Course Overview
#chi4good, CHI 2016, San Jose, CA, USA
Research Methods for Child Computer Interaction Janet C Read ChiCI group University of Central Lancashire Preston, PR1 2 HE, UK
[email protected] Shuli Gilutz Knowledge Technology Lab Tel-Aviv University Tel-Aviv, Israel 69978
[email protected]
Abstract In this course participants will learn about the theory and practice of conducting research in children’s HCI. The course is divided into two sessions: basic principles and theory, and best practices. The instructors have multiple years of experience designing, conducting, and analyzing children-computer interaction (CCI) studies, in the UK, USA, and Israel.
Author Keywords CCI, children, research methods, age-appropriate design, user testing, ethnography.
ACM Classification Keywords H.5.m. Information interfaces and presentation (e.g., HCI): Miscellaneous.
Part 2: Detailed Description of the Course Duration of the Course 2 sessions of 80 minutes is planned Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for third-party components of this work must be honored. For all other uses, contact the Owner/Author. Copyright is held by the owner/author(s). CHI'16 Extended Abstracts, May 07-12, 2016, San Jose, CA, USA ACM 978-1-4503-4082-3/16/05.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2851581.2856678
Link to other courses This course was first delivered in Seoul, Korea but it is designed to be a complementary course to the evaluation with children course by Read and Markopoulos that was given at CHI2014, 2011, 2010 and several earlier years. It is expected that once this course has had iterations in Korea and the USA it will be offered every second or third year to CHI with the
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Course Overview
#chi4good, CHI 2016, San Jose, CA, USA
evaluation course in between deliveries. The two will provide a useful and worthwhile curriculum for those doing CCI research and practice. In addition this course compliments the established course on design processes in CCI which has been offered in the past few years by the HCIL research group, and therefore it would be helpful for this to be scheduled at a noncompeting time, so conference attendees interested in CCI could attend both courses. Learning Objectives LO1 To be aware of challenges specific to doing research in Child Computer Interaction. LO1
To be able to plan and document a sound research study with children
LO2
To be able to locate, select from and appropriately use methods for research in Child Computer Interaction
LO3
To understand how children express themselves in research studies and to acquire sensitivity in interpreting these expressions
Justification This course was run to a large audience in Seoul in CHI2015. The related evaluation course was run at CHI 2014, CHI 2012 and CHI2011. The courses have proved quite popular (about 60 attendees each time) suggesting there is a demand from the CHI attendees for courses on Child Computer Interaction. This is the first CHI course specifially on research methods in CCI and so delivering it in San Jose will cement the content and provide a useful product for development for future years. Research in CCI is in need of improved rigour and it needs to have tighter
research reporting and to be more aware of the appropriate use of data from children – this course is aimed to help in this development. Content Research Methods in Child-Computer Interaction (CCI) is a two session course, introducing the theory and practices of conducting HCI research with children. The two sessions are linked together, and will be consecutive (Although theoretically participants could attend just one session). The course includes discussion on planning research with an emphasis on user studies and ethnographic research. The need for good planning is motivated by the presenters giving examples of mistakes they have made and thus this sets the scene for an open critical session. User studies are considered by looking at a pseudo CHI-EA paper written by M.Simpson et al. (2014) which is full of problems – the participants are taken through these problems by the presenters and fixes are given. Ethnographic research is considered using video footage that shows children (filmed with full permission) carrying out research work. The participants are then required to gather data from this footage which is then discussed. In the second session the use of survey methods is explored with the Fun Toolkit being presented as a useful tool. The interpretation of children’s responses is discussed using real examples from children (again gathered with full permission). Data that is gathered in research is considered with the focus being on baseline data (as an example to build from) and the CTEQ technology experience questionnaires are
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Course Overview
#chi4good, CHI 2016, San Jose, CA, USA
introduced while also several papers with missing data are discussed. The course wraps up with ethical questions about research with children focusing on the stages before the study – when the children need to be told what is going on (using the CheCk1 and CheacK2 tools) and then considering what the children should be told after the study about the research findings. Participants go back to the early study by M.Simpson et al. (2014) and present the research findings to the participants. In the wrap up the presenters ask the attendees to commit to do better but also offer their own time to assist in the attendees plans over the next 90 days through the website. Schedule: Session 1 0 – 10
Intro and aims
11 - 25
Research mistakes
36 - 60
Planning and User studies
61 - 80
Ethnography
Session 2 0 - 10
Recap
11 - 30
Surveying
31 - 50
Data
51 - 60
Writing up
61 - 70
Talking to children
70 - 80
Sum up
Background of Attendees Attendees will mostly be individuals seeking knowledge on how to do great research with children. They can be interested in quantitative or qualitative research, they may have not done any research yet with children and may be seeking to see whether it will suit them, or they may be experienced and looking for some new ideas. It is expected that the course will be especially interesting for PhD students and for individuals doing CCI research in labs where there is little specialist support. Presentation Format The course combines small lecture style presentation – with active participation by the attendees. The attendees do much more than they listen to and in order to ensure that as much material as possible is given to the attendees some additional written notes will be given to attendees as well as materials on the website. There will be videos and examples of data from real children to support the learning and much of the discussion is based on a spoof paper by M.Simpson et al (2014) which is written to example many of the points being considered. Audience size This course can be delivered to as few as 12 but would have a maximum of 60 attendees. Course history The course was initially delivered in Seoul, Korea at CHI2015. Student Volunteers One student volunteer will be sufficient to support the course.
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Course Overview
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Audio/visual needs The standard equipment will suffice: projector, screen, computer audio, and podium microphone. Promotional Strategy The course will be advertised thorugh the IDC-SIG website and mailing list. This is the community of the IFIP TC13 working group on Interaction Design and Children. The course will be advertised via the CCI Facebook group and other social media.
References/Related Publications
[1] Markopoulos, P., Read, J.C., MacFarlane, S., Hoysnieimi, J., (2008) Child-Computer Interaction: Methodological Research. Special Issue of the Cognition Technology and Work journal, Vol 10 (2), April 2008, Springer. [2] Markopoulos, P., Read, J.C., MacFarlane, S., Hoysniemi, J (2008) Evaluating Children's Interactive Products, Morgan-Kaufmann. [3] Read, J. C., & MacFarlane, S. (2006, June). Using the fun toolkit and other survey methods to gather opinions in child computer interaction. In Proceedings
of the 2006 conference on Interaction design and children (pp. 81-88). ACM. [4] Read, J. C., Horton, M., Sim, G., Gregory, P., Fitton, D., & Cassidy, B. (2013, April). CHECk: a tool to inform and encourage ethical practice in participatory design with children. In CHI'13 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 187-192). ACM. [5] Kano, A., Horton, M., & Read, J. C. (2010, October). Thumbs-up scale and frequency of use scale for use in self reporting of children's computer experience. In Proceedings of the 6th Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction: Extending Boundaries (pp. 699-702). ACM. [6] Gilutz, S., Calvert, S., Kremer, K., Chamberlin, B., & Gay, G. (2012, May). Tangible interfaces for children: cognitive, social, & physical benefits and challenges. In CHI'12 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 1123-1126). AC [7] Lester, K., Gilutz, S., & Black, J. (2005, June). Methodology for analyzing Children’s understanding of computer Interfaces. In World Conference on Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia and Telecommunications (Vol. 2005, No. 1, pp. 12631268).
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