Extended reality (XR) technologies have become more advanced and affordable in recent years, leading to greater familiarity and adoption among US families and youth-serving institutions. While these tools show promise in enhancing children's education, healthcare, and recreation, ethical considerations around safety, accessibility, and impact—particularly for children from historically marginalized racial and ethnic groups—warrant further investigation. This study engaged 17 local, primarily Black, middle school male youth in evaluating and co-designing utopian and dystopian XR use cases to surface their ethical perspectives. We found that our participants emphasized individual responsibilities like self-discipline, self-care, and skepticism of virtual content; broader societal concerns about entrapment and diminished community agency; and design opportunities for promoting equity and access. Based on these findings, we offer design and methodological recommendations to better integrate the perspectives of male youth targeted for racial oppression into XR innovation to ensure that these tools are ethical, inclusive, and responsive to the communities they serve.

This workshop will convene researchers and stakeholders to share their work on and discuss research on extended reality (XR) technologies for children, including identifying risks, opportunities, and ethical guidelines.The workshop builds on prior child-computer interaction research on XR technologies, as well as prior SIGs and workshops focused on ethics.Our goal is to discuss state-of-the art research on XR technologies and outline ethical concerns and future research challenges.

Emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and mixed reality (MR) increasingly pervade the world of children, from their schoolwork to leisure activities and social relationships. This has led to Child Computer Interaction (CCI) research supporting children's critical understanding of digital technologies and their ability to influence the design of future digital technologies. Despite these efforts, there are several limitations and challenges in terms of Computational Empowerment (CE) of children. This workshop unites such research 1) to create a shared manifesto for CE of children and 2) to jointly develop a research ‘roadmap’ to push the boundaries of CE of children.

This paper explores the co-design of "Play Therapy Web/VR", a play therapy application that empowers children to express themselves in a way that is comfortable and aligned with their interests and familiar environments.We conducted two exploratory co-design sessions with the University of Maryland's KidsTeam in November 2024 and January 2025.Using a variety of co-design based techniques (e.g., "sticky noting"), we captured design ideas from the children and observed various types of expressive play.Our codesign sessions afforded children an opportunity to discuss and recognize the value of technology-supported play therapy.Initially, many of the children's views appeared to be rooted in stigmatized perspectives.The structure of our sessions allowed children to share their awareness and possible biases surrounding the idea of therapy overall, which in turn, promoted more nuanced discussions about the value of therapy as a tool for well-being.

Emphasizing problem formulation in AI literacy activities with children is vital, yet we lack empirical studies on their structure and affordances. We propose that participatory design involving teachable machines facilitates problem formulation activities. To test this, we integrated problem reduction heuristics into storyboarding and invited a university-based intergenerational design team of 10 children (ages 8-13) and 9 adults to co-design a teachable machine. We find that children draw from personal experiences when formulating AI problems; they assume voice and video capabilities, explore diverse machine learning approaches, and plan for error handling. Their ideas promote human involvement in AI, though some are drawn to more autonomous systems. Their designs prioritize values like capability, logic, helpfulness, responsibility, and obedience, and a preference for a comfortable life, family security, inner harmony, and excitement as end-states. We conclude by discussing how these results can inform the design of future participatory AI activities.

Participatory narratives are compelling, at least partly because of their ability to help players suspend disbelief in the fictional world in which they engage. Game makers have used the phrase “This is Not a Game” (TINAG) to capture the willingness of players to buy into such narratives in ways that promote productive roleplaying and authentic engagement. Although TINAG has permeated the academic and popular literature on gaming and immersive narratives for decades, there has not been a scientific grounding for the term that provides researchers support for a more rigorous study of the topic. This article makes two primary contributions. First, it provides a definition of the Perception of TINAG based on a systematic literature review of 50 articles that define or describe critical characteristics of TINAG: The Perception of TINAG is a player’s acceptance that they are embedded in and able to influence a fictional story woven into the real world. Second, the paper develops and validates a survey instrument that researchers can use to measure the Perception of TINAG and its three unique components: (1) the player accepts that they are embedded in a fictional story, (2) the player believes their actions influence the narrative, and (3) the player perceives that the story is woven into the real world. We evaluated the instrument using exploratory factor analysis using expert reviewers and game players. We include a table of the articles describing TINAG and our final scale to facilitate future research.

Children are exposed to technology at home and school at very young ages, often using family mobile devices and educational apps. It is therefore critical that they begin learning about privacy and security concepts during their elementary school years, rather than waiting until they are older. Such skills will help children navigate an increasingly connected world and develop agency over their personal data, online interactions, and online security. In this paper, we explore how a simple technique---a ''Would Your Rather'' (WYR) game involving hypothetical privacy and security scenarios---can support children in working through the nuances of these types of situations and how educators can leverage this approach to support children's privacy and security learning. We conducted three focus groups with 21 children aged 7-12 using the WYR activity and interviewed 13 elementary school teachers about the use of WYR for facilitating privacy and security learning. We found that WYR provided a meaningful opportunity for children to assess privacy and security risks, consider some of the social and emotional aspects of privacy and security dilemmas, and assert their agency in a manner typically unavailable to children in an adult-centric society. Teachers highlighted connections between privacy and security dilemmas and children's social and emotional learning and offered additional insights about using this WYR technique in and beyond their classrooms. Based on these findings, we highlight four opportunities for using WYR to support children in engaging with privacy and security concepts from an early age.

Researchers are studying makerspaces as one way to support older adults in learning about and using new technologies and tools. In this paper, through a long-term (34 months), ethnographic approach, we study the ways that older adults arranged sociotechnical resources to sustain the community use of a makerspace. Our analysis identifies three interconnected resources that were developed: an adaptive staffing approach that could withstand constant personnel shifts and shortages; structured activities to draw interest and overcome challenges associated with learning to use the machines; and reference materials to support individuals in independent usage of the space. We describe the issues that arose as time went on with each of these resource types, and how individuals affiliated with the makerspace adapted the resources to address these issues. In the discussion, we extend best practices by reflecting on strategies that worked well in the makerspace, such as drawing interest through introductory classes, as well as different purposes for reference materials to support technology use.

Through this paper, we present the results of an exploratory study conducted in India and the USA, examining how cultural and academic backgrounds shape children’s perceptions of themselves as design partners in participatory design. We used participatory design methods with two small groups of children from India (n=4) and the USA (n=8) to understand their perspectives and experiences. Our initial findings suggest that personal, familial, and educational experiences play a role in the way children view themselves as designers. We also observed that differences between children from the two countries may result in variations in how they approach participatory design. These initial findings may be taken up by future researchers and designers who aim to support more inclusive participatory design across cultures.

This workshop will convene researchers and stakeholders to share their work on and discuss participatory approaches to the ethics of emerging technologies for children. The workshop builds on prior discussions in the community, which have identified significant challenges in addressing ethical issues related to emerging technologies given that they are still under development, and it is difficult to predict how they may be used. Our goal is to build on the familiarity the community has with participatory methods and apply them to considering the ethics of emerging technologies, thus giving stakeholders, including children, a voice in these considerations.

Participatory Design approaches involving youth are often guided by a desire to position participating young people as equal collaborators and experts at communicating their lived experiences. However, these conceptualizations often foreground the design process, with less attention paid to the holistic set of resources (values, experiences, perspectives, beliefs) that inform young people's identities and influence how they engage in the process of co-design. In this paper, we share how we leveraged a set of identity, team building, and design techniques in combination with a youth development approach to unpack youth identities and support relationship-building within the context of an intergenerational co-design team of eleven teenagers, two young adult mentors, and five adults. Our preliminary findings suggest that providing young co-designers with opportunities to reflect upon and share their individual multifaceted identities can support the formation of a cohesive collective identity, effective collaboration, and design ideas that are relevant to youth and their communities.

Participatory Design (PD) aims to promote inclusivity by involving users throughout the design process. However, Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and social computing research have pointed to instances where PD as practiced can, paradoxically, be exclusive. We aim to understand some of the challenges that could lead to exclusivity in order to design more inclusive PD practices. To investigate this, we conducted interviews with ten expert PD practitioners based in the Global North whose focus is on inclusion. Synthesizing practitioners' accounts, we advance understandings of challenges surrounding: 1) instantiating shared spaces that empower partners; 2) developing common ground among stakeholders; and 3) balancing funding needs with open-ended PD. We contribute theoretical and empirical insights into these challenges and close by articulating potential implications for addressing these challenges to inclusion in PD.

Iteratively building and testing machine learning models can help children develop creativity, flexibility, and comfort with machine learning and artificial intelligence. We explore how children use machine teaching interfaces with a team of 14 children (aged 7–13 years) and adult co-designers. Children trained image classifiers and tested each other's models for robustness. Our study illuminates how children reason about ML concepts, offering these insights for designing machine teaching experiences for children: (i) ML metrics (e.g. confidence scores) should be visible for experimentation; (ii) ML activities should enable children to exchange models for promoting reflection and pattern recognition; and (iii) the interface should allow quick data inspection (e.g. images vs. gestures).

Boredom is a universal phenomenon: everyone has experienced the sense of disengagement and apathy that comes when there's nothing to Children are especially quick to grumble, I'm bored!, despite an increase in pre-scheduled activities and interactive technologies designed to capture their attention. Are today's children losing an ability to generate their own antidotes to boredom, instead growing more dependent on external sources of increasingly digital and ubiquitous forms of entertainment? Current research indicates that young minds benefit from learning strategies to overcome feelings of boredom. How do children conceptualize boredom and find ways to transform feeling bored into creative play? We conducted five cooperative inquiry sessions with youth (7-13 years old) to explore the role that boredom plays in their lives and techniques to spark imagination and enhance their efforts to overcome boredom. Our findings suggest that boredom in children includes (1) a time dimension, (2) the sense that they lack control or agency, and (3) tangible interactions that prompt transitions from boredom to a more engaged, not-bored state.

We introduce ARMath, a mobile Augmented Reality (AR) system that allows ch ildren to discover mathematical concepts in familiar, ord inary objects and engage with math problems in meaningful contexts. Leveraging advanced computer vision, ARMath recognizes everyday objects, visualizes their mathematical attributes, and turns them into tangible or virtual manipulatives. Using the manipulatives, children can solve problems that situate math operations or concepts in specific everyday contexts. Informed by four participatory design sessions with teachers and children, we developed five ARMath modules to support basic arithmetic and 2D geometry. We also conducted an exploratory evaluation of ARMath with 27 children (ages 5-8) at a local children's museum. Our findings demonstrate how ARMath engages children in math learning, how failures in AI can be used as learning opportunities, and challenges that children face when using ARMath.

Mobile social media applications ("apps"), such as TikTok (previously Musical.ly), have recently surfaced in news media due to harmful incidents involving young children engaging with strangers through these mobile apps. To better understand children's awareness of online stranger danger and explore their visions for technologies that can help them manage related online risks (e.g., sexual solicitations and cyberbullying), we held two participatory design sessions with 12 children (ages 8-11 years old). We found that children desired varying levels of agency, depending on the severity of the risk. In most cases, they wanted help resolving the issue themselves instead of relying on their parents to do it for them. Children also believed that social media apps should take on more responsibility in promoting online safety for children. We discuss the children's desires for agency, privacy, and automated intelligent assistance and provide novel design recommendations inspired by children.

Genealogy and family history build the narratives of our family. By exploring these topics, children can make concrete and personal connections to larger historical themes. However, little is known about how to design genealogy and family history interactive applications for children. In this exploratory study, we consider what children want to know about these topics and how children want to interact with genealogical tools. We conducted 2 co-design sessions using the Cooperative Inquiry approach, Big Paper and Layered Elaboration, with an intergenerational design team that included 8 children ages 7-11. Our exploratory results indicate that 1) children are more interested in "fun facts" than kinship; 2) they are interested in geographical aspects of genealogy and family history such as migration history; and 3) they express and develop interests in broader historical topics such as artifacts from ancestors' eras during the design process.

We introduce PrototypAR, an Augmented Reality (AR) system that allows children to rapidly build complex systems using paper crafts and to test their designs in a digital environment. PrototypAR combines lo-fidelity prototyping to facilitate iterative design, real-time AR feedback to scaffold learning, and a virtual simulation environment to support personalized experiments. Informed by three participatory design sessions, we developed three PrototypAR applications: build-a-bike, build-a-camera, and build-an-aquarium---each highlights different aspects of our system. To evaluate PrototypAR, we conducted four single-session qualitative evaluations with 21 children working in teams. Our findings show how children build and explore complex systems models, how they use AR scaffolds, and the challenges they face when conducting experiments with their own prototypes.

Children ages 8--12 spend nearly six hours per day with digital content, but they receive little formal instruction related to managing privacy online. In this study, we explore how games and storytelling can inform the development of resources to help children learn about privacy online. We present results from three co-design sessions with a university-based intergenerational design team that included eight children ages 8--11. During these sessions, we reviewed existing privacy resources with children and elicited design ideas for new resources. Our findings yield several recommendations for designers. Specifically, online privacy-focused educational resources should: (1) include relatable elements such as familiar characters and easily understandable storylines, (2) go beyond instructing children through "dos and don'ts" and equip children to make privacy-related decisions, and (3) expose children to a range of privacy consequences, highlighting the positive and negative outcomes that can result from disclosing and managing information online.

The ubiquitous use of social media by children offers a unique opportunity to view diverse funds of knowledge that may otherwise be overlooked. To leverage this insight, we have coupled the iterative development of our community-focused, Science Everywhere life-relevant science learning program together with an integrated social media app to engage learners aged 6--16 in science with parents, teachers, and mentors throughout their community. We found that learners' scientific funds of knowledge were often not evident in their posts alone; rather, they emerged through our triangulation of posts, interviews with youth and their parents, and observations of their learning experiences in our life-relevant science education program. Our findings suggest that leveraging new social media features to support contextual information, scientific scaffolds and creative expression may make children's implicit and more unconventional scientific funds of knowledge more apparent. Additionally, social media sharing in conjunction with other practices, such as discussing posts with learners and encouraging non-science posts, can uncover the rich contexts of children's social media sharing, which can illuminate their scientific thinking.

A major challenge in education is understanding how to connect learning experiences across settings (e.g., school, afterschool, and home) for youth. In this paper, we introduce and describe the participatory design process we undertook to develop Science Everywhere (SE), which is a sociotechnical system where children share their everyday science learning via social media. Public displays installed throughout the neighborhood invite parents, adults, peers, and community members to interact with children's ideas to better develop connections for learning across settings. Our case study of community interactions with the public displays illuminate how these technologies encouraged behaviors such as the noticing of children's ideas, recognition of people in the neighborhood, and bridging to new learning opportunities for youth.

Wearable sensing poses new opportunities to enhance personal connections to learning and authentic scientific inquiry experiences. In our work, we leverage the body and physical action as an engaging platform for learning through live physiological sensing and visualization (LPSV). Prior research suggests the potential of this approach, but was limited to single-session evaluations in informal environments. In this paper, we examine LPSV tools in a classroom environment during a four-day deployment. To highlight the complex interconnections between space, teachers, curriculum, and tool use, we analyze our data through the lens of Activity Theory. Our findings show the importance of integrating model-based representations for supporting exploration and analytic representations for scaffolding scientific inquiry. Activity Theory highlights leveraging life-relevant connections available within a physical space and considering policies and norms related to learners' physical bodies.

An Alternate Reality Game (ARG) is an interactive storygame hybrid whose core mechanics include collaborative problem solving and storytelling. ARGs are also participatory experiences, because game designers dynamically adjust content in response to players' actions as game play progresses. What if the participatory process was extended during the design phase of an ARG as well? Few, if any, studies have explored how to include player populations in the ARG design process -- especially ARGs that target youth. In this paper, we share the process we followed to design a large-scale ARG to promote scientific inquiry for teenagers (13-17 years old) by partnering with them. Our findings suggest that co-designing with youth resulted in novel design features in the final game, and gave us insight into adolescent attitudes toward various scientific concepts. We also share co-design techniques that were not as effective and offer suggestions for future approaches.

Online user-generated video sharing communities, such as YouTube, are becoming more popular than conventional studio-produced content. These communities provide every user with the opportunity to create and promote their own video content---a compelling venue for children and teenagers to share their stories and voices. In this study, we investigate the practices of youth video creators on YouTube. To do so, we conducted a content analysis of the audience engagement practices of 100 youth author channels, comparing them to adult and professional YouTubers when appropriate. We found that most youth authors are aware of and actively engage with their imaginary or real audiences on YouTube. They emulate the conversational and audience engagement practices seen in professional quality YouTube channels, but may not have the video editing or other meta-content skills or experience to do so. Based on our findings, we point to a number of implications for future research and design in this space.

Partnering with parents and children in the design process can be important for producing technologies that take into consideration the rich context of family life. However, to date, few studies have examined the actual process of designing with families and their children. Without understanding the process, we risk making poor design choices in user-interactive experiences that take into account important family dynamics. The purpose of this investigation is to understand how parent-child relationships in families shape co-design processes and how they are reshaped through co-design. We document the evolutionary process and outcomes that exist in co-design partnerships between researchers and families. We found that parents' engagement patterns shifted more slowly than that of children's from observing and facilitating to design partnering practices. Our analysis suggests the importance of establishing and nurturing social bonds among parents, children, and researchers in the co-design process.

What kinds of content do children and teenagers author and share on public video platforms? We approached this question through a qualitative directed content analysis of over 250 youth-authored videos filtered by crowdworkers from public videos on YouTube and Vine. We found differences between YouTube and Vine platforms in terms of the age of the youth authors, the type of collaborations witnessed in the videos, and the significantly greater amount of violent, sexual, and obscene content on Vine. We also highlight possible differences in how adults and youths approach online video sharing. Specifically, we consider that adults may view online video as an archive to keep precious memories of everyday life with their family, friends, and pets, humorous moments, and special events, while children and teenagers treat online video as a stage to perform, tell stories, and express their opinions and identities in a performative way.

Many new technologies for children focus on fostering learning. However, designers and researchers often come from disparate traditions that either stress innovative design methodologies (e.g. participatory design) or rigorous examination of learning (e.g., design-based research). This workshop brings together researchers who are actively engaged in, or interested in, weaving together these research fields to develop usable, engaging, and innovative technologies that are also deeply grounded in theories of learning. We invite participants to submit position papers describing their work in progress. The goals of the workshop will be to better articulate the unique issues that arise at the intersection of interaction design and learning design, and develop an agenda for a next wave of research that draws a clear link between methodologies in these fields. All topic areas related to design, learning, and children are welcome.

Performative Experience Design (PED) is an extension of experience design focusing on the unique timebound encounter between performers and spectators. Technology is purposefully designed to enhance the experience between audience and performers. PED has been studied with adult participants; however, it has not been explored with children. We conducted a Cooperative Inquiry session to explore 1) how children want to interact with live performances; 2) how they seek to change a story in live performances; and 3) a specific technique that might facilitate designing for such interactions. We present our initial findings regarding children's perceptions of what constitutes live performance and the ways in which children want to use technology to interact with, direct, and respond to narrative structures and characters within live performances. We include a discussion of the features of a specific codesign technique for supporting the ideation process of our child designers.

In this paper, we present the design evolution of two social media (SM) tools: Scientific INQuiry (SINQ), which transformed into ScienceKit. We detail our motivations for using SM tools in science learning and the design decisions we made over a 2year, designbased research project. Our designs grew from our experiences using SM tools in the field and codesigning these systems with children. Our longitudinal case study and design narrative contribute to our understanding of the design and use of SM tools to support children's scientific inquiry. Specifically, we detail (1) the affordances and constraints we gleaned from the design evolution of SINQ to ScienceKit, (2) the potential of SM to guide learning behaviors, and (3) the role of SM for children and the community of adults and peers who support them.

This paper presents insights from designers of Alternate Reality Games (ARGs) regarding the design tactics they employ to integrate participatory storytelling and "authentic fiction" into the transmedia experiences they create. Our approach was motivated by recent efforts in HCI to more closely align the development of interaction design theory to the craft knowledge and experiences of designers themselves. The resulting insights enhance our understanding of design approaches that a diverse group of ARG producers follow to create interactive, participatory narratives. We outline narrative-specific themes to support designers who craft similar interactive experiences.

Children are increasingly using social media tools in their lives. In addition, there is great interest in understanding how to design and evaluate social technologies to aid in children's learning and development. We describe two research endeavors that begin to address these issues. First, we introduce SINQ, a social media application that encourages children to practice Scientific INQuiry skills through collaborative participation. Second, we conducted a case study of SINQ with six children, ages 8-11, and collected log data of their interactions in the app. We applied learning analytics on this log data using a visual analytic tool called LifeFlow. The event-sequence visualizations showed how children engaged with scientific inquiry within the SINQ app, and most importantly illuminated how inquiry is not a linear process with a defined start and end. The children in our study traversed the inquiry process via diverse pathways, all of which were supported by the SINQ app.

An Alternate Reality Game (ARG) is a form of transmedia storytelling that engages players in scavenger hunt-like missions to collectively uncover, interpret, and reassemble the fragments of a story that is distributed across multiple media, platforms, and locations. ARGs are participatory experiences, because players have a central role in reconstructing the storyline. Furthermore, players interact with the game as themselves, not via avatars. Although transmedia formats like ARGs have garnered increasing attention in entertainment and education, most have been targeted for adults 18 and older. Few studies have explored the design process of education-based ARGs for children. In this paper, we detail the design and implementation of an ARG for middle school students (13--15 years old). We describe the strategies we used to distribute story elements across various media and to encourage players to participate in an authentic inquiry process. We found that a "protagonist by proxy", or in-game character with whom players related closely, served as a strong motivator and a model for positive participation. We highlight student interactions and offer insights for designers who implement ARGs and similar immersive learning experiences.

Researchers often utilize the method of Participatory Design to work together with users to enhance technology. In particular, Cooperative Inquiry is a method of Participatory Design with children that involves full partnership between researchers and children. One important challenge designers face in creating learning technologies is that these technologies are often situated in specific activities and contexts. While children involved in these activities may have subject expertise (e.g., science inquiry process), they may not have design expertise (e.g., design aesthetics, usability). In contrast, children with design expertise may be familiar with how to design with researchers, but may not have subject expertise. Little is known about the distinction between child design and subject experts in Cooperative Inquiry. In this paper, we examine two cases -- involving children with design expertise and those with subject expertise -- to better understand the design process for both groups of children. The data from this study suggests that similarities do exist between the two cases, but that design and subject knowledge does play a significant role in how children co-design learning technologies.

Cooperative Inquiry is a Participatory Design method that involves children (typically 7--11 years old) as full partners with adults in the design of technologies intended for use by children. For many years, child designers have worked together with adults in Cooperative Inquiry approaches. However, in the past children have not typically initiated the design problems tackled by the intergenerational team, nor have they acted in leadership roles by conducting design sessions-- until now. In this paper, we detail three case studies of Cooperative Inquiry in which children led the process of design, from initial problem formulation through one iteration of design review and elaboration. We frame our analysis from three perspectives on the design process: behaviors exhibited by child leaders and their fellow co-designers; supports required for child leaders; and views expressed by child leaders and their co-design cohort about the sessions that they led.

Successful Alternate Reality Games (ARGs), such as The Lost Experience, I Love Bees and Urgent EVOKE have solicited thousands of active participants and, often, millions of spectators from around the world. ARGs require significant resources not only in terms of initial design, but also in implementation, since live, dynamic interplay between players and designers is an inherent aspect of their interactive storylines. This paper outlines a novel design framework for creating reusable ARGs that will help extend the lifespan of ARGs and allow them to permeate new domains such as education. The framework includes three key reusable design objectives (replayability, adaptability, extensibility), each of which can be enacted at different levels of depth. We also identify barriers to reusable ARGs and design strategies for overcoming those barriers, drawing upon ARG designer interviews and existing ARGs.

Today’s mobile devices are equipped with a variety of tools that enable users to capture and share their daily experiences. However, designing authoring tools that effectively integrate the discrete media-capture components of mobile devices to enable rich expression---especially by children---remains a challenge. Evaluating such tools authentically, as they are being used in-situ, can be even more challenging. We detail a long-term, multimethod study on the use of StoryKit, a mobile storytelling application. By taking advantage of a public distribution channel, we were able to evaluate StoryKit’s use on a scale beyond that usually found in lab settings or limited field trials. Our results show that StoryKit’s simple but well-integrated interface attracted a high number of dedicated users in education contexts at all levels, including children with special learning needs. We include a discussion of the challenges and opportunities that similar “in the wild” studies hold for HCI research.

Children often report that school science is boring and abstract. For this reason, we have developed Life-relevant Learning (LRL) environments to help learners understand the relevance that scientific thinking, processes, and experimentation can have in their everyday lives. In this paper, we detail findings that aim to increase our understanding of the ways in which technology can support learners' scientific practice and their personal meaning in LRL through the integration of two mobile apps into an LRL environment. Our analysis of the artifacts created in these systems show that technology must strike a balance between structured scaffolds and flexible personal design to support learners' scientifically meaningful experiences. Our data suggests that integration of media forms and mobile technology can provide creative ways for learners to express their scientific thinking, make artifacts of their personally meaningful experiences, and individualize artifacts in scientifically meaningful ways.

Face-to-face design with child and adult design partners is not always possible due to distant geographical locations or time differences. Yet we believe that the designs of children in areas not co-located with system builders, or who live in locations not easily accessed, are just as important and valid as children who are easily accessible especially when designing for a multinational audience. This paper reports on the prototype design process of DisCo, a computer-based design tool that enables intergenerational co-designers to collaborate online and asynchronously while being geographically distributed. DisCo contains tools that enable the designers to iterate, annotate, and communicate from within the tool. This tool was used to facilitate distributed co-design. We learned that children were less forgiving of their inability to draw on the computer than on paper, and they formed small, intergenerational design teams at their own locations when the technology did not work as they expected.

We describe the first iteration of an Alternate Reality Game (ARG) designed to lead players into a newly enfranchised relationship with history and engage them in scientific thinking and information literacy practices. We found that the points at which the game's mythology blurred the lines between fact and fiction prompted middle school students to move beyond rote memorization of content. Instead, they began to question, analyze, and make hypotheses about the data presented. However, striking a meaningful balance between "true" history and imagined events poses new design challenges. We present a formative typology of counterfactual design patterns that can help designers, educators, and players locate interesting fault lines in reality that facilitate the expansion of ARG mythologies.

We introduce a design technique, Clear Panels, to design interactive mobile device applications. Using mixed-fidelity prototyping, a combination of low- and high-tech materials, participants refine multiple aspects of a mobile application's design. Clear Panels supports writing and sketching via a transparent overlay affixed atop a mobile device screen. It enables design partners to refine their gesture-based interactions on actual devices. The technique has been successfully implemented in the design of children's mobile applications. The technique leverages and extends longstanding interaction design methods to include mobile and hand-held technologies. Importantly, we show it is effective in raising participants' awareness of key mobile application design issues without constraining their creativity.

An intergenerational design team of children (ages 7-11 years old) along with graduate students and faculty in computer science and information studies developed a programming language for children, Toque. Concrete real-world cooking scenarios were used as programming metaphors to support an accessible programming learning experience. The Wiimote and Nunchuk were used as physical programming input devices. The programs that were created were pictorial recipes which dynamically controlled animations of an on-screen chef preparing virtual dishes in a graphical kitchen environment. Through multiple design sessions, programming strategies were explored, cooking metaphors were developed and, prototypes of the Toque environment were iterated. Results of these design experiences have shown us the importance of pair-programming, programming by storytelling, parallel programming, function-argument relationships, and the role of tangibility in overcoming challenges with constraints imposed by the system design.

As technology for children becomes more mobile, social, and distributed, our design methods and techniques must evolve to better explore these new directions. This paper reports on "Layered Elaboration," a co-design technique created to support these evolving needs. .Layered Elaboration allows design teams to generate ideas through an iterative process in which each version leaves prior ideas intact while extending concepts. Layered Elaboration is a useful technique as it enables co-design to take place asynchronously and does not require much space or many resources. Our intergenerational team, including adults and children ages 7 -- 11 years old, used the technique to design both a game about history and a prototype of an instructional game about energy conservation.