Enabling opportunities for young children with disabilities to co-engage in learning activities alongside their non-disabled peers is essential for promoting equity in early childhood education. We investigate how collaborative technology can be designed to support young neurodivergent and neurotypical children in playing together. By integrating theories and methods from design, HCI, and the learning sciences, we iteratively designed, developed, and evaluated a novel tablet application called Incloodle-Classroom (Incloodle in short), that takes into account the needs of neurodiverse groups of children and the adults who support them during play. We deployed Incloodle in a kindergarten classroom of 15 neurodivergent and 16 neurotypical children over a 10-week period. Using interaction analysis, we present rich empirical understandings of how children interacted with each other, with adults, and with Incloodle. In doing so, we contribute new theoretical underpinnings to collaborative and accessible technology design, extending joint media engagement to encompass inclusivity and equity.

Although specific design decisions are known to support Joint Media Engagement (JME; co-play with digital media) it is unclear whether current off-the-shelf tablet experiences are designed with this in mind and whether parents and children are able to engage in JME in practice. As apps that promote artistic creation (i.e., music, drawings) fulfill many extant design recommendations for JME, we observed joint play with two artistic creation apps in a culturally and socioeconomically diverse sample of 20 United States child-mother dyads. Using interaction analysis, we found that in these ”ideal” circumstances, families used varying styles of co-engagement, with Co-Creation and Parent Coaching standing out as collaborative arrangements toward which designers and families can strive. However, there were still challenges, with parents often assuming spectator roles despite their apparent intentions. We highlight key challenges to JME plus design supports and parent strategies to help families jointly engage and create with media.

Millions of children now use conversational agents (CAs), leading researchers and the public alike to ask how interactions with these devices might shape children’s communication with people. We conducted a single-session observational lab study with 22 five-to-ten-year-old children as a step toward understanding whether and how children might transfer a linguistic routine they learned from a CA to a conversation with another person. We found that 68% of children spontaneously used this routine in a conversation with their parent in the lab, and 55% continued to use it at home. When addressing parents, children infused the routine with warmth and playfulness that they did not use when addressing the CA, adapting it to suit their relationship with their parent. However, only 18% of children used it in conversation with an unfamiliar researcher, where they instead were more likely to follow conventional conversational norms. These findings suggest children are quick to learn linguistic routines from CAs but use social differentiation when they apply them. Children’s willingness to expand on and share the routine with their parent is consistent with the principles of the Joint Media Engagement (JME) framework and suggests CAs may be a productive medium for creating JME experiences.

We perpetuate, reinforce, and have the opportunity to disrupt systemic injustices through the actions we take as individuals. As an IDC community, we have a responsibility to reflect upon our behaviors and the commitments we make to ensure our engagements with youth, especially those that identify as Black or brown, are justice-centered. In this workshop, we invite researchers and practitioners to reflect on what is at stake if the IDC community does not intentionally take a justice-centered approach throughout our methods, our research questions, and our everyday interactions with youth. The goals of our workshop are two-fold: (1) To share stories about the actions we take as researchers with power to influence change in our interactions with youth, and (2) To establish the commitments the IDC community can make for more equitable design and research engagements with youth.

This one-day workshop will bring together a community of researchers, designers, practitioners, and other experts who are interested in the responsible design of immersive media---or augmented, virtual, mixed, and cross reality---for children, while taking into account children's developmental needs, equity, and inclusivity. At the workshop, participants will discuss and make connections across their work, participate in hands-on activities, and begin producing a set of design guidelines for immersive media for children, grounded in their collective experiences, research, and knowledge of the field. After the workshop, we will publish these guidelines as a white paper to distribute to interested industries, developers, designers, and more to positively influence the thoughtful design of immersive media for children.

Strengthening early executive function (EF) skills has the potential to improve an individual's quality of life throughout their lifetime, a fact that has led to many EF-training suites. In this work, we empirically investigate how children and parents engaged with Cookie Monster's Challenge (CMC), a tablet game designed to train EF in preschoolers. Through analysis of child-parent co-play with CMC, we describe children's and parents' thematic behaviors, documenting their effective and ineffective strategies for engaging with the game, particularly when it challenged children's EF skills. We further show that these behaviors led to a small but significant short-term increase in an unrelated EF task. Drawing on these patterns of interaction, we propose design directions for EF training interfaces, such as increasing contextual relevance and specific forms of scaffolding. Our work is the first illustration of how preschoolers exercise their EF and inhibitory control by collaboratively using a commercial tablet app together with a parent.

This paper examines the entangled development of governance strategies and networked technologies in the pervasive but under-examined domain of public restrooms. Drawing on a mix of archival materials, participant observation, and interviews within and beyond the city of Seattle, Washington, we look at the motivations of public restroom facilities managers as they introduce (or consider introducing) networked technology in the spaces they administer. Over the course of the research, we found internet of things technologies-or, connected devices imbued with computational capacity-became increasingly tied up with cost-reducing efficiencies and exploitative regulatory techniques. Drawing from this case study, we develop the concept of managerial visions: ways of seeing that structure labor, enforce compliance, and define access to resources. We argue that these ways of seeing prove increasingly critical to HCI research as it attends to computer-mediated collaboration beyond white-collar settings.

In HCI, adult concerns about technologies for children have been studied extensively. However, less is known about what children themselves find concerning in everyday technologies. We examine children's technology-related fears by probing their use of the colloquial term "creepy." To understand children's perceptions of "creepy technologies," we conducted four participatory design sessions with children (ages 7 - 11) to design and evaluate creepy technologies, followed by interviews with the same children. We found that children's fear reactions emphasized physical harm and threats to their relationships (particularly with attachment figures). The creepy signals from technology the children described include: deception, lack of control, mimicry, ominous physical appearance, and unpredictability. Children acknowledged trusted adults will mediate the relationship between creepy technology signals and fear responses. Our work contributes a close examination of what children mean when they say a technology is "creepy." By treating these concerns as principal design considerations, developers can build systems that are more transparent about the risks they produce and more sensitive to the fears they may unintentionally raise.

Research suggests that parental engagement through Joint Media Engagement (JME) is an important factor in children's learning for coding and programming. Unfortunately, parents with limited technology background may have difficulty supporting their children's access to programming. English-language learning (ELL) families from marginalized communities face particular challenges in understanding and supporting programming, as code is primarily authored using English text. We present BlockStudio, a programming tool for empowering ELL families to jointly engage in introductory coding, using an environment embodying two design principles, text-free and visually concrete. We share a case study involving three community centers serving immigrant and refugee populations. Our findings show ELL families can jointly engage in programming without text, via co-creation and flexible roles, and can create a range of artifacts, indicating understanding of aspects of programming within this environment. We conclude with implications for coding together in ELL families and design ideas for text-free programming research.

Parental controls allow parents to set limits on children's use of technology, but prior work suggests that controlling children alone is unlikely to foster the development of healthy media habits. We took elements from evidence-based preschool curricula that teach self-regulation and translated them to the digital space by creating a tool for preschoolers and parents to plan their device-based playtime. In an observational lab study with 11 parent-child dyads and follow-up interviews with 14 parents, we found that children demonstrated intentionality and made goal-directed choices as they planned, the mediating factor in developing self-regulation. We observed that parents prompted their child to be intentional and solicited children's input. When children played through their plan, they transitioned to the next activity without intervention 93% of the time. Our results suggest that evidence-based practices for teaching self-regulation in a non-digital context can be applied productively to children's use of technology. As parents supported children in trying the tool for the first time, a further contribution of this work is a hierarchical model of parents' approaches to scaffolding children's use of a novel technology.

In this one-day workshop, we aim to bring together a community of researchers at the Interaction Design and Children (IDC) conference who will share how they already make or plan to make equity-promoting fairness by allocating more resources and opportunities to those who need it? and inclusivity? the inclusion and meaningful participation of people who might otherwise be excluded or marginalized? foundational to their research with children and families. By discussing theoretical and practice-based approaches, providing feedback on each other's research, and collectively identifying concerns and challenges in addressing equity and inclusivity when doing and assessing research in IDC, we intend to do twofold. First, we will build our understanding of how our approaches, designs, and/or methods may either be restricting or facilitating equitable access and participation of diverse children and their families. Second, we will work to establish and articulate approaches to our research that forefront equity and inclusivity, taking into account how intersecting identities affect how the children and families with whom we work have or do not have access to various sources of power.

In this case study, we describe a design workshop with 7 children age 4-6 using existing co-design techniques known to elicit design insights in older individuals. We found that our 5- and 6-year-old participants successfully generated design ideas using these methods, while 4-year-olds were unable to use create solutions in a traditional format. How-ever, these younger children enthusiastically offered opportunities where, with methodological guidance, the research-er could have followed the child's lead and shifted the design question to one that was potentially more meaningful for the participant. We propose a future work to examine the effectiveness of giving these younger participants great-er authority in defining and scoping the problem space.

Though prior work shows parents worry about screen media experiences displacing physical activity and time outdoors, this research does not account for location-based mobile games like Pokémon GO, which specifically facilitate outdoor activity. To fill this gap in the research, we surveyed and interviewed parents to understand (1) their values and perceptions of this type of gameplay and (2) how they co-play Pokémon GO with their children. Our findings provide empirical evidence that, in addition to appreciating the increased exercise and time outdoors, parents valued how play led to family bonding experiences. Furthermore, some traditional concerns about screen time persisted in this context, and new concerns about safety in real-world environments emerged. Parents mitigated these concerns with rules and gameplay choices, such as maintaining control of the mobile device, to ensure children were safe. This work contributes an empirical understanding of families as co-users of technology and offers a generative lens to study and design for joint media engagement among family members where gameplay differs from normative notions of screen time.

Augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) devices are a critical technology for people with disabilities that affect their speech. One challenge with AAC systems is their inability to portray aspects of nonverbal communication that typically accent, complement, regulate, or substitute for verbal speech. In this paper, we explore the design space of awareness displays that can supplement AAC devices, considering their output features and their effects on the perceptions of interlocutors. Through designing prototypes and getting feedback on our designs from people with ALS, their primary caregivers, and other communication partners, we consider (1) the consistent tensions that arose between abstractness and clarity in meaning for these designs and (2) the ways in which these designs can further mark users as "other." Overall, we contribute a generative understanding of designing AAC awareness displays to augment and contextualize communication.

Prior studies have focused on child interactions in participatory design (PD) with adults and children, but less is known about what specific adult-child interactions constitute a partnership. In this study, we unpack what constitutes an "equal partnership" in PD between adults and children. On the basis of prior literature, we created a new framework that examines the complementary roles between children and adults. Next, we analyzed a case study of a year-long intergenerational design team of children (ages 7-11) and adults. From this analysis, we determined that design partnerships are composed of four dimensions that span from unbalanced to balanced interactions: facilitation, relationship building, design-by-doing, and elaborating together. Finally, to demonstrate its utility, we analyzed two focal co-design sessions using our framework. Our analysis suggests that equal partnership in PD is not a single static interaction but a development over time of design interactions influenced by context, experience, and participants.

In this work, we present EduFeed, a system that enables preliterate children to explore an algorithmically-mediated social feed of learning exercises, select activities to engage in, and share them with their peers. We deployed EduFeed as a technology probe to three classrooms of ESL students in the first year of elementary school in India who had limited English literacy and limited experience with touchscreen technology. We found that children were able to self-direct their engagement with the system and were initially motivated by digital sharing, while social context surrounding the system in physical space was also important. Based on our design and probe deployment, we reflect on issues relevant to adapting the social feed paradigm to this context, such as ranking algorithms, physicality, immediacy, and bridging physical and digital collaborative experiences.

In this work, we sought to understand the experiences and disability disclosure preferences of adults with and without disabilities who have dated online. Our 91 survey respondents expressed varying opinions about the need for potential partners to disclose disability status when online dating depending on the nature or perceived severity, with "visible" disabilities carrying a higher expectation of upfront disclosure than "invisible" disabilities. Many disabled respondents also described proactively disclosing as a technique to filter potential connections. Our findings suggest that individuals with disabilities must perform additional labor and navigate complex group norms in pursuit of personal connection. We advocate that the social computing research community consider how these processes are driven by both societal expectation and the constraints of online dating platforms. We then offer design considerations and open questions as a means to extend social computing study at the intersection of online dating and disability studies.

Every child should have an equal opportunity to learn, play, and participate in his or her life. In this work, we investigate how interactive technology design features support children with and without disabilities with inclusion during play. We developed four versions of Incloodle, a two-player picture-taking tablet application, designed to be inclusive of children with different abilities and needs. Each version of the application varied in (1) whether or not it enforced co-operation between children; and in (2) whether it prompted interactions through in-app characters or more basic instructions. A laboratory study revealed technology-enforced cooperation was helpful for child pairs who needed scaffolding, but character-based prompting had little effect on children's experiences. We provide an empirical evaluation of interactive technology for inclusive play and offer guidance for designing technology that facilitates inclusive play between young neurotypical and neurodiverse children.

Though toddlers and preschoolers are regular touchscreen users, relatively little is known about how they learn to perform unfamiliar gestures. In this paper we assess the responses of 34 children, aged 2 to 5, to the most common in-app prompting techniques for eliciting specific gestures. By reviewing 100 touchscreen apps for preschoolers, we determined the types of prompts that children are likely to encounter. We then evaluated their relative effectiveness in teaching children to perform simple gestures. We found that children under 3 were only able to interpret instructions when they came from an adult model, but that children made rapid gains between age 3 and 3-and-a-half, at which point they were able to follow in-app audio instructions and on-screen demonstrations. The common technique of using visual state changes to prompt gestures was ineffective across this age range. Given that prior work in this space has primarily focused on children's fine motor control, our findings point to a need for increased attention to the design of prompts that accommodate children's cognitive development as well.

Inclusive play, defined as play among children with and without disabilities, provides learning opportunities that challenge stereotypes, foster strong friendships, and help children develop empathy and other social and emotional skills. Designing technologies to support inclusive play are understudied in Human-Computer Interaction. We synthesized literature, conducted design ethnography in an inclusive classroom, and interviewed and surveyed parents and teachers to explore this problem. Our research contributes an empirical understanding of the current state of inclusive play and a characterization of the design space for interactive technologies that can support children and adults with inclusive play. We identify key facilitators of inclusive play: direct and embedded supports, transparency, adjustability, emphasis on children's interests and strengths, and current technology use. We also describe significant barriers to inclusive play: effort required to facilitate inclusive play, children's preferences, parental inexperience, and inappropriate technology. Through our discussion, we conclude that interactive technologies should be designed to harness the facilitators and help overcome the barriers in order to maximize children's opportunities with inclusive play.

Child development research suggests that using phones while caring for children can be problematic, but limited prior work in this space makes defining appropriate use challenging. We conducted the first exploration of whether adults feel pressure to limit phone use in this context and whether they choose to do so. Through mixed methods, we collected data from 466 adult caregivers at playgrounds. We found that phone use was a small part of playground time, yet a notable source of guilt. Adults engaged in systematic and specific phone-use and phone-non-use behaviors in order to prioritize their children above themselves. Our results indicate that caregiver values and self-control together predict behavior and can be used to model phone use in this context. Users' mixed success with engaging in intentional periods of non-use suggests that a design agenda which prioritizes cycles of engagement, disengagement, and re-engagement may be of value to this group.

This paper presents a new sensing and interaction environment for post-stroke and upper extremity limb rehabilitation. The device is a combination of camera-based multitouch sensing and a supporting therapeutic software application that advances the treatment, provides feedback, and records a user's progress. The image-based analysis of hand position provided by a Microsoft Surface is used as an input into a tabletop game environment. Tailored image analysis algorithms assess rehabilitative hand movements. Visual feedback is provided in a game context. Experiments were conducted in a sub-acute rehabilitation center. Preliminary user studies with a stroke-afflicted population determined essential design criteria. Hand and wrist sensing, as well as the goals of the supporting game environment, engage therapeutic flexion and extension as defined by consulted physicians. Participants valued personalization of the activity, novelty, reward and the ability to work at their own pace in an otherwise repetitive therapeutic task. A "character" - game element personifying the participant's movement - was uniquely motivating relative to the media available in the typical therapeutic routine.