Hi
I'm Radhika Garg. I'm an assistant professor
at the iSchool of Syracuse University
during this presentation
I will highlight the main findings of our CHI paper
that illustrates children's and patents' design ideas
for conversational technologies
for children's in-home learning.
Recent literature has highlighted that children are successfully able to use conversational agents such as smart speakers
for various purposes including searching information for function reasons and for entertainment. We
were interested to understand how children would like to devise conversational agents for in-home learning purposes because searching information
One of the most popular reasons of children using these devices today
has been identified as a skill that improves one's learning effectiveness and
academic performance.
Also children are known to attribute human-like characteristics to these agents, which can boost their interest in learning.
We also included parents as a core design partners because they are known to mediate children's technology through various mechanisms and
we wanted to elicit their design requirements and recommendations as well.
Therefore our work was guided by two research questions
How do children think about in-home conversational technology that can be used to fulfill their learning needs? and what are the parents
requirements for conversational technology?
To this end, we recruited twelve children in the age range of seven and twelve and
conducted
co.design sessions with an intergenerational group.
Three sessions using different techniques of collaborative participatory design
methodology were conducted. Each comprised of time for snacks
question for the day the design session itself and
discussion, in that order.
The aim of the first session was to elicit children's opinion about using commercially available
devices for the purpose of learning.
Using stickies we asked participants to write down their likes dislikes and potential design ideas
while interacting with the Google Home Amazon Echo Microsoft Cortana an apple Pod
The aim of the second session was to elicit design ideas for future
In-home conversational technology. At this stage, we were a team of children and the research team.
In the second session we use the techniques of big props and bag of staff
where the participants acted out scenarios in which they either acted as a device or as a user.
The aim of the third session was to refine the ideas we generated in session two
by including parents' preferences and recommendations.
Therefore, we use the layered elaboration technique
wherein parents built on what children had built and they worked collaboratively
Our inductive analysis by affinity diagram led to a identification of 25 themes
That were clustered into five broad categories
The analysis was done on 162 minutes of audio and video data
along with several drawings and low fidelity prototypes developed by both children and
parents.
These are the five categories that were identified during our analysis.
Based on the themes we developed the presented model
That depicts the major themes along with it sub-themes and the interrelationships among those themes.
For example, the system output on the right
allows user to
Interpret its intelligence
Which is shown in the middle.
Parenting involvement, which you see down below on the right side
Mediates children's or users' behavior, which is on the left side of the image
Children included a wide range of output modes including physical output in form of merit-based badges
Children also included various modes of learning in their designs which users could select from
some of the modes frequently included in children's designs
Were the following:
instead of simply providing direct answers to user's questions
When children were learning or revising a previously learned topic
One of the modes used scaffolding to help users work out the answers to the queries themselves
Children also included storytelling as one of the learning modes
They included the possibility of practice drills and formative and summative assessments in the form of quizzes and competitive games.
In the design session three parents came in and said we want to generate reports of these assessments.
The children conceptualized intelligent technology for learning
With a personality and a back story. In terms of personality
they assigned the devices physical human features such as voices and
human anatomy and the ability to move
They assigned intellectual features such as decision-making and
emotional states. The emotional states could change based on those of users and
They assigned human behavior or human-like behavior, which was reflected in various functionalities.
The backstory of the
personas that they assigned to these technology were often based on that of children's favorite media character
We did not restrict children to include only voice as the form of input and therefore
They included a wide range of input modes
However, speech and touch for the most common input modes that children included in their designs.
Children also interestingly included remote access capabilities
For example, they Illustrated how the tablets or the phones that they could carry around
Could be connected to these in-home technologies and they could still access
learning modules, for example
but just remotely.
Children also enabled the user to be able to customize and control devices, its
functionalities, personas,
learning and input modes.
As the children were designing during the co-design sessions it became apparent that the children expected a high level of intelligence in such
technologies.
The design prototypes
manifested intelligence through their human-like conversations
For example, the devices could tailor their communication
So that it was more social and just not transactional
By developing an understanding of users context and characteristics such as mood,
intentions, likes, or dislikes, and even their level of expertise in a given topic.
Further, in their designs that children frequently included the capability to sense the emotional states of its users
For example,
irritation, fatigue, sadness.
This enabled the devices to adapt their responses and the learning activities it offered to the users
Finally the children and parents gave devices the ability to activate automatically
For learning module and even motivate a user to participate in that activity
While parents did this to ensure that some part of a child's daily or weekly schedule
Would be dedicated to in-home learning activities
The children thought it could help them when they were supposed to practice
or revise a topic, but they forgot or were not motivated to do so.
Designs also Illustrated how parents want ed to be involved and wanted to control children's interaction
Parents involvement and control was manifested in several ways
Parents desired to be able to participate in children's learning activities
and they wanted to assume several roles such as that of a co-learner, a motivator or a overseer.
For many parents
this was driven by their fear
that the children's continual interaction with these devices would exacerbate their dependence on technology
Which in turn could displace parenting relationships by excluding
tasks that would otherwise be considered primarily parents' responsibilities. They also feared
that they would just lose behind
the fast pacing technology.
Parents also designed features
that could inform them when children communicated in an unacceptable manner such as using her curse words and
could automatically restrict children
They considered that the device should motivate
good social behavior and
foster social communication
They felt that these devices would lead children to always be with technology and
Not interact with anybody in the household
Finally parents pointed out lot of privacy concerns
Primarily because the data was after all
about children
their children were young and they
Thought that children would not understand the potential implications of such data collection
They desired
that they should know which data is being collected, when it is happening and
They wanted to be able to turn off data collection and any sort of processing if they so wish
Based on the developed model, I
Want to leave you with
following four design recommendations
The future in-home
conversational technology that can be used for children's learning purposes
should support different learning modes
they should assume different roles and
They should support different personas
They should be able to adapt based on user's context, sense and express emotions, and
Be able to have a conversation like a human
Based on parents' requirements these devices should foster social interaction and engagement
Parents should also be able to set learning goals
participate in children's learning activities as a Co-learner, as a motivator, or as overseer and
They should also be able to monitor and restrict usage
Thank you for listening
If you have any questions, you can contact me on the displayed email ID or the Twitter ID