I'm excited to share our work, titled
Raising Responsible Child, Collaborative Work
in the Use of Activity Trackers for Children.
In recent years, we see an increase in commercial activity
trackers that are specifically designed for children.
As these children-oriented trackers
continue to proliferate as tools for introducing
healthy lifestyles beyond the needs of chronic disease,
there is a need to understand how these tools fulfilled
children's and parents' expectations
and how they impact family life.
In this study we aim to learn from users
who naturally adopted these technologies in family life
on their own.
We qualitatively analyzed user reviews of nine
systematically identified children-oriented trackers
and their associated apps.
We coded user reviews based on parents' and children's
positive experiences and the challenges against using
trackers for family collaboration.
It is important to note that our study does not
reflect children's perspective from first hand.
Certain trackers are targeting children as young
as three years old.
All trackers in our study except one
are composed of a variable device
and then the app operated through a smart device.
Even though the trackers are designed for children,
the Children's Online Privacy Protection
prevents manufacturers addressing
apps for children under 13 years old directly.
Also, younger children do not own a smart device.
For these reasons, apps were mostly available
on parents' smartphones.
Parents' comments illustrate three types of motivations.
First, parents want to encourage their children
to be physically more active.
A parent wrote, "What matters most is that she is moderated,
and that's a great start towards a healthy lifestyle."
Second, parents used trackers, alarms, and chore tracking
features to mediate parent-child collaboration for meeting
daily tasks and schedules.
A parent explained, tracker encouraging her child
to help out around the house and addressing family conflicts.
Parents' third motivation is the family moments,
facilitated via daily activity challenges and data
comparisons.
Parents' comments indicate that children's experience
with tracking technologies is also collaborative,
although the nature of their experience is different.
With using trackers, children participate
in family informatics, but they're not necessarily
conscious about this.
Instead, they recommended to use trackers for having fun.
With using trackers, children also
collaborate more in daily life as they feel more independent.
They do tasks such as brushing teeth
without parents' intervention.
Some parents supported getting more help from their children
around the house with the help of digital and physical rewards
for the completed tasks.
Parents' comments also indicated challenges
for the effective integration of trackers into family life.
A parent said, "Without the app, the watch is worthless."
Existing design solutions are often
unable to fully address parents' expectations on decreased
parental workload due to the needs
for parents to take active roles for the system
to fully function.
Also, parents are concerned about the need
to share their smartphones with their children
for them to make the most use of trackers.
While we initially aimed to understand the use of trackers
for family health management, our findings
indicate that families also utilize these technologies
beyond health and wellness.
[INAUDIBLE] exercising and family fun activity.
Parents further utilize activity trackers
to address parental workload with motivating children
to participate in daily tasks and schedules.
A common point of these families' practices
is the desire for parents to teach their children
about responsibilities.
The use of trackers reinforced two new types of invisible work
that create burden to parents.
First, trackers required parents' attention,
as younger children can not do some tasks such as charging.
Second, parents need to take care
of the relationship between the wristband and the app
for the system to fully and properly function.
Last, trackers encourage family interaction and dialogue
around activity challenges.
Parents also commented how the device
could help to bring peace to family life
with occasionally taking the parents' role of setting rules
and reminding chores.
To conclude, even though the design
of children-oriented trackers for health tracking
is based on individual use, their current use practice
is structured around collaboration
via family challenges.
On the other hand, the chore feature
was designed towards collaborative use,
but users want to practice individual use.
Thus it is necessary to reconsider the children's
interdependency to parents during the use
of these technologies
Thanks.