Increasingly, IoT kits are used in pedagogical contexts to support learning experiences and teach students about IoT. However, few of them focus on both the technical aspects and the societal implications of IoT, such as cybersecurity and privacy. In this paper, we describe the Orbit IoT Kit, a micro:bit-based toolkit that supports teachers in IoT activities. The kit combines the microcontroller with relays and a web application, enabling students to connect everyday objects to the Internet and visualize the devices’ data flow. Based on an intervention in a secondary school with 3 teachers and 20 students of ages 12-13, our results indicate that the design and features of the kit — internet communication and data visualization — support teachers to engage students in learning about a holistic perspective of IoT. We reflect on our research propositions, discuss design strategies, and present three design recommendations for IoT toolkits: Connectivity, Visualization, and Openness.

Technologies based on AI/ML are playing an increasingly prominent role in teenagers’ everyday lives. Mirroring this trend is a concomitant interest in teaching young people about intelligent technologies. Whereas previous research in the field of Child–Computer Interaction has proposed curriculum and learning activities that describe what teenagers need to learn about AI/ML, there is still a shortage of studies which specifically address teenager-centered perspectives in the teaching of AI/ML. This paper presents a study of teenagers’ everyday understanding of AI/ML technologies. Using a thematic analysis of the teenagers’ own explanations during a series of workshops, we present a conceptual map of the teenagers’ understandings of these technologies. We go on to propose five general recommendations for the teaching of AI/ML to teenagers through the lens of Computational Empowerment. Taken together, these recommendations serve as a teenage-centered starting point for teaching young people about intelligent technologies, an approach that can be implemented in future research interventions with similar objectives.

This systematic mapping review sheds light on how emerging technologies have been introduced and taught in various K–12 learning settings, particularly with regard to artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), the internet of things (IoT), augmented reality (AR), and virtual reality (VR). These technologies are rapidly being integrated into children's everyday lives, but their functions and implications are rarely understood due to their complex and distributed nature. The review provides a rigorous overview of the state of the art based on 107 records published across the fields of human-computer interaction, learning sciences, computing education, and child–computer interaction between 2010 and 2020. The findings show the urgent need on a global scale for inter- and transdisciplinary research that can integrate these dispersed contributions into a more coherent field of research and practice. The article presents nine discussion points for developing a shared agenda to mature the field. Based on the HCI community's expertise in human-centred approaches to technology and aspects of learning, we argue that the community is ideally positioned to take a leading role in the realisation of this future research agenda.

Children grow up in a data economy but grasping how their data are part of this eco-system and how data become valuable to others can be difficult. This work explores how to design tools and activities which support children’s critical data literacy for K-9 education. We bring together two strands of work; First, insights from a co-design process where teachers and researchers designed tools and activities for teaching critical data literacy which they deployed in a lower secondary education classroom. Second, insights from didactic theories from maths and computer science education about working with multiple and rich representations of complex and intangible phenomena. Based on this we contribute three principles for enriching pupils’ relationship to data in order to inform future research into how pupils can be scaffolded in forming richer relationships to the data-driven technologies in their everyday lives in order to retain agency in a data-driven world.

The need for critically reflecting on the deceptive nature of advanced technologies, such as social robots, is urging academia and civil society to rethink education and the skills needed by future generations. The promotion of critical thinking, however, remains largely unaddressed within the field of educational robotics. To address this gap and question if and how robots can be used to promote critical thinking in young children's education, we conducted an explorative design study named Bringing Shybo Home. Through this study, in which a robot was used as a springboard for debate with twenty 8- to 9-year-old children at school, we exemplify how the deceptive nature of robots, if embraced and magnified in order for it to become explicitly controversial, can be used to nurture children's critical mindset.

Based on a systematic review we explore how empowerment has been articulated in 188 papers in Child-Computer Interaction (CCI) literature since 2003. Using an existing framework outlining functional, educational, democratic, mainstream, and critical empowerment, our analysis shows that while empowerment is rarely defined in CCI papers, a wide range of different articulations coexists. We explore the prevalence of different articulations in the literature and how this has shifted over time. We show that although empowerment has been part of the CCI discourse since the early days, a shift can be noticed in terms of how empowerment is articulated from an emphasis on empowerment in its functional meaning towards a more even distribution and the advent of critical articulations of empowerment. We conclude the paper by looking ahead into a new decade of CCI research and posing three questions to assist CCI researchers in more clearly articulating the nature and understanding of empowerment.

Based on a comprehensive account of digital design literacy, we report from an interview study with pioneer teachers to disclose their experiences from teaching design in formal K-9 education. Unique for the study is that the interviewees were highly qualified K-9 teachers with research-based in-service training in design and more than three years of teaching experience in the area. Our findings suggest that digital design literacy supports children's agency and empowerment in relation to digital technology. Moreover, digital design literacy provides children with four broad competence areas of effective teamwork, contextual inquiry, imagination and creation, and design process navigation. Our study also demonstrates that digital design literacy does not fit seamlessly within the path of conventional school courses. Several structural barriers in formal education such as summative assessments, teacher-roles, failure-prevention and children's lack of experiences with open-ended assignments are reported and discussed in relation to previous studies in child-computer interaction research.

In this paper, we describe an exploratory study of how design fiction can be used to introduce machine learning (ML) to 14-15 year old students in an engaging way. The study describes three sessions conducted online that combined hands-on and design fiction activities related to supervised ML, focusing on facial analysis. Based on semi-structured interviews and field notes, we discuss how the design fiction approach seemed to be engaging and supportive for students' reflection on their relationship with technology. In future work, we will expand the study to include a larger number of students, assess their learning, and further explore connections between ML and its societal implications.

Recent years have seen growing interest in 'ethics' within the Child-Computer Interaction (CCI) community. In this paper, we take stock of 18 years of CCI research by conducting a systematic literature study exploring how and to what extent ethics has been dealt with in the community's leading venues: the Interaction Design and Children (IDC) conference and the International Journal of Child-Computer Interaction (CCI). Searching all papers in the IDC conference proceedings and IJCCI, 157 papers were found that use the word stem 'ethic*'. Based on our analysis of these papers, our study demonstrates that while ethics is frequently mentioned, the literature remains underdeveloped in a number of areas including definition and theoretical basis, the reporting of formal ethical approval procedures, and the extent to which design and participation ethics is dealt with. Based on our study we provide five avenues of future research in the interests of developing a more explicit discourse on ethics in CCI.

This paper presents a systematic literature review on collaborative technologies for children with special needs in ACM Digital Library. The aim of the review is to (1) reveal the current state of the art, (2) identify the types of technologies and contexts of use, the demographics and special needs of the target group, and the methodological approaches and theoretical groundings, and (3) define a future research agenda. The results of the systematic literature review show that collaborative technologies for children with special needs are increasingly gaining attention, mostly involve tangible and/or embodied interaction, and are often developed for use in the classroom. The target group that is most represented are boys between 6 to 12 years with Autism Spectrum Disorder. The results further show a wide range of evaluation criteria for measuring collaboration, an interchanging use of theoretical concepts and a lack of definitions for the concept collaboration, and a need for more demographically diverse studies.

This paper presents a co-design project in a school with 16 children ages 10 to 11 in which three learning goals were defined upfront: creativity, empathy, and collaboration. The first part of the paper demonstrates how these co-design skills were implemented through an iterative process of explanation, practice, reflection, and application. Based on the results of post-interviews and short questionnaires, the second part discusses children's assessments of these skills. Whereas children reported fluctuations in applying these skills, the findings show an overall positive trend towards the end of the project. In future work, these findings will be triangulated with observational data.

The Interaction Design and Children (IDC) Community has a long history of innovating methods and techniques for the design and evaluation of technologies for children. Many innovations have been reported in the academic literature but the uptake of methods by industry has been slow and the community has hitherto failed to seriously consider how best to develop, present and promote their methods beyond academia. The aim of the workshop is to weave together IDC researchers and IDC key personnel coming from the industry, with genuine interest in industry-academia collaboration, into a community interested in building a coherent, high-impact collaboration channel. The goal of the workshop is to encourage a critical discussion and debate about how IDC methods can be further adopted, modified or even extended by the IDC related industry. This workshop is expected to reinforce IDC industry-academia collaboration with an ultimate goal to increase understanding and develop a community of interest that is going to co-develop ideas and novel design approaches that can bring IDC methods closer to the industrial practice

This paper explores how a co-design process can be centred around pre-schoolers' enjoyment of constructive play practices, so that they, rather than adults, become protagonists in a design process. The pilot study was conducted involving 25 children from 3-6 years of age in an intuitive three-step design process that allowed the children to self-reliantly express themselves and make their own design decisions. Generative tools, storytelling, and a set of open-ended design tasks stimulated the pre-schoolers to design tactile 3D shapes. Observational data provided insight in the children's playtime and focus during the design process. The results showed that it is possible for pre-schoolers to (1) establish focus on construction play (environment), (2) that their explorative playing is led through distinctive phases of a design process (activity), and (3) that they are able to construct something specific by playing (concept).

This paper explores how co-design activities in schools can contribute to developing children's empathy. A pilot case study is presented in which eight 10- to 12-year-old children participated. The design theme was outdoor education. After discussing the co-design procedure, preliminary results about three empathic techniques are discussed: (1) reflection on the role of empathy in design, (2) storytelling to introduce the design challenge, and (3) defining the needs and wishes of the story's protagonists. The lessons learned are taken into account in a comprehensive follow-up study.

This paper presents a co-design toolkit, Storytelling Shapes, that enables children to tell personal stories using various wooden shapes. Starting from these stories, designers can engage in a conversation about children's needs and wishes. The toolkit was tested and improved based on a pilot study and two co-design sessions with 16 children aged 6 to 11. After introducing the toolkit and discussing its iterative development, the paper concludes with a set of guidelines for using Storytelling Shapes in co-design activities with children.

Children's play objects are increasingly shaped by technological innovations that can transform them into hybrid, internet-connected toys, a phenomenon referred to as the Internet of Toys. Previous research has presented user research on connected toys, but little is known how to approach them from a design perspective. This paper investigates whether and how an animistic design perspective can foster a fruitful exploration of the design potentialities of connected toys. It addresses this question by analysing three design concepts of connected toys that were developed in the course of an R&D project. These included a high-tech bracelet with digital passport, a card game with a customizable 3D-printed figurine, and a robot as a board game play mate. The results show how the design qualities of connected toys can be categorized on a spectrum ranging from a certainty-driven, problem-solving logic to an uncertainty-driven, animistic design perspective. The contribution of this study is a better understanding of how connected toys emerge in a broader ecology of children, toys, and data that all act upon each other. By embracing the uncertainty in this complex and fluid network of subjects and objects, the animistic design perspective allows to explore a broad set of design opportunities relevant in the realm of the Internet of Toys.

How is technology being designed to improve children's well-being? We address this question in connection to childhood overweight issues. On a global level, overweight and obesity among children and youth is recognized to be an alarmingly growing health challenge. We have conducted a literature review to explore how studies from the Interaction design and children (IDC) community frame health challenges related to overweight amongst children and youth. Based on the available IDC research focusing on aspects connected to overweight problems, we identify patterns in type of initiative, ages of children, context of use, kind of solution or technology, focus of the research activities and theoretical frameworks. We discuss the importance of increased research and development efforts in this area within the IDC community and call for a broader approach in terms of initiatives, research focus and application of philosophical paradigms and related theory to address a holistic understanding of children's well-being.

Today, it has been broadly acknowledged in the CCI community that children are not only active learners and users of technology, but can also actively participate in the design process. However, it remains challenging to analyze children's experiences and creative contributions resulting from co-design activities (e.g. stories, paper prototypes, enacted ideas). Broadly speaking, a distinction can be made between researchers looking for inspiration in the form of useful design ideas, and researchers that take a more interpretative stance by looking beyond the surface level of children's ideas to better understand and empathize with them. This knowledge about children is often used to more accurately define the problem space at the early stages of design. Both perspectives to co-design can be seen as the opposite ends of the same continuum, and many researchers combine aspects of both depending on where they are in the design process (e.g. defining the design problem, prototyping stage). This workshop will explore different ways to analyze children's (0 to 18 years) experiences and contributions in co-design activities, the perceived benefits and challenges of these approaches, and will serve as a venue for synthesizing productive practices that will move the CCI community forward.

Personas are a widely used tool to keep real users in mind, while avoiding stereotypical thinking in the design process. Yet, creating personas can be challenging. Starting from Cooper's approach for constructing personas, this paper details how behavioral theory can contribute substantially to the development of personas. We describe a case study in which Self-Determination Theory (SDT) is used to develop five distinctive personas for the design of a digital coach for sustainable weight loss. We show how behavioral theories such as SDT can help to understand what genuinely drives and motivates users to sustainably change their behavior. In our study, we used SDT to prepare and analyze interviews with envisioned users of the coach and to create complex, yet engaging and highly realistic personas that make users' basic psychological needs explicit. The paper ends with a critical reflection on the use of behavioral theories to create personas, discussing both challenges and strengths.

Supporting young children's play in the digital world is a challenging endeavor. Little is known, however, about the parental beliefs and mediation practices regarding children's facilitated play in hybrid (mixed digital/physical) environments and how one can account for this through design. Following a Value Sensitive Design approach, we performed: 1) a conceptual literature investigation, 2) an empirical survey with 1398 parents of child(ren) aged 4-6 years, and 3) a technical investigation on online customer reviews of hybrid playful products for children. Our findings reveal the role of parents' mediation and beliefs in shaping young children's play. We provide designers with guidance to be accountable of the way design properties can foster parental play beliefs and support adult-child interaction. We conclude that young children's facilitated play in hybrid environments is shaped by both the social context in which it is enacted and the affordances provided through design.

In this paper we explore whether Social Interdependence Theory (SIT) is a useful theoretical framework to anticipate on challenging intragroup dynamics in co-design with children. According to SIT, there are five principles that mediate the effectiveness of cooperation: positive interdependence, individual accountability, promotive interaction patterns, social skills and group processing. First, we theoretically ground six challenging group dynamics encountered in a previous study. Next, we introduce SIT and describe how we applied each of the five mediating principles in a new case study in which 49 children aged 9 to 10 were involved in a series of co-design sessions. Afterwards, we present our findings and reflect upon the SIT inspired co-design procedure. Finally we touch upon topics for further research and we make a call for more research on SIT in the Child Computer Interaction (CCI) community.

Parental control software enables parents to support risk-management of their children's digital media use. However, tools to support online opportunities are left unexplored. This paper presents an explorative inquiry into stakeholder values related to parental software for young children, using a Value Sensitive Design approach. By studying values, we aim to illuminate design of parental software solutions that are responsive to the issues families find most important. We engaged in value exploration of corporate and parental values, and conducted a workshop with the corporate stakeholders to align stakeholder values. The results highlight the importance of values such as 'control for safety' and 'involvement' in the development of parental software for young children. The contribution of this paper lies in the understanding of stakeholder needs and values concerning software tools that balance online risks and opportunities for young children.

We describe a multimodal method for the analysis of co-design outcomes in participatory design (PD) with children. The multimodal approach we take allows researchers to treat both verbal (notes, writings) and tangible material out-comes as complementary ways of communicating design ideas. We argue that an integrated approach in which both PD outcomes are compared and contrasted can result in a richer analysis, in which underlying values can be identified more clearly. To illustrate the method, we describe a PD process with primary school children.

This paper presents a structured way to evaluate challenging group or 'codesign dynamics' in participatory design processes with children. In the form of a critical reflection on a project in which 103 children were involved as design partners, we describe the most prevalent codesign dynamics. For example, some groups rush too quickly towards consensus to safeguard group cohesiveness instead of examining other choice alternatives (i.e., groupthink). Besides 'groupthink' we describe five more challenging codesign dynamics: 'laughing out loud', 'free riding', 'unequal power', 'apart together' and 'destructive conflict'. We argue that balancing these dynamics has a positive impact on the dialectic process of developing values and ideas in participatory design, as well as on children's motivation. Therefore, the CCI community could benefit from our indepth exploration and categorization of challenging group dynamics when codesigning technology with children.

To encourage ethical practices in participatory design with children the CHECk tool was created. This paper reports on an expert review of the CHECk tool and a validating case study. Four main challenges to the CHECk tool are identified: (1) how to inform children on the research and their role herein, (2) distinguishing between project values and designer or researcher's personal values, (3) accounting for the dynamic nature and social constructedness of values in design, and (4) the emergence of values in all stakeholders including child design partners. We advocate complementing CHECk with interactive storytelling and show how this narrative can be used to not only inform participation and achieve ethical symmetry, but also to negotiate values with child design partners.