In this paper, we present the results from a systematic literature review on technology-mediated collaboration among children with special educational needs.The review is based on searches in four databases and focuses specifically on definitions and measurements for collaboration between children mediated by digital technology.Although collaboration is often vaguely defined in the reviewed literature, the paper contributes with an overview of various definitions, measurements, and common references, which together with recommendations for future work can be helpful when designing technologies for collaboration among children with special educational needs.

Inspired by the use of design-based research (DBR) in the learning sciences, in this paper, we discuss the promise of applying DBR in Child-Computer Interaction (CCI). As much research in CCI is related to learning interventions and educational contexts, we believe that DBR can be highly relevant for CCI, but that it has not yet reached its full potential in the field. We argue that DBR as a research approach can help mature the field, by explicitly grounding research design and interventions in theory, foster better impact beyond project completion, and bridge theory and practice through clarified knowledge contributions. Grounded in the characteristics of DBR, and based on a scoping review, this paper provides a timely snapshot of DBR literature, practices and research contributions in CCI research. Based on this, we will discuss further implications and opportunities of DBR in the CCI field.

In this paper, we explore the role of learning theory in the Child-computer interaction (CCI) community’s leading venues: the Interaction Design and Children (IDC) conference and the International Journal of Child-Computer Interaction (IJCCI). Searching all publications in the IDC conference proceedings and IJCCI, 63 papers that use the word stem ‘learn*’ in title, abstract and keywords were included in the corpus. Based on an analysis of these papers, our semi-systematic literature review demonstrates that assessment of learning regarding transfer of learning and controlled groups is rare, that the main role for learning theory is application, and that four main theoretical positions on learning can be recognized: constructivism, constructionism, cognitive theories, and socio-cognitive theory. The paper further presents an overview of how and which learning theories are used, and outlines paths for future CCI research based on the results.

In this paper, we map out the CoCe design space - a design space for co-located collaborative games that use multi-display composition. The design space grew out of the analysis of game instances based on the 4in1 concept. First, we did a horizontal analysis of 16 game instances with 31 corresponding gameplay design patterns (GDP), followed by a vertical analysis of 89 GDPs occurring in the description of the GDP Cooperation. Through inductive analysis, we have identified four perspectives with corresponding dimensions that span the CoCe design space. By applying the CoCe design space with game instances, we illustrate how it can be used both as an analytic tool for analysis of games and also as a generative tool in the design or re-design of cooperative games that use multi-display composition.

In this paper, we explore applying learning goals in participatory design (PD) practice as an approach to mutual learning in a school context. The paper is based on experiences from master students in interaction design, who were instructed to define learning goals for children participating in PD activities that they organized in a school context. Based on the results of this study, we suggest a number of strategies for aligning and applying learning goals in PD in school contexts in practice: Debrief the results from the children’s reflections with the teachers, Scalability in regard to time and context, Adjust to age, Collaborate with the teacher to define specific learning goals, Formulate learning gains for the teachers, and Develop support materials.

In this paper, we discuss the applicability of using design patterns to enhance the participation of children in the design process. This is illustrated by a study in which gameplay design patterns have been used to evaluate and re-design a collaborative co-located game focused on training collaboration skills in a special education context. The results show that patterns helped as a way of focusing the analysis of observations, as tools for noting suggestions for change, supported the children's involvement in co-design activities, worked as an extendable collection of intermediate-level knowledge elements, and that patterns functioned as a way to introduce a common vocabulary. The contribution of this paper is a number of opportunities and challenges for working with gameplay design patterns with children.

This paper explores teachers' expected and perceived gains from classroom participation in design projects. The results indicate that teachers hope the experience will be fun for the children, and that it will increase both children's and their own knowledge about technology. Although they consider learning goals important, these do not necessarily have to be communicated to the children, since the teachers experience that the children are learning several skills anyway. However, early involvement in the definition of learning goals could make participation more beneficial. The teachers also see several gains from partication for themselves, especially related to using a design approach in the classroom. We discuss the implications of these finding and suggest a way to increase the user gains for both children and teachers by considering the opportunity to use classroom participation as a way to support teachers' competence development, thereby fulfilling the promise of mutual learning as advocated in Participatory Design.

In this workshop, we invite researchers to jointly explore how the Child-Computer Interaction (CCI) field can establish intermediate-level knowledge, being a kind of design knowledge that resides in the realm between the design of particular artifacts and theories. In this full day workshop we want to invite (1) researchers and designers who position themselves as producing intermediate-level knowledge (2) people in the field of design research who have not necessarily thought about their work as producing intermediate-level knowledge. Together we will discuss the pros and cons of different kinds of intermediate-level knowledge and how we can promote the creation of these kinds of knowledge in the CCI field.

In this paper, we discuss possibilities for how digital tools can support children with intellectual disabilities to carry out leisure activities. Leisure activities play an important role for physiological and psychological well-being, but children with intellectual disabilities carry out less leisure activities than others. In order to investigate what factors are important for supporting children with intellectual disabilities to carry out leisure activities, we have developed a mobile application, Plan&Do, acting as a technology probe. The contribution of this paper is based on results from a situated evaluation, and consist of a raised awareness of the many challenges parents and children face when choosing and preparing for taking part in a leisure activity, as well as early results from how this can be supported, and directions for future work.

This paper describes the lessons learned when designing an empathy-oriented image-exchange app for fifth-grade pupils. The aim was to evoke curiosity and empathy towards someone living elsewhere or under different socio-economic circumstances. In addition, we strived to apply design ethics (e.g. protecting users from insults, humiliation, inappropriate content etc) and take users' privacy into account. By setting up these boundaries for this user group we found ourselves confronted with a set of conflicting design decisions which ultimately led to a lesser and different user experience than we had expected. Here, we discuss the interplay between our design decisions and the consequences thereof, and evaluate the mistakes we made. Moreover we discuss how to balance anonymity and curiosity, and comment on the benefits of making a pre-analysis of potential clashes related to intended UX and other core design decisions.

In this paper, we present the forced collaborative interaction game StringForce. StringForce is developed for a special education context to support training of collaboration skills, using readily available technologies and avoiding the creation of a "mobile bubble". In order to play StringForce two or four physically collocated tablets are required. These tablets are connected to form one large shared game area. The game can only be played by collaborating. StringForce extends previous work, both technologically and regarding social-emotional training. We believe StringForce to be an interesting demo for the IDC community, as it intertwines several relevant research fields, such as mobile interaction and collaborative gaming in the special education context.

Based on an analysis of all papers at IDC from 2003 to 2016 this paper urges the Child-Computer Interaction (CCI) field to start formulating intermediate-level knowledge, in the form of e.g. strong concepts. Our analysis showed that 40% of all papers at the Interaction Design and Children conference presents the design of an artefact accompanied by an evaluation (to which we will refer as 'artefact-centered' papers). While exploring the design space in the form of artefacts is important and valuable, it can be argued that those artefact-centered papers generally make a smaller contribution to the field as a whole, which is also visible in the number of citations to such papers in comparison to the number of citations to other kinds of papers. As a first step towards more intermediate-level knowledge, we have thus attempted to formulate and ground three suggestions for strong concepts in CCI, namely Head-up gaming, Collective storytelling and Remote sensing. We based these concepts on an analysis of a set of relatively often-cited artefact-centered papers from the IDC conference proceedings. The three strong concepts we present here aim to show that the artefact-centered papers presented at the IDC conference over the last 15 years potentially contain useful knowledge that should be capitalized upon. The contribution of this paper is to initiate a discussion in the CCI community on the need for intermediate-level knowledge and how this knowledge, such as strong concepts, should be generated.

In this paper we examine the challenges of introducing learning goals in Participatory Design (PD) activities in a school context. In order to increase the transparency of mutual learning in accordance with traditional PD values, we argue that learning through design approaches can inspire us to actively formulate learning goals, stage activities and include reflection as an integral part in the PD activity in order to meet those learning goals. We tested this approach in several master student projects, where the students were required to involve children in schools in the design of a technology. Our data analysis is based on their written reports as well as a specific exam question. We found that defining good learning goals was hard, but useful, especially when designing and discussing informed consent forms with teachers. Staging activities in order to meet the learning goals was possible, although learning goals were sometimes derived from the activities. Finally, incorporating moments of reflection for children was still difficult for our students because they felt pressed for time. We present some of the advantages and problems so that practitioners can consider the added value of this approach.

In this paper we propose the Role Definition Matrix that helps authors to describe more precisely the involvement of children in the design process. Although the previously defined roles for children (user, tester, informant, and design partner) have had a positive impact on researchers' and designers' awareness of the different ways to involve children in the design process, the Role Definition Matrix clarifies what was exactly done during a project, enables the reader to understand the credibility of the design decisions presented, avoids the misuse of certain terminology, and enables the consideration of trade-offs between the different roles. We propose to describe children's involvement in terms of the phases in design (Requirements, Design and Evaluation) and activity in relation to designer (Indirect, Feedback, Dialogue, Elaboration) during these phases. We present the Role Definition Matrix, including examples, and invite other researchers to use it as a tool to present their work.

This paper presents the results of a systematic literature review of research papers on the involvement of developmentally diverse children in design. The review shows that there is a growing tendency to include developmentally diverse children in the design process. Compared to other groups of developmentally diverse children, children with high-functioning autism between 8 and 12 years old are the ones that are most often actively involved in the design process. Other groups of children often have a more passive role, being observed, both in the requirements, design and evaluation phase. Working with mixed groups of children, either children with different disabilities, or typically developing children together with developmentally diverse children, also occurs more seldom. Compared to design with typically developing children, adults are involved more intensively in the design, either as users, proxies, experts and/or facilitators. Specific guidelines for how to prepare and perform design sessions with developmentally diverse children often emphasize the need for a coherence of activities, a clear structure in the sessions, verbal as well as textual explanations, and the active participation of caregivers, teachers and therapists. Based on these findings we give several suggestions for further research.

Many of our everyday social interactions involve mobile devices. Yet, these tend to only provide good support for distributed social interactions. Although much HCI and CSCW research has explored how we might support collocated, face-to-face situations using mobile devices, much of this work exists as isolated exemplars of technical systems or interaction designs. This paper draws on a range of such exemplars to develop a practical design framework intended for guiding the design of new mobile experiences for collocated interaction as well as analysing existing ones. Our framework provides four relational perspectives for designing the complex interplay between: the social situation in which it takes place; the technology used and the mechanics inscribed; the physical environment; and the temporal elements of design. Moreover, each perspective features some core properties, which are highly relevant when designing these systems. As part of presenting the framework we also explain the process of its construction along with practical advice on how to read and apply it.

This paper proposes the principles of constructive alignment as foundation for course design within Interaction Design and Children (IDC). While the field has existed for over a decade, there is still no settled curriculum for teaching it. The paper demonstrates how intended learning outcomes in combination with related work and research on teaching IDC can be used to develop a course in IDC, and exemplify this with a brief description of the development of a recently completed course. The contribution of this paper is to support anyone who intends to start teaching in this area, to stimulate discussion in the community, and contribute to an emerging curriculum for Interaction Design and Children.