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** COGNITION TECHNOLOGY AND WORK ** 

** Special Issue on: "Child Computer Interaction: Methodological Research" ** 

** Editors:  Panos Markopoulos, Johanna Höysniemi, Janet Read and Stuart MacFarlane ** 

** Theme
Children make up a growing user group for information and communication technology in its various forms. In Western societies, children are users and owners of Personal Computers, video games, mobile phones and a range of toys with embedded computing or communication capabilities.  Methodological guidance for the design and evaluation of interactive products and services for children users is highly relevant.  Companies turn their attention to children as a growing market segment and societies seek to ensure that appropriate products are made available for children. 

Over recent years there has been a significant increase in the published work relating to children and interaction design.  Child Computer Interaction (CCI) is emerging as a vibrant sub-field of Human Computer Interaction, following pioneering work by Rogers and Scaife, Druin and Kafai.

HCI has been growing in importance over the last 20 or more years and as a discipline, it has matured and settled. There is a published curriculum by ACM, dedicated high-impact journals, professional groups, and there are undergraduate and postgraduate university courses with HCI as the core component. In contrast, Child Computer Interaction is still finding its way.  It relates in some ways to education and educational technology, is connected to art and design, and has links to storytelling and literature. As a result of this heterogeneity, it borrows methods of inquiry.  Much of the published work is based on small samples, is anecdotal and difficult to generalise. This disparity in methods of enquiry makes it difficult for researchers to gain an overview of research, compare across studies and gain a clear view on cumulative progress in this field. 

This special issue aims to present a coherent view of this field, recording results and advances in methodological research, new methods and studies documenting existing methods.   

** Topics
*	Novel design and evaluation techniques for products intended for children.
*	Comparison and assessment of known design and evaluation techniques.
*	Applications of developmental and educational theories, or theories regarding fun, to guide the design of interactive products for children.
*	Case study reports reporting successes and failures with known methods in this domain.
*	Methodologies for evaluation and evaluation of long-term benefit/impact of technologies

** Important Dates:
*	February 24, 2006 -- Deadline for full paper submission     
*	April 21, 2006 -- Review results returned to authors      
*	June 16, 2006 -- Deadline for revised papers                     
*	September 15, 2006 -- Deadline for submission  of final version

** Submission Instructions
Full papers between 4500-6500 words should present original research in the form of case studies, review articles, discussion papers and integrated inter-disciplinary essays.  
Submissions should be sent as .pdf files by mail to [log in to unmask] 
General information about submissions to CTW can be found at the journal's web site: http://www.iav.ikp.liu.se/ctw/. 
Formatting instructions can be found at the journal webpage accessible from Springer (http://www.springeronline.com/).

** Background of the organizers
Panos Markopoulos is an assistant professor in User Centred Engineering at the Eindhoven University of Technology.  In 2002 he co-founded the series of conferences on Interaction Design and Children. His research concerns Ambient Intelligence, Privacy, Awareness systems and Interaction design for Children.   He has published articles relating to usability testing methods for children, computer games aiming to encourage social interaction between children and has given tutorials on testing interactive products for and with children, together with the other special issue editors

Johanna Höysniemi is a researcher in the field of children's physical user interfaces, with a particular emphasis on computer vision based games and dance games aimed at children and teenagers. She has published several articles related to child-computer interaction and design and evaluation methodologies that can be applied to physically interactive children's computer games.  She is the co-chair of the Interaction Design and Children 2006 conference in Tampere, Finland.

Janet Read is a lead researcher in the Child Computer Interaction Group at the University of Central Lancashire where she is currently investigating the use of digital ink, the evaluation of fun, and methods for design with children.  She has a PhD in Child Computer Interaction and has authored many publications about interaction and children.  She has presented seminars, workshops, and turtorials on Child Computer Interaction in several countries and has served on the organising committees for IDC2003, HCIE2004 and HCI2005.  She is the co-chair of the Fun and Games Conference to be held in Preston in 2006.

Stuart MacFarlane, lectures at the University of Central Lancashire where he leads the Child-Computer Interaction Group. His main interest is in evaluation methods for children.  He is involved in several research projects involving interface design and evaluation for children, and is supervising 6 research students in this field.  He was the Chair of the International Conference on Interaction Design and Children 2003.

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