The functional bounds of school education are being redefined by recent innovations like artificial intelligence and digital education platforms. This transformation highlights the potential of speculative design and world-building to address structural gaps in student motivation. To imagine alternative futures and provoke critical discussion, we conducted a series of world-building workshops with expert stakeholders to speculate on the future of game-based interventions and motivation. This work-in-progress presents the methodological framework and structural gains from the first workshop of a multi-stage research project. The core operational rules and conceptual parameters of a high school environment spanning from 2025 to 2035 were established in this first phase, which was carried out with expert stakeholders utilizing design narratives and a modified world-building mandala. Thus, the systemic infrastructure for future student-centered, game-based school designs has been established. The study focuses on the world-building process and its infrastructural potential for future educational visions rather than final outcomes.

Cross-stitching, a traditional craft practiced across cultures, holds potential as an educational tool for developing computational thinking (CT) skills in children.While CT is increasingly recognized as essential in modern education, the role of unplugged activities like cross-stitching remains underexplored.This study examines cross-stitching through Kolb's experiential learning theory and key CT categories, including abstraction, decomposition, algorithmic thinking, evaluation and generalization.Using a qualitative approach, data were collected through interviews with crossstitch instructors, a preschool teacher, and parents of children engaged in cross-stitching.A priori content analysis identified key aspects: (1) numerical thinking and visual representation ; (2) task breakdown and progressive learning ; (3) sequencing and debugging ; (4) problem solving and learning by doing ; (5) persistence and pattern recognition.The study offers an exemplar for applying an analytical lens to understand the interplay between unplugged activities and computational thinking.

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.

This study aims to investigate the dynamics of young adults' food practices within the interplay between technology and tradition by employing a Value-Sensitive Design (VSD) approach as an analytical lens. We conducted surveys and interviews with young adults. This is complemented by a workshop involving design and gastronomy experts. Grounded in Value-Sensitive Design (VSD) and encompassing 38 core values and resulting in five value conflicts. Our analysis highlights five prominent themes: "Preservation of Culinary Heritage and Relationships", "Technological Convenience", "Uniqueness and Personalisation", "Globalised Nature of Food", and "Sustainable Choices and Trustworthiness". By bridging between Human-Food Interaction (HFI) and VSD realms, this study provides insights for researchers, designers, and practitioners. The value-laden analytical perspective of the findings sheds light on the food practices of the young generation, for future HFI design studies blending traditional and technological elements.

This paper presents a scoping review on motivational game elements examined in game-based interventions for children's learning in school context in ACM Digital Library and Scopus, with a total of 119 articles reviewed. The aim of the review is to (1) reveal the current state of the art, (2) identify the types of interventions, the game elements, and investigate the core drives of the interventions, (3) examine the empirical findings on the link between motivation and game elements, and (4) define a future research agenda. The results of the scoping review show that interventions that utilize gamification for children are increasingly gaining attention, mostly involve game elements that address the drive for development and accomplishment, the studies mostly target children between 7 to 13 years and the educational domain. The results further show a wide range of game elements in relation to the core drives, and a need for more diverse studies.

In this paper, we present preliminary insights about the classification of children’s gestural input elicited from a hand movement tracking prototype for music making, namely Co-Rhythm. The analysis builds on the existing gesture taxonomy in human-computer interaction, and provide insights into children’s performative gestures when controlling a musical instrument sound for analysing gestural input. Based on our study with four children (aged between 8-11) and four young adults, we report the qualitative results for describing the gestural categories for analysis and informal observational notes on how children’s gestural interaction with the prototype differed from young adults. This study is an initial step towards capturing the complexity of performative gestures in relation to guided vs. free version of visual cues. This study shed a light on children’s gestures as an input for embodied interaction in performative tasks (e.g., music composition) as well as providing some design recommendations derived from experts from a design workshop on how to further develop cues for guiding children’s performative gestures in music making.

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.

Intrinsic motivation plays an important role in learning or engagement, and the factors that identifies intrinsic motivation have been insufficiently taken into account at the early stages of technology design for children. In this work-in-progress paper, we describe how we develop cards for children’s intrinsic motivation in carrying out everyday tasks in home environment. The content of the cards were derived from 50 parents’ views extracted through an online survey as well as a desk research literature review. Then we evaluated the cards in a focus group with four experts from different backgrounds in developmental research. We draw on our findings to set forth design considerations and possible refinements that make age specific knowledge about 9-13-year-old children’s intrinsic motivations to inform technology design in child-computer interaction 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.

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.

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.

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.

To date, developmental needs and abilities of children under 4 years old have been insufficiently taken into account at the early stages of technology design. Bekker and Antle [6] created developmentally situated design (DSD) cards as a design tool to inform children's technology designers about children's development starting from 5 years of age. In this paper, we describe how we customized DSD cards for a specific developmental skill (i.e., spatial learning) of children between 2- and 4-year-olds for tangible interaction design. The cards were evaluated after a user study in which 19 participants from different backgrounds used the cards in three design workshops. Our analysis of observational notes and online survey identify and discuss how specific card features support or limit use by our participants. We draw on our findings to set forth design considerations and possible refinements that make age specific knowledge about very young children's spatial learning to inform technologies based on tangible interaction.

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.

This proposed project aims to develop a research-driven interactive product that facilitates spatial skills of preschoolers. Here, we present the preliminary qualitative results of a user study with the paper prototype of Fungram, merging physical tangram pieces on the screen within a narrative context. A pilot study was conducted with eight children between the ages of 25 and 48 months, who were presented tangible tangram pieces along with two sets of papers with and without narrative context. Our preliminary qualitative data indicates that narrative context helps children's coherence of abstract figures and triggers rotation of geometric tangram pieces. This study provide insights about children's user needs and action strategies within the proposed use scenario with graspable puzzle pieces related to screen interaction at this age range. We suggest that transmedia play expand opportunities for children to employ their spatial skills in different settings.