks and digital safety issues (e.g., exposure to unsuitable content) that required their mitigation strategies. As their children grow up, parents further expressed the need to shift attention from physical safety to digital safety. Parents' safety perceptions influence how they involve children in smart home interactions and implement mitigation strategies, such as restricting access to certain devices and using parental controls. We identify six factors that shape parents' perception and evaluation of smart home safety risks to children, including parenting style, parents' tech-savviness, parents' trust in tech companies, children's age and developmental differences, news media, and device characteristics. We provide design and policy recommendations to better protect children's safety in the smart home environment.
https://doi.org/10.1145/3479858
Over the past few years, in-home smart technologies have dramatically increased and changed. This paper aims to investigate how families of different socioeconomic status use or forgo the use of smart devices, specifically smart speakers and smart interactive toys. To this end, we interviewed 14 parents with low socioeconomic status and 16 parents with high socioeconomic status from varied races and different levels of education, lifestyles, and occupations. Our findings reveal how socioeconomic differences reflect and impact use of these devices in terms of parenting aids, parents' regulation of children's use, and the non-use practices of families. In the end, we discuss the implications of our findings and provide design recommendations for smart speakers and smart toys that address the diverse values and preferences of families from different socioeconomic backgrounds.
https://doi.org/10.1145/3476036
Parents’ use of mobile devices (tablets and mobile phones) while caring for children is considered to be beneficial, but also problematic. In this study, we aimed to understand parents’ technology non-/use practices around infants and toddlers in the domestic setting and to survey parents’ opinions about their partners’ practices. To this end, we collected data from parents from seventeen families, using diaries and interviews. We found that as parents grapple with multiple and often conflicting motivations and needs, they adopt or shift among four non-/use positions. Our findings also show that adult family members believe that their partner’s use is more problematic than theirs and that the other person does not abide by mutually decided norms. Furthermore, parents often have conflicting opinions about how one should shape one’s technological practices around children. Based on our findings, we propose new design directions for technology that can support caregivers in the domestic setting.
https://doi.org/10.1145/3479513
Diverse fields, including CSCW, Communication, and Human Development studies, have investigated how technologies can better support parent-child relationships. While these studies are scattered across literature, little effort has been made to synthesize the findings. We conducted a review of studies that examined the factors associated with parent-child relationships that are mediated by technologies. Specifically, we synthesized previous studies based on children’s age groups and different family contexts, including cohabitation. From a total of 12,942 search results from two databases, and 32 results from the hand-searching process, we conducted a full-text review of 190 articles and identified 19 suitable studies. An additional search during the revision cycle resulted in 6 more full-text reviews and 1 additional study being included in the data analysis. We analyzed challenges and facilitators in designing CSCW systems supporting parent-child relationships for families living together or apart and families with children of different developmental stages. Findings showed two common challenges, which should be addressed in technology designed to support parent-child relationships: discrepancies in expected communication between parents and child(ren) and the complex emotions of parents toward parenting caused by their busy schedules. Challenges specific to families who are living apart included consequences from being physically distant and having limited access to communication resources. The following factors commonly helped facilitate parent-child relationships: (1) reciprocity norms of the family (2) reinforcement of transparency, affection, and trust, (3) a physical proxy of each other through an object or interface design, (4) accessibility, the sophistication level of technology, and communication resources, (5) enjoyable, age-appropriate shared content among parents and children, and (6) situational awareness and routine as ways to increase parent-child relationships. Media richness and synchronicity in system design and privacy preservation without interruption facilitated parent-child relationships of families living apart. Based on the findings, we discuss opportunities for technological innovation for physically co-located families and the importance of considering children’s age and developmental stages in designing technology for parent-child relationships.
The struggle to thrive as a productive student researcher, an attentive parent, and a caring partner can be difficult, particularly for international student parents who are far from home and also possibly burdened with complex cultural expectations, interpersonal dynamics, and institutional biases. Using uses and gratifications theory as a framing mechanism, we describe interviews with twelve international student mothers in the United States who are primary caregivers of children between six months to five years old, focusing on the context of their use of screen media content and devices, the gratifications they seek from their children's use of screen media devices, and the differences in their perceptions about the use of screen media as an educated, non-US parent. Our findings give an initial account of the role of screen based technology in their domestic life with young children, and the limitations of their technological experience. We present four opportunities for designing for this population including technologies for positive distraction, interactive language aids, playful acquaintance tools, and anonymous peer networks for parent support. We conclude by formulating future promising avenues of research in this design space.