Large-scale disparities in computing exist for many youth of color. Learning in informal settings can increase the participation of youth in computing; however, computing education programs have typically been developed by adults for youth. We argue computing education can contribute toward decolonization by directly involving youth from nondominant communities as design partners. When we directly involve youth voices, we can move away from focusing solely on the structural barriers faced by youth of color toward an assets-based approach. We examine a 10-week case study within KidsTeam Libraries, an intergenerational digital design program where local youth conceptualize what digital learning could look like in libraries. Our qualitative dataset includes over 15 hours of video recordings from participatory design sessions, six interviews with participants, 10 researcher jottings, and a corpus of 25 researcher memos written by researchers, librarians, and teens. Throughout our investigation, our knowledge claims are co-constructed with the two teenagers who led the design and implementation of a three-dimensional printing curriculum in their local library with 10 children. Our findings emphasize (1) the ways in which the involvement of teen leaders can foster and sustain community-level relationships for computing education; (2) how we noticed, enforced, and disrupted power within our computing education program; and (3) the systemic challenges we confronted in our process toward disrupting computing education. We provide empirical evidence of teen-led participatory design approaches for computing education in their community through detailed vignettes from sessions and through quotes from key participants. We contribute to the computing education community a novel approach in which youth are positioned as design partners for reimagining a computing education experience in libraries that centers and serves community members.

As HCI pedagogy research grows, so too does an emerging set of evidence-based teaching and curricular recommendations. Yet, few studies have implemented and examined these recommendations in the classroom. In this paper, we present a Research Through Design investigation of a studio-based HCI course, which was revised based on HCI education literature. Drawing on reflection surveys, video recordings of student-led user sessions, final project artifacts, and student interviews, we explore how students responded to key educational changes, the strategies that supported and hindered their reflective practices, and how reflection afforded new student insights. Our findings highlight the utility of video-based reflection exercises to support student learning in designing and running user sessions, the importance of multi-faceted reflection prompts, and how students noticed moments of inclusion and exclusion by attending to users’ non-verbal cues. Additionally, we empirically demonstrate the importance of implementing and studying HCI education research recommendations in the classroom.

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.

Co-designing with children in an online environment is increasingly important due to external factors, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, and the diversification and inclusion of youth participants. Many prior studies about co-design with youth focus on co-located or asynchronous online sessions. However, conducting synchronous online co-design sessions adds layers of complexity and uncertainty to collaboration. This paper introduces a model explicating factors to consider when co-designing with children synchronously in an online space. We examined ten consecutive intergenerational participatory design sessions online where children (ages 7-11) and adults designed new technologies. Along with highlighting unexpected moments and interactions, we use theories of improvisation to guide our understanding of dynamic situations that are out of the control of researchers. This work contributes to improving theoretical understanding of improvisation as a method of inquiry for co-designing with youth, and offers practical suggestions for suitable online co-design techniques and implementation.

Co-design methods have involved older adults in the design process to fill the knowledge gap that younger adult designers might encounter when designing for an aging population. A focus of co-design means establishing equal and equitable relationships between users and designers. To understand the factors that contribute to equal collaborations between older adults and student designers, we conducted 12 co-design sessions with 16 older adults and 11 student designers. We examined their interactions by adapting a framework initially aimed to understand the child-adult design partnership. We also analyzed student designers' reflections to understand their experiences and learnings from designing with older adults. Our findings demonstrate that developing a design partnership is complex. The framework helped surface factors like sharing life experiences and role ownership that influenced balanced or unbalanced interactions. Through the student designers' reflections, we found that student designers identified challenges they encountered and the assumptions they had about the older adult population. We believe that immersing students in a co-design experience with older adults and leveraging reflection activities provides an educational and meaningful experience to the design students.

Users are fundamental to HCI. However, little is known about how HCI education introduces students to working with users, particularly those different from themselves. To better understand design students' engagement, reactions, and reflections with users, we investigate a case study of a graduate-level 10-week prototyping studio course that partnered with a children's co-design team. HCI students participated in two co-design sessions with children to design a STEM learning experience for youth. We conducted participant observations, interviews with 14 students, and analyzed final artifacts. Our findings demonstrate the communication challenges and strategies students experienced, how students observed issues of power dynamics, and students' perceived value in engaging with users. We contribute empirical evidence of how HCI students directly interact with target users, principles for reflective HCI pedagogy, and highlight the need for more intentional investigation into HCI educational practice.

Approximately 8 million U.S. children have at least one immigrant parent. Lower-socioeconomic (SES) immigrant parents often rely on their children's language skills to problem-solve family needs-a practice known as brokering. Yet it is unknown how children use their language and digital literacy skills to search and broker information online. This paper examines how children with lower-SES immigrant parents search and broker information online. We focused on Latino families as they are the fastest growing U.S. minority group. We conducted in-home interviews and observations of search tasks with 23 parent-child dyads. We demonstrate: (1) how Online Search and Brokering (OSB) is impacted by familial values and resources at an individual, family, community, and digital infrastructure level, and (2) through search vignettes, how parent-child dyads problem-solve family needs through OSB. Our work demonstrates a different purpose of technology use in families: intergenerational, bilingual, and online co-searching to problem-solve family needs.