Special issue on Assumptions about the Concept of Childhood and the Roles of Children in Design for the International Journal of Child-Computer Interaction
When designing technologies for children, designers and researchers often implicitly or explicitly incorporate an interpretation of what a child is, how children learn, or how they play etc. in their design process. However, if these assumptions are not communicated explicitly, discussions among researchers and designers can become difficult because they are not based on the same premises. It is important for the CCI community to be explicit about what assumptions are being made about children and how technology can support their life, so we can develop better quality argumentations about our work.
The origins for the underlying assumptions and views can be diverse in the CCI community. They can be related to the assumptions we hold about the activity we are trying to support, such as learning or play. Furthermore, they might be related to cultural influences about views on childhood and life. Or they can be related to the view we hold of what is childhood, e.g. from a sociological perspective [Cregan and Cuthbert, 2014, James et al., 1998].
These assumptions can influence both what is deemed to be appropriate activities and roles for the child in using the technology being designed, but also the roles that children are expected to have in the design process.
The variety of roles that children can play ranges from informants to participants (Druin, 2002; Read, 2015) to co-researchers. It is important to examine the pro and cons, and considering how this can truly be achieved. Among the many open issues under discussion in our research community is how to give children’s opinion the right importance and consideration (Read et al, 2014). In this space van Doorn et al, (2013; 2014) have studied how children could be considered as researchers collaborators in many different stages of research. On a similar line Salian et al (2013) debate on how children could act as heuristic evaluators.
We want to explore to what assumptions related to the concept of the child are present in the area of designing for children, and how these influence actual design decisions and the roles that children play in design process.
The aim of this special issue is to twofold:
to examine how values, assumptions and views of children and childhood are embedded and (not) made explicit in the design and to delve deeply into the roles that children can play at the various stages of design.
The special issue builds on a workshop held on this topic during the Interaction and Children (IDC 2016) conference in June 2016 in Manchester (UK) (http://rolesandvaluesidc2016.inf.usi.ch/).
We invite submissions on the following themes:
• Studies that describe how the views and assumptions about children were considered, and how these considerations influenced the design process and the design decisions made
• Descriptions of methods and techniques that can be applied to consider assumptions, values and views of children and childhood in a design process
• Studies that examine the roles that children can play in a design process
• Discussion papers that help the IDC community build up a theoretical understanding of how to take roles and, or values of children in design into account
Submission Instructions
We invite initial submission of 300 word abstracts outlining the proposed paper. Abstracts should be submitted to the guest editors via email ([log in to unmask]).
Following abstract acceptance, full papers should be submitted via the Journal website (https://www.evise.com/profile/#/IJCCI/login). Please select “VSI: Assumptions and children” as the Article Type during the submission process.
Important dates:
Submission portal open date: September 30, 2016
Submission deadline: December 1, 2016 [EXTENDED]
First decisions notification: January 15, 2016
Revisions submitted by: March 1, 2016
Final decisions notification: June 15, 2017
Publication: July 15, 2017
Guest editors:
• Tilde Bekker, Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands ([log in to unmask] )
• Helle Marie Skovbjerg, Aalborg University, Denmark
• Wolmet Barendregt, University of Gothenburg, Sweden
• Monica Landoni, Università della Svizzera, Italy
• Elisa Rubegni, University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Southern, Switzerland
• Emma Nicol, University of Strathclyde, UK
• Janet Read, University of Central Lancashire
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