#idc2015

The First Indonesian Ballet Gala – Gallery

Last week, iMinds-CUO was strongly present at the 14th International Conference on Interaction Design and Children at Tufts University in Boston, Massachusetts. The IDC conference’s mission is to bring together researchers, designers and educators to explore new forms of technology, design and engaged learning among children. IDC offers a wide-ranging program, supporting and facilitating the exchange of ideas within and between all of these communities. The theme for this year was Empowering Children to Create. Two iMinds-CUO submissions were accepted for the competitive papers track, which has an acceptance rate of 23%. Furthermore, one short paper in the form of a poster and two workshop contributions were presented. Here is the full list of accepted papers, short papers and workshop contributions from iMinds-CUO.

Before the actual conference, iMinds-CUO colleague Marije Nouwen and I presented our work at a workshop hosted by UX researchers at Google. The workshop was about balancing the needs of children and adults in the design of technology for children. Marije presented her contribution Exploring Stakeholder Requirements for Parental Mediation Software (co-author: Bieke Zaman) and I talked about Child Empowerment by Design to increase transparency and child-friendliness in the Terms of Use of websites for children (co-authors: Veronica Donoso, Valerie Verdoodt, Karin Slegers). On the first conference day, I furthermore presented the paper Challenging Group Dynamics in Participatory Design with Children: Lessons from Social Interdependence Theory (co-authors: Ann Laenen, Bieke Zaman, Vero Vanden Abeele). This paper explores whether Social Interdependence Theory (SIT) is a useful theoretical framework to anticipate on challenging intragroup dynamics in co-design with children. The study is part of my ongoing PhD research and describes a case study conducted within the IWT project EMSOC.

On the second day, iMinds-SMIT researcher Lizzy Bleumers presented the paper Sensitivity to Parental Play Beliefs and Mediation in Young Children’s Hybrid Play Activities (co-authors: Karen Mouws, Jonathan Huyghe, Maarten Van Mechelen, Ilse Mariën, Bieke Zaman). The paper describes parental beliefs and mediation practices regarding children’s facilitated play in hybrid (mixed digital/physical) environments and how they can be taken into account through design. This study is part of the ongoing iMinds project WOOPI. During the poster session later that day, Marije presented the short paper A Value Sensitive Design Approach to Parental Software for Young Children (co-authors: Maarten Van Mechelen, Bieke Zaman). This paper presents an explorative inquiry into stakeholder values related to parental software for young children, using a Value Sensitive Design approach. The study was part of the iMinds project Ragasi.

In general, reactions were very positive and especially the reflective stance in all three papers was much appreciated by the audience. Some reactions on Twitter: