Dialog with a social pedagogical robot or agent is a powerful way for kids to learn [1, 5] but may limit the formation of an agentic relationship with the technology [9]. One main purpose of conversational agents is to allow the user to have a natural interaction that reduces the need to learn artificial conventions [6], but dialog systems fall short with respect to failure recovery, vocabulary diversity, remembering conversational history, and other measures [2, 3]. Further, Hill et. al. [4] found that people adapt their model of communication to match a chatbot’s in the same way they do with a child or non-native speaker. Thus, users conversing with a pedagogical agent are implicitly trained to shape their behavior to suit the technology rather than shaping the technology. For young learners, particularly among populations that have been historically excluded from technology fields, this limits agency and reinforces marginalizing power structures [9].

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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.