Juan Pablo Hourcade

Interaction Design and Children

Children are increasingly using computer technologies as reflected ini¾ reports of computer use in schools in the United States. Given thei¾ greater exposure of children to these technologies, it is imperative that they be designed taking into account childrens abilities, interests, and developmental needs. This survey aims to contribute toward this goal through a review of research on childrens cognitive and motor development, safety issues related to technologies and design methodologies and principles. It also provides and overview of current research trends in the field of interaction design and children and identifies challenges for future research.

Multitouch tablet applications and activities to enhance the social skills of children with autism spectrum disorders

In spite of great improvements in early diagnosis and interventions, most children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are unlikely to live independently when they reach adulthood. We have been conducting research on novel computer-based interventions with the goal of promoting social skills. Working with 26 children with ASD, their teachers, and other stakeholders, we have iteratively developed a set of activities based on applications that run on multitouch tablets. Our observations suggest these activities increased pro-social behaviors such as collaboration and coordination, augmented appreciation for social activities, and provided children with novel forms of expression.

Designing a Digital Library for Young Children: An Intergenerational Partnership

ABSTRACT As more information resources become accessible using computers, our digital interfaces to those resources need to be appropriate for all people. However when it comes to digital libraries, the interfaces have typically been designed for older children or adults. Therefore, we have begun to develop a digital library interface developmentally appropriate for young children (ages 5–10 years old). Our prototype system we now call “SearchKids” offers a graphical interface for querying, browsing and reviewing search results. This paper describes our motivation for the research, the design partnership we established between children and adults, our design process, the technology outcomes of our current work, and the lessons we have learned. Categories and Subject Descriptors H.5.2 [Information Interfaces and Presentation]: User Interfaces - graphical user interfaces, interaction styles, screen design, user-centered design. H.3.7 [Information Storage and Retrieval]: Digital Libraries - user issues. H.3.3 [Information Storage and Retrieval]: Information Search and Retrieval - query formulation. D.2.1 [Software Engineering]: Requirements/Specifications - elicitation methods. General Terms Design, Human Factors.

Designing a digital library for young children

As more information resources become accessible using computers,our digital interfaces to those resources need to be appropriate for all people. However when it comes to digital libraries, the interfaces have typically been designed for older children or adults. Therefore, we have begun to develop a digital library interface developmentally appropriate for young children (ages 5-10 years old). Our prototype system we now call SearchKids offers a graphical interface for querying, browsing and reviewing search results. This paper describes our motivation for the research, the design partnership we established between children and adults, our design process, the technology outcomes of our current work, and the lessons we have learned.

Evaluation of tablet apps to encourage social interaction in children with autism spectrum disorders

The increasing rates of diagnosis for Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASDs) have brought unprecedented attention to these conditions. Interventions during childhood can increase the likelihood of independent living later in life, but most adults with ASDs who benefited from early intervention do not live independently. There is a need for novel therapies and interventions that can help children with ASDs develop the social skills necessary to live independently. Since the launch of the iPad, there has been a great deal of excitement in the autism community about multitouch tablets and their possible use in interventions. There are hundreds of apps listed as possibly helping children with ASDs, yet there is little empirical evidence that any of them have positive effects. In this paper we present a study on the use of a set of apps from Open Autism Software at an afterschool program for children with ASDs. The apps are designed to naturally encourage positive social interactions through creative, expressive, and collaborative activities. The study compared activities conducted with the apps to similar activities conducted without the apps. We video recorded the activities, and coded childrens behavior. We found that during the study children spoke more sentences, had more verbal interactions, and were more physically engaged with the activities when using the apps. We also found that children made more supportive comments during activities conducted with two of the apps. The results suggest the approach to using apps evaluated in this paper can increase positive social interactions in children with ASDs.

A Visual Search Tool for Early Elementary Science Students.

This paper reports on the development of a visual search interface (called “SearchKids”) to support children ages 5–10 years in their efforts to find animals in a hierarchical information structure. This search tool presents both the querying process and its results graphically. The quantitative study reported here focused on two questions: (1) Can children understand and use a visual hierarchical domain structure to find particular instances of animals? (2) Can children construct search queries to conduct complex searches if sufficiently supported, both visually and conceptually? The results of this study showed that children were able to search very efficiently, primarily using a “fewest-steps” strategy, with the SearchKids software prototype. In addition, children were able to construct search queries with a high degree of accuracy. Results are discussed in terms of the scaffolding support that SearchKids provides, and its effectiveness in helping children to search efficiently and construct complex search queries.

KidPad: collaborative storytelling for children

Collaborative storytelling occurs frequently when children play, but few efforts have been made to support it with computers. This demonstration presents KidPad, a collaborative storytelling tool that supports children creating hyperlinked stories in a large two-dimensional zoomable space. Through the use of local tools, KidPad provides children with advanced interaction techniques in a collaborative environment.

The International Children's Digital Library: Viewing Digital Books Online

Abstract Reading books plays an important role in childrens cognitive and social development. However, many children do not have access to diverse collections of books due to the limited resources of their community libraries. We have begun to address this issue by creating a large-scale digital archive of childrens books, the International Childrens Digital Library (ICDL). In this paper we discuss our initial efforts in building the ICDL, concentrating on the design of innovative digital book readers.

PyMT: a post-WIMP multi-touch user interface toolkit

Multi-touch and tabletop input paradigms open novel doors for post-WIMP (Windows, Icons, Menus, Pointer) user interfaces. Developing these novel interfaces and applications poses unique challenges for designers and programmers alike. We present PyMT (Python Multi-Touch), a toolkit aimed at addressing these challenges. We discuss PyMTs architecture and sample applications to demonstrate how it enables rapid development of prototypes and interaction techniques while being accessible to novice programmers and providing great flexibility and creative freedom to advanced users. We share experiences gathered in the open source development of PyMT to explore design and programming challenges posed by multi-touch tabletop and post-WIMP interfaces. Specifically, we discuss changes to the event model and the implementation of development and debugging tools that we found useful along the way.

B-APT: Bayesian Anti-Phishing Toolbar

Identity theft is one of the fastest growing crimes in the nation, and phishing has been a primary tool used for this type of theft. In this paper, we present B-APT, a Bayesian anti-phishing toolbar designed to help users identify phishing Websites and protect their sensitive information. Bayesian filters have shown great performance in content-based spam filtering and we adapt a Bayesian filter to detect phishing attacks in the Web browser. The experimental results show that our toolbar effectively detects phishing sites, and is also efficient in terms of page load delay. Among the phishing sites in our testbed, B-APT detected 100% of phishing sites while IE and Firefox only detected 64% and 55%, respectively. Netcraft and SpoofGuard show better accuracy, 98% and 90%, respectively.