The Giggle Gauge offers a quick and simple way for researchers to evaluate the engagement of systems designed for children. This self-report metric is based on prior work delineating the components of engagement and was designed to address the limitations of children's cognitive development (e.g., by focusing on simple language and rapid administration). Through a process of iterative design (N = 23, ages 4 -- 10) and co-design (N = 8, ages 7 -- 11), we refined the items of this metric to ensure children's comprehension. A validation study with 26 children, ages 4 -- 7, confirmed the validity and reliability of the Giggle Gauge through the assessment of three properties: known-groups validity, criterion validity, and test-retest reliability. We simultaneously developed a bifurcated response type, intended to reduce the cognitive load of traditional ordinal response, and show through participant quotes that it may decrease the cognitive load of self-report questions for children.

As more children's technologies are designed to be used with a global audience, new tools need to be created to include more children's voices in the design process. However, working with those children who are geographically distributed as design partners is difficult because existing technologies either do not support distributed design, or are not child-friendly. Industries that produce items for children to consume have begun using traditionally academic co-design techniques in order to design new products and experiences for children. As these groups need to reach out to more diverse and global populations, they will begin using technologies that support distributed co-design. As child-computer interaction researchers, we have a duty to understand this concept and identify recommendations for others to use that incorporate the ideals of our field. In order to do this, this paper describes the design process of an online environment to support geographically distributed, intergenerational co-design. Within this environment, children can work together despite differences of time zones, geographic location, or availability. The online environment was deployed for eight weeks during the summer and was modified each week throughout that time to better support the participants. Based on the experiences of participants within the environment, we make suggestions for new technologies including user management tools, creative expression tools, and ad hoc team membership that encourage more voices in the design process.

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.

This paper discusses the challenges inherent in conducting research with young participants. Based on a series of three studies with children ranging in age from 7--17 as examples, the paper contains descriptions of participant recruitment approaches and challenges. Also included is a discussion of issues surrounding the retention of participants for longitudinal studies, including specific issues for participant retention and loss. Overall, this paper provides detailed experiences of the challenges of large-scale long-term field work with children, and provides guidance for others who are in similar research situations.

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.

In this paper, we present a framework that describes commonly used design techniques for Participatory Design with children. Although there are many currently used techniques for designing with children, researchers working in differing contexts and in a changing technological landscape find themselves facing difficult design situations. The FACIT PD framework presented in this paper can aid in choosing existing design techniques or in developing new techniques regardless of the stage in the design cycle, the technology being developed, or philosophical approach to design method. The framework consists of eight dimensions, concerning the design partners, the design goal, and the design technique. The partner dimensions are partner experience and need for accommodation. The design goal dimensions are design space and maturity of design. The technique dimensions include: cost, portability, technology and physical interaction. Three cases will be presented which describe new techniques developed using the framework and two cases will describe existing techniques.

In this article, we present an in‐home observation and in‐context research study investigating how 38 adolescents aged 14–17 search on the Internet. We present the search trends adolescents display and develop a framework of search roles that these trends help define. We compare these trends and roles to similar trends and roles found in prior work with children ages 7, 9, and 11. We use these comparisons to make recommendations to adult stakeholders such as researchers, designers, and information literacy educators about the best ways to design search tools for children and adolescents, as well as how to use the framework of searching roles to find better methods of educating youth searchers. Major findings include the seven roles of adolescent searchers, and evidence that adolescents are social in their computer use, have a greater knowledge of sources than younger children, and that adolescents are less frustrated by searching tasks than younger children.

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.

Abstract This paper presents the results of a large‐scale, qualitative study conducted in the homes of children aged 7, 9, and 11 investigating internet searching processes on Google. Seven search roles, representing distinct behavior patterns displayed by children when interacting with the Google search engine, are described, including Developing Searchers, Domain‐specific Searchers, Power Searchers, Nonmotivated Searchers, Distracted Searchers, Rule‐bound Searchers, and Visual Searchers. Other trends are described and selected to present a view of the whole child searcher. These roles and trends are used to make recommendations to designers, researchers, educators, and parents about the directions to take when considering how to best aid children to become search literate.

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.

Children want to find information about their world, but there are barriers to finding what they seek. Young people have varying abilities to formulate multi-step queries and comprehend search results. Challenges in understanding where to type, confusion about what tools are available, and frustration with how to parse the results page all have led to a lack of perceived search success for children 7-11 years old. In this paper, we describe seven search roles children display as information seekers using Internet keyword interfaces, based on a home study of 83 children ages 7, 9, and 11. These roles are defined not only by the children's search actions, but also by who influences their searching, their perceived success, and trends in age and gender. These roles suggest a need for new interfaces that expand the notion of keywords, scaffold results, and develop a search culture among children.

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.

Children are among the most frequent users of the Internet, yet searching and browsing the web can present many challenges. Studies over the past two decades on how children search were conducted with finite and pre-determined content found in CD-ROM applications, online digital libraries, and web directories. However, with the current popularity of the open Internet and keyword-based interfaces for searching it, more critical analysis of the challenges children face today is needed. This paper presents the findings of our initial study to understand how children ages 7, 9, and 11 search the Internet using keyword interfaces in the home. Our research has revealed that although today's children have been exposed to computers for most of their lives, spelling, typing, query formulation, and deciphering results are all still potential barriers to finding the information they need.