This paper presents a case study on the design, development, and evaluation of Tabeer-e-Isharaat (TEI), a digital educational platform tailored to meet the needs of deaf children at the Deaf Reach School in Pakistan. Informed by classroom observations and interviews with educational experts, TEI incorporates visual and interactive learning activities aligned with the curriculum and preferences of deaf students. Feedback from both deaf and non-deaf participants regarding the TEI platform suggests overall positive perceptions of its usability. While both groups found the platform easy to understand and navigate, there were slight differences noted, such as deaf participants encountering challenges in error recovery compared to their non-deaf counterparts.

We describe a seven-year longitudinal study conducted in collaboration with an indigenous community in Kenya. We detail the process of conducting research with an oral community: the deliberate practice of understanding and collecting stories; working with inter-generational community to envision and design technologies that support their ways of storytelling and story preservation; and to influence the design of other technologies. We chronicle how we contended with translating oral stories with rich metaphors to new mediums, and the dimensions of trust we have established and continue to reinforce. We offer our griot-style methodology, informed by working with the community and retrofitting existing HCI approaches: as an example model of what has worked, and the dimensions of challenges at each stage of the research work. The griot-style methodology has prompted a reflection on how we approach research, and present opportunities for other HCI research and practice of handling community stories.

Specific Learning Difficulties such as Dyslexia and Dysgraphia are characterized by struggles in reading and writing. Their diagnosis and intervention are critical as if left unattended, they can cause hindrance in academic activity, self-esteem, and long-term quality of life. Owing to the complex traditional processes for diagnosis, social stigma, and the general lack of availability of remedial therapists and clinical psychologists in Pakistan, this study explores the potential of handwriting quality features to be used in computationally screening for SLDs to make screening more accessible. This project consists of exploratory data analysis of handwriting scans of 25 children thus far, in the age group of 5 to 15, generating various handwriting quality features and using classification models to assess their potential. Our preliminary results are promising, with approximately 80% accuracy, thus showing potential for increased accuracy when paired with larger data samples and further feature generation.

This paper details our collaborative approach in capturing a holistic understanding of parental technology use through an assets-based framework. We steer the focus away from the design of technology as the central force of technological innovation, and instead support participants to reflect and describe intimate details that highlight specific use-contexts of technology in their lives. We leverage a group of foreign graduate student mothers' self-described unique strengths to gain an in-depth account of their lived experiences with technology. As research participants and co-authors, our collaborators elicit intimate narratives about meaningful events in their lives, bringing social and cultural aspects of their lived experience to the forefront, and thus providing broader context of their use of technology. We detail and reflect upon our approach of promoting user agency by creating an affinity group, fostering a safe and intimate space for research engagement, and describe the implications of using our adapted research methodology in intimate settings. We conclude by highlighting the various ways in which technology facilitates foreign student parenting, as well as the ways in which it serves as a temporary band-aid solution, prompting consideration of larger social issues.

The popularity of mobile devices for learning outside conventional classrooms necessitates the exploration of the many challenges which can impede the learning process for children using them. Key among these is the possibility of disorientation, occurring when children are faced with stimuli external to their learning task which can redirect their attention elsewhere. This paper explores the several factors which can contribute towards disorienting children from their learning task in an informal learning environment (ILE) using science festivals as a context. We detail the design and deployment of a mobile leaf identification application used by attendees at a child-focused science festival in a setting filled with distractions. Participating children used the app to watch an educational video about leaves, and were asked to identify the leaves around the exhibit correctly by taking a picture using the app. From our observations, we derive the key factors which can disorient young learners in an ILE and the ones which help them reorient towards the learning task. We conclude by providing considerations for designing mobile applications for children to be used in ILEs which can promote informal learning while minimizing disorientation.

Children in international and cross-cultural families in and outside of the US often learn and speak more than one language. Challenges can arise for these children in terms of communicating with other children and being able to fully participate in school and society using the primary country language, in developing relationships with distant relatives in other languages, and with the lack of opportunities for practising additional languages within a small community of speakers. Recent research shows that some parents use screen media content to acquaint their children with their parent’s native language, and to also help them become proficient in the language of communication in the country that they reside in. We leverage the qualities of screen media in aiding children with language learning, and try to translate those qualities into the design of a CUI for children to explore the potential of designing conversational user interfaces which can double as assistive language aids. By reviewing the relevant literature about the role of screen media content in young children’s language learning, and interviewing a subset of parents raising multilingual children, we present a preliminary list of objectives to guide the design of conversational user interfaces for young children’s bilingual language acquisition.

The struggle to thrive as a productive student researcher, an attentive parent, and a caring partner can be difficult, particularly for international student parents who are far from home and also possibly burdened with complex cultural expectations, interpersonal dynamics, and institutional biases. Using uses and gratifications theory as a framing mechanism, we describe interviews with twelve international student mothers in the United States who are primary caregivers of children between six months to five years old, focusing on the context of their use of screen media content and devices, the gratifications they seek from their children's use of screen media devices, and the differences in their perceptions about the use of screen media as an educated, non-US parent. Our findings give an initial account of the role of screen based technology in their domestic life with young children, and the limitations of their technological experience. We present four opportunities for designing for this population including technologies for positive distraction, interactive language aids, playful acquaintance tools, and anonymous peer networks for parent support. We conclude by formulating future promising avenues of research in this design space.

Emerging research in Human Computer Interaction (HCI) has considered the use of technology to preserve Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) while wrestling with the dilemma of local participation in the face of post-colonialism. There remains a need to understand how ICH is portrayed by museums and texts, how communities regard these representations, and how technology would affect preservation. We conducted a study in the North Rift region of Kenya to understand how ICH is preserved and disseminated by the museum in comparison with the community. The findings describe a respectful technology space where community needs and museum needs can co-exist. We also articulate social challenges that should be considered by designers when recommending or designing technological solutions. This paper concludes by recommending ways for researchers to smoothly integrate technology with ICH through community participation and an awareness of the respectful space.

Advances in the fields of natural language processing, machine learning and speech recognition have led to the increasing adoption of conversational agents in a variety of domains. However, the use of conversational agents as a childcare assistant for parents of young children has not been realized. We propose the use of conversational agents into children's programs to produce an interactive show, which can be employed as conversational companion for children, and a childcare assistant for parents of young children who have limited access to childcare options. Key features of the interactive show include understanding, responsiveness and maintaining an uninterrupted conversation flow. We argue that having a truly interactive show can engage children for a longer period of time without being distracted, which can give parents some time to attend to their needs in the absence of help.