Supporting Developmentally Responsive Design in Children’s Technologies

Abstract

Today’s technologies are rapidly impacting how children learn, play, communicate, and interact with others. Popular media and common wisdom often portray children’s technology use as detrimental to their growth and wellbeing. However, in recent years, a wealth of research in Child-Computer Interaction (CCI), education, and health informatics suggests that well-designed interactive application use can result in developmental and learning benefits for children. In this dissertation, I examine how to create developmentally responsive designs for children’s technology, with two main investigations: (1) incorporating child development theory to distill design principles for mobile technologies that can facilitate children’s interest development in a topic; and (2) bridging the CCI research and practice gap by providing designers access to an actionable evidence-based designer’s toolkit. I explore how designers can promote children’s interest-driven learning—a core component of child development—through the design of mobile applications. Drawing from interest-development theory to distill the Interest-Centered Design (ICD) framework to design developmentally responsive technologies, I report on several co-design sessions with children that supported ICD strategies and the design of NatureCollections, a mobile app that facilitates children’s interest in their natural surroundings. I also report on a series of observational and app deployment field studies during which I evaluated multiple dimensions of the NatureCollections app and by extension the ICD framework in supporting children’s interest-driven learning and pro-environmental behavior change. Additionally, I examine families’ experiences with the NatureCollections app and explore parent-child tech-related tensions during a transitional phase of child development. Although the NatureCollections app designs support the underpinning characteristics of interest development in children, encouraging children to spend more time in and learn about nature, and families valued their shared experiences around nature, families’ app experiences were influenced by tweens’ transitional period of parent-child relationships. I also survey CCI research that supports the developmental needs of children, which served as the foundation for the content presented in the Interaction Design and Children (IDC) designer’s toolkit. Through co-design workshops with children’s technology designers to evaluate the toolkit, I discuss current practices and needs, new barriers to using CCI research, and design considerations for the toolkit. For example, designers desire the research to discuss how the design choices supported children’s developmental goals and include how to generalize the actionable design strategies beyond the system presented. The contributions of this work are threefold: (1) Theoretical– a theory-based Interest-Centered Design (ICD) framework for mobile technologies to promote children’s interest development in a topic, along with a generative theory expanding the Joint Media Engagement (JME) framework in a new context of nature-based exploration. (2) Artifact design– the NatureCollections App and the IDC Designer’s Toolkit, that facilitate new explorations, draw new insights, and imbue new possible futures. And (3) Empirical understanding– how the NatureCollections app designs, and by extension the ICD framework, support children’s interest development, family shared experiences around nature, and parent-child tech related tensions during tweens’ transitional period of development. An additional contribution is a generative empirical understanding of the child-computer interaction research-practice gap.