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[NetWorking.Kids] - Implications for Innovation
[NetWorking.kids]
explores how children adapt, learn and live by emerging new
technologies. In particular the project investigates the process
in which children reorganize and change their everyday life
as a response to technological interventions.
The project will produce new insight as to identify essential
focal points for design of new meaningful technology, based
on studies of children's use of existing artifacts.
Kids of the internet age
Kids these days can challenge research and development of
new technology in ways that differs from adults and the world
of business. Born in the Internet age, the children embraces
Internet Technology and pervasive computing as the way Baby
Boomers did television. Moreover the Y-generation (so-labeled
for their propensity to question everything) are critical
users of technology only inviting the best innovations in
to their everyday life of NetWorking. Information is available
to them more than any generation before, which makes them
smart, skeptical and savvy towards technology.
Networking kids
The project focus on kid's ability to participate in, maintain
and develop communities of interests which in a broad sense
covers the relationship to family, spare-time occupation,
school courses, sports community, and the social relation
to friends, girl/boy friends, etc. Add to these primary networks
the virtual communities that children subscribe to as club
members, service members or even consumer of a certain TV
shows or brands. Today, kid's are indeed NetWorking as a way
of living.
With the current development of technology that places/embeds
computer chips/power in everyday things as well as dedicated
workplace tools, a development we describe through terms like
ubiquitous and pervasive computing, we face new design challenges
that go far beyond what we know about user interface- and
interaction design for the PC.
Focusing on use
As 'children' of the Scandinavian school of system development,
we acknowledge the importance of focusing on use practice
as the driving force in design of technology rather than the
technology itself. However, we put specific focus on the technology
that is already employed to support this use practice, as
a natural extension of the cooperative design approach. We
use the concept "web-of-technology" to analyze the crucial
relationship between the already existing technology and the
device we are introducing into this technological web to understand
which role the new technology should play in relation to the
already existing. The outcome of this analysis is another
"web-of-technology" which can be used as a design tool for
exploring the degree of integration between the different
technological artefacts, enabling us to design systems or
services that take advantage of the different elements it
consists of.
We focus specifically on the following issues: " What characterizes
children's use of technology in their everyday life? " How
is technology adapted into the life of the children? " How
can the study of use contribute to design of new artefacts
for children?
Who?
Ole Iversen is a Ph.D candidate at Department of Computer
Science. His research embodies studying children's use of
and pervasive computing as well as attempts to expand the
field of participatory design into designing with children.
Christina Nielsen defended her PhD entitled "Designing to
support Mobile Work with Mobile Devices" in March 2001 and
currently holds a position as Research Assistant Professor
at the Computer Science Department at the University of Aarhus.
Research interests include information visualisation and interaction
techniques in mobile and wearable computing, developing the
concept of "web-of-technology" further and exploring/exploiting
the power of cross-disciplinary methods in this process.
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