As interactive technologies shape indoor environments, dominant design approaches prioritise optimisation, efficiency, and instrumental forms of socialisation. In contrast, architectural traditions of biophilic design show how interaction with nature supports emotions, attentional restoration, and physical health. Yet these insights are often overlooked in interactive indoor environments. In this paper, we advance biophilic design as an interaction design lens for technologically mediated indoor environments. Drawing on design sessions with architects, we examine how qualities of natural phenomena, beyond visual greenery, are translated into biophilic interaction indoors. We contribute a biophilic interaction design framework for indoor environments structured through: (1) seven biophilic dimensions that characterise the design space; (2) seven design values that articulate the experiential priorities shaping this space; and (3) six interaction forms that illustrate novel ways occupants interact with indoor environments. Our framework positions biophilic interaction as a multisensory process shaped through relations between people, technologies, and built environments.

Children increasingly interact with conversational AI in everyday settings, yet existing evaluation approaches rarely capture how trust, doubt, and understanding develop across childhood. This second edition of the C3AI workshop brings together researchers, designers, and educators to explore where trust, design, and evaluation meet in child-AI interaction. Through hands-on analysis of naturalistic interaction transcripts from children aged 6-14 and research-informed personas, participants will collaboratively identify cues of trust, confusion, resistance, and critique. Small-group activities and co-design exercises will support the development of preliminary, developmentally sensitive evaluation metrics for trust. Workshop outcomes include shared personas, draft evaluation templates, and open materials to support child-centred, responsible AI design and assessment.

Children increasingly encounter intelligent systems in educational and everyday contexts, yet most trust measures in human–AI interaction have been developed for adult users. This Work-in-Progress extends the validation of the child-centred K-AI Trust questionnaire to an older developmental cohort (10–14 years). Building on prior validation with 9–11 year-olds, we examine whether the instrument demonstrates acceptable internal consistency and coherent response patterns in early adolescence. Using survey data from 314 participants, we report preliminary reliability analyses and explore associations between dispositional trust (Propensity to Trust Technology; PTT) and post-interaction trust evaluations. Item refinement resulted in acceptable internal consistency for both scales (7-item K-AI; 5-item PTT). Correlational analyses revealed no significant association between dispositional and situational trust. This suggests that, in early adolescence, children’s inherent propensity to trust technology may not directly shape their immediate trust evaluation of a specific intelligent system. These findings provide preliminary evidence for the developmental applicability of a child-centred trust instrument and support ongoing age-sensitive psychometric refinement.

As generative AI systems increasingly act autonomously in digital environments, the ways in which these systems interact with children raise questions of both agency and permission. Existing frameworks offer limited guidance on how to design interfaces that respect children’s role as the final decision-makers [30]. This paper adopts a design-oriented perspective on child-AI interaction, drawing on mixed-methods data from 289 children aged 9-11. We reinterpret children’s trust-related responses as empirical signals for the ways in which agency and authority should be distributed within AI interfaces. Our findings indicate that children resist ‘proactive’ AI, instead preferring systems that seek permission, support non-judgmental error correction, and respect their right to refuse suggestions. Building on these insights, we propose three design principles: Staged Execution, Non-Destructive Reversibility, and Perceptible Uncertainty Signals, which translate children’s rights into concrete interface mechanisms, ensuring that generative systems support rather than override children’s agency.

Most trust metrics for intelligent systems are developed for adults, relying on complex reasoning and language that do not align with children’s developmental stages. As intelligent systems increasingly engage with young users, evaluating trust in child-AI interaction has become an urgent concern in HCI. In this paper, we present the iterative refinement and validation of the K-AI Trust Questionnaire, a child-centred instrument that integrates dispositional and situational trust components grounded in child-rights principles. Dispositional trust is captured through a child-adapted Propensity to Trust Technology (PTT), while situational trust is assessed through post-interaction items reflecting children’s experience with AI. Starting with a sample of 289 children, we conducted psychometric analyses and exploratory testing, culminating in a confirmatory factor analysis on a subsample of 85 children. Results supported a unidimensional structure consistent with the PTT, and highlighted the limitations of adult-oriented scales, underscoring the need for developmentally appropriate tools for trustworthy child-AI design.

Smart building design has predominantly focused on interactive experiences that enhance human comfort across measurable dimensions, namely thermal, respiratory, visual, and acoustic comfort. In contrast, architectural practices attend to inhabitation as subjective, situated, lived, and socially embedded experiences. This creates a gap between what can be sensed and regulated and the complexity of human experiences in buildings. We argue that an Affective Interaction (AfI) lens offers a way to bridge this gap, and deepen the role of interaction design research in architecture. We illustrate this through two exploratory studies using open-ended, in-situ methods that foreground lived experience and social interpretation. The AfI perspective revealed five Ways in which occupants interpret smart environments — from reading bodily cues and forecasting disruption to making sense of building automation. From these, we distil six Affective Practices and six Interaction Qualities that guide the future of interaction design research in buildings.

This paper introduces OSMoSIS, a novel tool for assessing Social Motor Synchrony (SMS) in naturalistic child-facilitator interactions. Unlike Motion Energy Analysis (MEA), which is limited to seated or highly controlled tasks, OSMoSIS captures full-body interactions and computes synchrony through position correlation (PC) and specific kinetic energy correlation (SKEC). We evaluated OSMoSIS during music therapy sessions with twelve autistic children, using synchronous (movement-contingent) and asynchronous (non-contingent) sound mappings as a testbed to elicit contrasting interaction dynamics. Our results show that SKEC was sensitive to condition differences, whereas PC was not in this setting, indicating that OSMoSIS provides a suite of indices in which SKEC serves as the primary marker for dynamic, whole-body contexts and PC as a supporting, posture-aligned measure. Complementary coding with Interact behavioural coding software revealed reduced non-response under synchronous conditions, supporting the convergent validity of OSMoSIS. We argue that OSMoSIS advances the measurement of SMS beyond MEA, enabling analysis in ecologically valid contexts such as therapeutic and educational interventions.

Advances in interaction design, architecture, and artificial intelligence offer new possibilities for built environments. Yet, most systems focus on improving physical parameters such as indoor air quality. While these enhance physical comfort, they often overlook an innate aspect of human experience - our connection with nature - fundamental to physical and mental health. In contrast, architecture offers a rich legacy of biophilic design that creates sensory-rich spaces evoking a connection to nature. What insights can biophilic architecture offer to guide interactive experiences in future buildings? Drawing on 13 expert interviews, we expose the gap between current biophilic practices in smart buildings and the multidimensional potential of nature-inspired design. We present eight themes reflecting expert imaginaries of biophilic futures and five design opportunities illustrating how emerging technologies can position biophilic interaction as multi-sensory, interpretive, and aligned with more-than-human, justice-oriented futures.

Unlike any previous generation, children's lives are now highly datafied, tracked, and digitally monitored.They are increasingly vulnerable to data collection from seemingly innocuous toys and devices with cameras, sensors, voice recognition, and geolocation.Yet, children typically lack awareness or control over these data exchanges, as consent is usually given by adult caregivers (who may also lack data literacy).Despite regulatory improvements, interdisciplinary approaches remain crucial to empowering children to understand, value, and manage their personal data.How can the IDC community involve children in the design and use of their personal data?This workshop unites experts to explore current practices.1 CCS Concepts• Security and privacy → Social aspects of security and privacy; • Human-centered computing → Interaction design 1 This workshop merged with "Towards a Research Agenda for Including Children and their Care Ecosystems in HCI" to run a joint workshop: Grasping Data Together: Interdisciplinary Agendas for Engaging Children and their Care Ecosystems with their personal data

As children face global challenges, creating environments that nurture hope and empower them to shape a fair, transparent future is essential.Conversational AI systems (CAIs) offer opportunities for cognitive and emotional growth, with trust built through transparent, responsive interactions.This workshop offers participants a hands-on opportunity to analyze child-CAI interactions, bringing their own use cases alongside pre-recorded examples from five countries provided by organizers.In collaboration with a diverse group of stakeholders, the focus will be on identifying the human factors that influence trust in child-AI interactions, aiming to advance guidelines for building transparent, trustworthy conversational AI systems.

Built environments increasingly incorporate new forms of intelligence, creating opportunities for enhancing human interactive experiences with and within building spaces.This scoping review examines design interventions and discourses within the domain of "Smart Buildings".The goal is to identify and characterise the type of human experiences that research in this domain aims to address.Using a hybrid deductive-inductive coding approach, we analysed 192 papers related to human experiences and smart buildings from ACM Digital Library and Scopus published between 1996 and 2024.Our analysis revealed 11 distinct "targeted human experiences", 20 commonly used "design mechanisms" to achieve those design goals, as well as two typologies of "technological interventions".Our findings create a foundation for understanding building design research and the range of human experience they entail.

In an era where Artificial Intelligence (AI) permeates our lives, its impact on children raises critical considerations. This workshop aims to delve into the multifaceted realm of Human-Centered AI (HCAI) for children, exploring the transformative role of AI in fostering creative expression and inclusive learning environments. Our goal is to unite diverse research expertise and methodologies, focussing on how AI can be tailored to meet diverse learning needs, enabling personalized and engaging educational experiences which support creativity. This workshop will bring together researchers, educators, technologists, and practitioners for expert talks, interactive demonstrations, and collaborative discussions,. Our goal is to foster a multidisciplinary dialogue on developing child-centered AI solutions that enhance creative learning while being mindful of inclusivity, ethical considerations and safeguarding against potential risks.

UPDATED—2024/04/17 13:30:54. This paper reports on work in progress to develop an assessment tool for Social Motor Synchrony (SMS) in children’s interactions. Expanding upon the foundation provided by the OSMoSIS motor sonification tool, we have developed an innovative approach for measuring SMS with children. Our method aims to overcome challenges stemming from variations in research settings and objectives encountered in studying SMS within the context of full-body interaction. Current tools for investigating SMS have been conducted in fixed settings, often limiting the interacting individuals to a seated position. However, this is in stark contrast to interventions such as music therapy, where the emphasis is on full-body interactions, and the settings exhibit considerable diversity. In such contexts, unrestricted movement is recognised as a fundamental element contributing to the overall efficacy and authenticity of the therapeutic experience, making it important to preserve the inherent benefits of a naturalistic setting. The study described in this paper explores the utility of OSMoSIS as a tool for assessing social motor synchrony revealing intriguing differences when comparing OSMoSIS with the well-known MEA software. This study not only brings a fresh perspective to the evaluation of social motor synchrony but also offers unique insights that set it apart from existing tools.

With the recent growth in interest in computing education for younger children, concrete representations have enabled children to understand concepts that, in abstract form, may otherwise be considered too advanced. Introducing children to computing concepts through concrete representations may be necessary at younger ages, but there is also a need for effective methods for progressing from this towards abstract understanding. Concreteness Fading has previously been applied in computing contexts with some success, but questions remain about how to design learning environments that most effectively support this progression, including the role of intermediate representations. This paper presents an augmented reality (AR) environment that uses the Concreteness Fading approach to teach introductory topics in computer networks. An in-school experiment with 59 children aged 9-10 investigated the effect of three distinct methods of fading representations from concrete to abstract, using a between-groups pre-test / post-test design. Three groups were compared: concrete > concrete > abstract (“two-step”), concrete > intermediate > abstract (“three-step”), and concrete > concrete/intermediate > intermediate > intermediate/abstract > abstract (“five-step”). The results showed a statistically significant difference between the two- and three-step groups in favour of the three-step, confirming the value of explicitly linking mutual referents via an intermediate representation when moving from concrete to abstract. No statistically significant difference was found between the three- and five-step groups, suggesting that increasing the number of intermediate representations does not significantly improve the learning outcomes. We discuss the implications of these findings for the design of educational technology for children.

Computing concepts are often introduced to children using interactive concrete representations, such as Computer Science Unplugged (CSU) activities - an approach that may positively affect attitudes towards computing when applied in extra-curricular settings. However, within the classroom, children may be required to interact with abstract representations, e.g. during programming tasks, and little is known about how to design CSU activities that support this. Prior work in mathematics and computing suggests that the Theoretical Model of Concreteness Fading (TMCF) may effectively scaffold the progression from concrete to abstract and improve learning outcomes. This paper aims to investigate one of the TMCF recommendations: the use of physical manipulatives, motivated by the growing body of evidence that suggests that virtual manipulatives can, in many contexts, be equally effective while providing several design advantages. An experiment was conducted with 48 children to compare two alternative implementations of Concreteness Fading learning materials: physical concrete (Playmobil toys) vs. virtual concrete (an AR iPad app), on learning gains and attitudinal change. Using these materials, children were taught the fundamentals of network structure and internet routing. Results indicated no significant difference between groups on either measure.

In this workshop, we invite researchers, practitioners and designers to reflect on ethical issues arising from Distributed Participatory Design (DPD) research with children. As participatory design research practices require rethinking and innovative adaptation in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, distributed, asynchronous and online (D)PD approaches may provide solutions to participation barriers. However, in light of this adaptation, additional ethical complexities may arise. Ongoing collaborative discussion is required to identify and address the different types of ethical issues which may arise when planning and conducting DPD projects with children. This workshop builds on previous workshops held at IDC 2021 and 2020, which provided insights into developing a protocol for a world-wide DPD project with children.

In this paper, we outline a Distributed Participatory Design (DPD) research protocol. The protocol is presented through the lens of the World’s Largest DPD Project with children, a hypothetical project in which children address the issue of climate change. The DPD research protocol is based on the protocol template recommended by WHO’s Research Ethics Review Committee (ERC) and on the data from two conference workshops with a total of 45 participants. The contribution of this paper is two-fold: 1) an initial version of a generic DPD research protocol; 2) an exemplification of how to appropriate this protocol for a specific project. We expect this protocol will be iteratively refined and will serve as inspiration for future research practices in Child-Computer Interaction (CCI).

Technology research for neurodivergent conditions is largely shaped by research aims which privilege neuro-normative outcomes. As such, there is an epistemic imbalance in meaning making about these technologies. We conducted a critical literature review of technologies designed for people with ADHD, focusing on how ADHD is framed, the research aims and approaches, the role of people with ADHD within the research process, and the types of systems being developed within Computing and HCI. Our analysis and review is conducted explicitly from an insider perspective, bringing our perspectives as neurodivergent researchers to the topic of technologies in the context of ADHD. We found that 1) technologies are largely used to ‘mitigate’ the experiences of ADHD which are perceived as disruptive to neurotypical standards of behaviour; 2) little HCI research in the area invites this population to co-construct the technologies or to leverage neurodivergent experiences in the construction of research aims; and 3) participant resistance to deficit frames can be read within the researchers’ own accounts of participant actions. We discuss the implications of this status quo for disabled people and technology researchers alike, and close with a set of recommendations for future work in this area.

In this workshop, we invite researchers and practitioners as participants in co-designing the protocol for the world’s largest Distributed Participatory Design (DPD) project with children. Participatory Design – whose inclusive benefits are broadly recognised in design – can be very challenging, especially when involving children. The current COVID-19 pandemic has given rise to further barriers to PD with such groups. Recent key barriers include social distancing and government-imposed social restrictions due to the additional health risks to vulnerable children and their families. This disrupts traditional in-person PD (which involves close socio-emotional and often physical collaboration between participants and researchers). However, alongside such barriers, we have identified opportunities for new and augmented approaches to PD across distributed geographies, backgrounds, ages and abilities. We invite the CCI community to examine Distributed Participatory Design (DPD) as a solution for overcoming these new barriers, during and after COVID-19. Together, we offer new ways to think about DPD, and unpick some of its ambiguities. This workshop builds on work conducted in a similar workshop in IDC 2020, and this year will focus on the planning and design of the protocol for the world’s largest DPD project with children.

Spontaneous gestures produced during mathematics learning have been widely studied, however, research on the role of gesture in computing education is limited. This paper presents an investigation into children's use of spontaneous gestures when learning programming using either a tangible user interface (TUI) or a graphical user interface (GUI). The study explored the relationship between spontaneous gestures, interface type and learning outcomes in a programming lesson for primary school students aged 6-7. In the study, 34 participants engaged in a learning activity lasting approximately 37 minutes, using a TUI or a GUI. The study used a between-subjects design, and mixed methods. Pre-test and post-test data were collected, and sessions were video recorded and subsequently coded and analysed. A video analysis scheme, adapted from mathematics education research, was used to code the spontaneous gestures produced during the learning session. We found a statistically significant difference between the mean learning gains of high-frequency gesturers and low-frequency gesturers, with the top quartile showing significantly greater learning gains. There was no significant difference in the frequency of gestures between interface types. A qualitative analysis of representational gestures showed that some children use spontaneous hand gestures to demonstrate abstract computational concepts, providing evidence for the embodiment of children's offline thinking in the computing domain.

There is considerable interest in using tangible user interfaces (TUIs) to support teaching children programming, but evidence for the benefits is mixed, and their deployment in school environments presents more challenges than graphical user interfaces (GUIs). This study investigates the effect of GUIs and TUIs on learning outcomes, attitudes toward computing, and reported enjoyment in a computer-programming activity with primary-school students aged 6-7 in Saudi Arabia. Forty-two students engaged in a 45-minute learning activity using either a TUI or GUI programming environment. The study used a between-groups design, and quantitative data were collected, including pre-test and post-test results, and ratings on attitudinal and enjoyment surveys. Learning gains were significantly higher for the GUI group than the TUI group. However, post-activity increases in reported attitude toward computing were significantly higher for the TUI group. There was no difference in activity enjoyment scores, which were high for both groups.

Despite its inherent challenges, participatory design (PD) has unique benefits when designing technology for children, especially children with special needs. Researchers have developed a multitude of PD approaches to accommodate specific populations. However, a lack of understanding of the appropriateness of existing approaches across contexts presents a challenge for PD researchers. This workshop will provide an opportunity for PD researchers to exchange and reflect on their experiences of designing with children with special needs. We aim to identify, synthesize and collate PD best practices across contexts and participant groups.

In primary education, concepts are commonly introduced through concrete instantiations, such as physical manipulatives and kinaesthetic activities, with an expectation that learners will gradually move towards working with abstract representations. There has been considerable research in subjects such as mathematics on how children can move from working with concrete to abstract materials, but relatively little research on how this can be achieved in computing, which has recently become a more prominent subject at primary level. This paper reports on the design and evaluation of a low-fidelity prototype learning environment that aims to teach children aged 9--10 about a key computing concept (internet routing), using a concreteness fading approach commonly applied in mathematics. An empirical study with 59 children showed that those following a concreteness fading progression scored significantly higher on a post-test than those using a concrete only prototype, and had an increase in positive attitude towards computing in line with alternative approaches. We highlight the potential for an augmented reality implementation of the prototype to support investigation of further key questions raised by this research.

This article examines the educational efficacy of a learning environment in which children diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Conditions (ASC) engage in social interactions with an artificially intelligent (AI) virtual agent and where a human practitioner acts in support of the interactions. A multi-site intervention study in schools across the UK was conducted with 29 children with ASC and learning difficulties, aged 4--14 years old. For reasons related to data completeness and amount of exposure to the AI environment, data for 15 children was included in the analysis. The analysis revealed a significant increase in the proportion of social responses made by ASC children to human practitioners. The number of initiations made to human practitioners and to the virtual agent by the ASC children also increased numerically over the course of the sessions. However, due to large individual differences within the ASC group, this did not reach significance. Although no evidence of transfer to the real-world post-test was shown, anecdotal evidence of classroom transfer was reported. The work presented in this article offers an important contribution to the growing body of research in the context of AI technology design and use for autism intervention in real school contexts. Specifically, the work highlights key methodological challenges and opportunities in this area by leveraging interdisciplinary insights in a way that (i) bridges between educational interventions and intelligent technology design practices, (ii) considers the design of technology as well as the design of its use (context and procedures) on par with one another, and (iii) includes design contributions from different stakeholders, including children with and without ASC diagnosis, educational practitioners, and researchers.

Participatory Design (PD) has become a standard methodology in HCI, however, the evaluation of the outcomes of participatory processes is often exclusively driven by researcher defined measures of success. Through our work with autistic children, who have radically different life worlds from our own, it became evident that their criteria for the success of a project are most likely also very different. In order to address the limitations of researcher defined and led evaluations in this context, we developed an approach for participatory evaluation called PEACE (Participatory Evaluation with Autistic ChildrEn). Using this approach, we were able to include autistic children in dedicated evaluation phases through the co-definition of goals and methods, joint processes of data gathering and the co-interpretation of results. We discuss three case studies in which we successfully applied our approach and conclude with a reflection on the novel insights created through participatory evaluation and researchers' roles in such a process.

Creating narrative-based computer games is a complex and challenging task. Narrative Threads is a suite of software tools designed to aid young people (aged 11-15) in creating their own narrative-based games as a writing development activity. A participatory design process highlighted the areas where additional support was required, and informed the iterative design of Narrative Threads. The tools are implemented as a plugin to a commercial game creation toolset, and constitute character and object design tools, a branching narrative diagramming tool and an augmented story map view. In this paper, we provide an overview of the design of the tools and describe an evaluation carried out with 14 children over a four-day workshop. The study examined tool usage patterns, and compared games created with Narrative Threads to those created using the standard toolset. The results suggest a number of ways in which dynamic external representations of story elements can support writing activities in narrative-based game creation. Young designers using Narrative Threads wrote more character dialogue, made stronger links between the conversations they wrote and wider game events, and designed more complex characters, compared to those using the standard toolset. In addition to showing how Narrative Threads can support young games designers, the results have broader implications for anyone looking to support storytelling and writing through game creation activities and tools.

The current drive in many countries to teach computing, particularly programming, to all from an early age, has potential to empower and support children in creative and problem-solving tasks. However, there are a number of challenges in ensuring that computing curricula, tools and environments embody appropriate progression and engender motivation for the topic across the school years. This workshop will consider the key research challenges in learning coding throughout childhood, with contributions from developmental psychologists, educators, researchers of children's programming, and designers of developmentally appropriate technologies for children.

Given the current drive to teach computational concepts to all from an early age, we consider whether traditional programming languages are truly necessary, or whether natural language might be a suitable medium for program generation and comprehension, given its familiarity and ubiquity. We conducted an empirical study on the use of natural language for computation, and found that, although it provides support for understanding computational concepts, it introduces additional difficulties when used for coding. Following a design study with target users, we distilled our findings into a series of design guidelines for novice programming environments that incorporate natural language. These guidelines drove the design of Flip, a bimodal programming language for young people's game creation activities. Two empirical studies examined the extent to which these embodied design guidelines support ease of use and an understanding of computation. The guidelines have potential both for analysing the usability of existing novice programming environments, and for designing new ones.

The field of Participatory Design (PD) has greatly diversified and we see a broad spectrum of approaches and methodologies emerging. However, to foster its role in designing future interactive technologies, a discussion about accountability and rigour across this spectrum is needed. Rejecting the traditional, positivistic framework, we take inspiration from related fields such as Design Research and Action Research to develop interpretations of these concepts that are rooted in PD׳s own belief system. We argue that unlike in other fields, accountability and rigour are nuanced concepts that are delivered through debate, critique and reflection. A key prerequisite for having such debates is the availability of a language that allows designers, researchers and practitioners to construct solid arguments about the appropriateness of their stances, choices and judgements. To this end, we propose a “tool-to-think-with” that provides such a language by guiding designers, researchers and practitioners through a process of systematic reflection and critical analysis. The tool proposes four lenses to critically reflect on the nature of a PD effort: epistemology, values, stakeholders and outcomes. In a subsequent step, the coherence between the revealed features is analysed and shows whether they pull the project in the same direction or work against each other. Regardless of the flavour of PD, we argue that this coherence of features indicates the level of internal rigour of PD work and that the process of reflection and analysis provides the language to argue for it. We envision our tool to be useful at all stages of PD work: in the planning phase, as part of a reflective practice during the work, and as a means to construct knowledge and advance the field after the fact. We ground our theoretical discussions in a specific PD experience, the ECHOES project, to motivate the tool and to illustrate its workings.

Data from the ECHOES virtual environment (VE) suggests that young children with autism spectrum conditions (ASC) may be motivated to initiate repeatedly and positively about novelty and expectationviolations (i.e. discrepancies) in a VE. This is of interest because initiating communication is developmentally important but difficult to encourageit must be unprompted in order to "count". Also, the ASC literature would predict that discrepancies should be distressing, not motivating. Based on this unexpected but positive finding, we are exploring the possibility of embedding discrepancies into VEs to support children's initiation practice. As a first step, we propose 6 empiricallyderived design principles for including discrepancies as motivators, while still maintaining the VE's overall integrity.

This paper explores the phenomenon of young children with autism spectrum conditions (ASC; aged 5-8 years) detecting discrepancies (i.e. novel or rule-violating occurrences) in a virtual environment (VE), and their subsequent reactions. Analysis of existent video data of 8 children with ASC interacting with the ECHOES VE showed that they detected and reacted to a range of discrepancies. More importantly, these discrepancies motivated a range of positive, social initiations, such as sharing affect, commenting, and social referencing. These early results suggest that deliberately including discrepancies in VEs may motivate initiation for children in this group. However, little is known about the possible types of discrepancies that might exist in a VE, how this population understands them, and how they might practically be incorporated into future designs.

Interaction design methodologies have become increasingly popular in the design and development of technologies for children with special needs. However, designing within this area remains fraught with difficulties. This workshop aims to explore the issues that occur when working with children with special needs and seeks to establish a set of guidelines for interaction design researchers who are working with such a diverse group. This will be achieved through the discussion of a number of themes that have highlighted as important when designing within this complicated area.

In this paper we discuss participatory approaches to designing interactive technologies for children with disabilities. While participatory design (PD) has been increasingly influential in the field of Human-Computer Interaction as a whole, applying its methods and theories to children with disabilities raises challenges specific to this target group and poses more fundamental questions about the limits of PD. We will first build the underlying argument of why we believe PD is particularly important when designing for children with disabilities, before discussing the challenges and opportunities that come with implementing PD in this context. We ground this discussion in our own experiences with developing a learning environment for children with autism spectrum conditions (ASC). We then consider future perspectives and develop research questions by reflecting on our experiences.

In this paper we describe the development of a tool to support the contributions of children with Autism Spectrum Conditions (ASC) in a design critique activity. The work is part of the ECHOES project in which we have included children with ASC in a participatory design process to create a technologically enhanced learning environment. We first discuss the general difficulties of involving children with ASC in participatory design work, particularly a socially demanding activity such as design critique. Based on theory from autism research and the results from our own previous design work, we then lay out requirements for a tool to allow children with ASC to become meaningfully involved in a design critique of the ECHOES environment. Subsequently, we describe a prototype of an annotation tool based on these requirements, a pilot study, and feedback elicited from special education teachers. We then report on a study in which seven children with ASC were involved in critiquing a prototype of the ECHOES system using the annotator. In our analysis of the children's annotator use, we found that it served the intended purposes as a visual support, but also that it was appropriated for other means, such as emotional self-regulation. We discuss examples of these different uses and close by asking how these findings could be applied in other contexts where tools are required to facilitate a discourse in design, rather than directly capture its output.

Involving children in the design process of interactive technology can greatly enhance its likelihood of successful adoption. However, children's input and ideas require careful interpretation to reach viable designs and technical specifications, which poses a significant challenge to an adult design research team. In this paper we discuss our approach to managing the complexity of combining concepts and ideas that were generated through participatory design work with the practical, technical, ethical and theoretical constraints of developing a technologically enhanced learning environment for children with and without Autism Spectrum Conditions. We found that the nature of this design problem did not lend itself to be rationally reduced to produce a single solution, but required an understanding of interpretive and speculative approaches for us to be able to cope with the complexity of requirements. We describe a workshop in which members of the design team used such approaches to develop a design brief that is faithful to the children's input. By making this process transparent, we aim to contribute to the methodology of using such designerly approaches in combination with participatory and human-centred methods to develop interactive technology.

Nonverbal communication is an essential part of face-to-face social interaction, conveying information about emotion and interpersonal relationships. The rigorous sensing capabilities of pervasive technologies and the subtle nature of ambient technologies make them ideal to support the production of nonverbal communication in social interactions. In this paper we present a study using an ambient technology that supports nonverbal communication, and specifically nonverbal behaviours associated with rapport. We show that an ambient display can influence a participant's nonverbal behaviour, and that participants are not aware of this change in their behaviour. We discuss these findings in terms of the design and ethical issues that it raises, and define an agenda for future work.

Constructive emotional experiences are strongly related to effective learning. Yet, it is challenging for teachers, researchers and students alike to understand the emotions experienced in the classroom setting. Advances in wireless and sensor technologies open up possibilities for better supporting emotions. However, little work has explored how affective technologies in the classroom might operate. This paper describes a study where 15 high school students used the Subtle Stone: a tangible technology designed to support students' active emotional communication in the classroom. We report on how the students used and experienced this technology, and the values they demonstrated through this use: flexibility, privacy, agency, voice and reflection. We conclude by examining future possibilities for affective technologies in the classroom.

A study was carried out which examined the extent to which young people aged 11-12, with no prior instruction in programming, are able to write computational rules which govern play in a 3D computer role-playing game. Expressing these rules required the use of common computational structures such as conditionals, sets and loops. We analysed the rules written for their structure and style, and recorded the types of errors made. It was found that although young people were able to abstract away from the game play experience, very few of the rules were error-free. The most common errors were errors of omission (leaving elements out that should have been included) rather than errors of commission (including elements which should not be part of the rule). These findings have implications for the design of the Flip language, which aims to support young people as they begin to develop computational skills through game design.

The paper presents a case for investigating the ability of companion agents to demonstrate cognitive empathy and describes planned research.

We propose a design model for guiding learning in exploratory environments through representational choices. Selecting the appropriate representations at the correct granularity can foreground the salient activities and background the irrelevant.. We demonstrate how this model can be applied via learner-centred design to ensure that the engaging factors of an environment are preserved whilst the learner is guided towards the development of specific skills.

This paper explores the potential for simplified programming languages to support the development of computational thinking skills in nonprogrammers. We suggest that novice programming languages might offer a starting point for nonprogrammers to engage with a substantial subset of computational thinking concepts, and assess a number of languages from this perspective. We outline four key computational thinking skills and examine the support provided by existing languages. We then describe additional characteristics which would be important for a new language aimed specifically at developing computational thinking skills.

The seventh annual graduate consortium at VL/HCC addresses the question: How can researchers and designers of computational tools support problem solving and information manipulation by diverse user populations? For the seventh year, the U.S. National Science Foundation continues its sponsorship of a graduate student consortium at the VL/HCC Symposia (NSF grant # IIS-0929989). These workshops, on themes related to diversity and universal access of software development technologies, have brought together graduate students, faculty mentors, and conference attendees to discuss the innovative work of the students and provide feedback and suggestions on their research. The events have produced considerable excitement and community building around approaches for reaching broad populations.

We describe an innovative educational system designed to, firstly, motivate young people to engage with computational concepts and secondly, provide them with tools to do so in an embodied manner. The interface is designed as a "magic mirror" in which users can, through augmented reality technology, take on the role of a character and control the character's movements via their own movements. They are able to record movements, and using a Wii Remote as a mouse and pointing device, organise these movements into sequences. We are now working on ways in which the recorded movements can be manipulated in ways that foster computational thinking.

Designing for illiterate populations involves particular challenges: for a start, the life experiences, needs and expectations of non-elite and illiterate populations in developing nations are likely to be markedly different from those of a designer. To avoid any bias, the creation of new technologies for such groups must develop in continuous partnership with primary users, and include a thorough investigation into their worlds, lives, relationships and concerns. Involving the user throughout the design process can also help in progressively testing and fine-tuning the prototypes by exposing the shortcomings and strengths in the design. In this paper, we report on a study that investigated the design of a mobile phone for illiterate persons. While the study takes a user-centred, incremental design approach, the users’ context of use forms the basis for the phone design. Through a discussion which compares key insights from our study with related HCI studies, we have endeavoured to illustrate how findings from our study could be useful in the area of design for non-traditional users.

Creating interactive stories in the form of narrative-based games can have motivational and educational benefits for children, but scripting languages can be a barrier to the activity. This paper describes a learner-centred design (LCD) approach to creating a visual programming language (VPL) for scripting plot events in game-based interactive stories. The LCD approach, unusual in the field of VPLs, was essential to ensure that the software effectively supported our child target users in the game creation process.

This paper describes an innovative method for teaching modelling skills in theoretical computer science (e.g. finite state automata, Turing machines). Students acquire a new modelling skill by completing a game-building assignment in which there is a direct and transparent mapping between the game that the student is building and the model in the framework they are trying to master. Through this constructionist approach, the student not only learns by doing, which potentially contributes to understanding, but there is also a significant element of personalization and choice present, which has the potential to increase both motivation and performance.

This paper describes Script Cards, a visual programming language which enables young people to script story events in a 3D role-playing game (Neverwinter Nights). Script Cards is designed to eliminate the need to learn a complex scripting language when creating interactive stories. An initial evaluation of Script Cards suggests that young people found it easy to use.

The effects of games on learning and skill development are being examined by a number of researchers [1], although with the notable exception of Kafai [3], much research places children in the role of game consumers. In line with a constructionist approach [4], we believe that allowing children to design and implement their own games will lead to deeper learning and transferable skills.We are investigating the relationship between game creation and the development of children's narrative skills. Non-programmers can now create 3D interactive virtual reality role-playing games using toolsets that ship with certain commercial games (e.g. Neverwinter Nights). By adapting these toolsets, and the game content, to children, we could develop game creation environments which allow children to author narrative games by creating settings, characters, a plot structure, and possible dialogues for each character. Given the interactive nature of such dialogue, children would need to create multiple plot threads and associated dialogue. Other children could then play the game, and have a potentially different experience each time the game is played. We believe that these types of environments would have a beneficial effect on the development of narrative skills and overall literacy, and have carried out various pilot studies which look at the process of creating role-playing games by children [2, 5].In this paper, we look at the product of game creation, specifically at 3D interactive virtual reality games created by adolescents using the Neverwinter Nights toolset. We feel it is important to determine whether games which are considered to be good from an educational perspective are also good from the perspective of potential game players.To explore this question, we carried out a multi-faceted qualitative study from three perspectives: children, expert game designers, and teachers. As the basis for interaction with the three target groups, we used created by 10 young people aged 12-15 using the Neverwinter Nights toolset [5]. While examining the games, the interviewees discussed the features of successful games. Although there are clear, and expected, differences in perspective between the three groups, there are also common themes.

Recent research into the educational applications of computer games has focused on the skills which children can develop while playing games. Various benefits of computer game playing have been recorded, such as increased motivation; development of problem solving and discussion skills; and improvement in aspects of story writing. While encouraging children to play appropriately designed computer games can be used to enhance their learning, enabling children to create their own computer games offers a further range of learning opportunities. This paper describes a workshop in which young people learned how to create their own computer role- play games for their friends and family to play. The purpose of the workshop was to give the young people an opportunity to tell stories in the medium of a computer game, and to develop narrative skills such as character creation, plot planning and interactive dialogue writing. Results from this study are used to illustrate the educational benefits of computer games authoring, and to suggest directions for future research in this area.

No abstract available.

Children find computer games extremely motivating and are often prepared to devote large amounts of leisure time to playing them. UK educational policy makers and practitioners have recently started to explore the educational potential of computer games and to consider how their motivational features can be harnessed within the curriculum. This paper describes a fully implemented virtual role-playing environment, Ghostwriter, designed for educational drama development and writing instruction. Ghostwriter was developed using the commercial game engine Unreal and therefore has the same high quality graphics and audio which children are accustomed to playing with at home. Two separate field studies with Ghostwriter have shown the educational value of the system and have confirmed that children are extremely motivated by it