In this work, we discuss the findings emerging from co-design sessions between children ages 6 to 11 and adults, which were conducted to advance knowledge on how to best support children using well-known search tools for online information discovery. Specifically, we argue that by leveraging scaffolding, gamification techniques, and design choices via an application, it is possible to enhance children’s habits related to query formulation. Outcomes from this preliminary exploration reveal that gameplay incentives (e.g. levels, points, and other incentives like customization) are needed and effective in motivating further interaction with the application, which in turn leads to further utilization of the scaffolding needed to positively impact query formulation.

Children often interact with search engines within a classroom context to complete assignments or discover new information. To successfully identify relevant resources among those presented on a search engine results page (SERP), users must first be able to comprehend the text included in SERP snippets. While this task may be straightforward for an adult user, children may encounter obstacles in terms of readability and comprehension when attempting to navigate a SERP. Previous research has demonstrated the positive impact of including visual cues on a SERP as relevance signals to guide children toward appropriate resources. In this work, we explore the effect of supplying visual cues related to readability and text difficulty on children’s (ages 6-12) navigation of a SERP. Using quantitative data collected from user-interface interactions and qualitative data gathered from participant interviews, we analyze the impact of these visual cues on children’s selection of results on a SERP when carrying out information discovery tasks.

One of the largest barriers to communication is a difference in language. There are thousands of spoken languages, and no one human is capable of learning all of them – especially for those travelling or immigrating to a new country. For this problem we propose the Audiovisual Virtual Assistant (AVA): a helmet with integrated augmented reality (AR) designed to translate foreign languages both auditory and visually. AVA is also capable of taking cultural context and currency exchange into account with translating.

In this paper, we explore how children engage with search engine result pages (SERP) generated by a popular search API in response to their online inquiries. We do so to further understand children navigation behaviour. To accomplish this goal, we examine search logs produced as a result of children (ages 6 to 12), using metrics commonly used to operationalize engagement, including: position of clicks, time spent hovering, and the sequence of navigation on a SERP. We also investigate the potential connection between the text complexity of SERP snippets and engagement. Our findings verify that children engage more frequently with SERP results in higher ranking positions, but that engagement does not decrease linearly as children navigate to lower ranking positions. They also reveal that children generally spend more time hovering on snippets with more complex readability levels (i.e., harder to read) than snippets on the lower end of the readability spectrum.