Marije Nouwen

A Qualitative Inquiry into the Contextualized Parental Mediation Practices of Young Children’s Digital Media Use at Home

Technologies are increasingly adopted and used by young children at home. Parents play an important role in shaping their media use, keeping certain possibilities open for children to play, learn, and socialize while limiting others. Nevertheless, the literature on parental mediation of young children’s media use is scant. In this article, we describe a qualitative, mixed-method study involving 24 parents and 36 children aged 3 to 9, and focus on the contextual factors that shape (transitions between) parental mediation practices. The results point to the emergence of new manifestations of parental mediation and provide evidence of their dynamic, often paradoxical nature. In particular, the insights on distant mediation, various buddy styles, and participatory learning, as well as the value of a wholeness approach for understanding children’s conditions for media engagement, suggest new prospects for parental mediation literature.

Parental controls: reimagining technologies for parent-child interaction

This article questions existing approaches in designing parental controls and puts forward a hypothesis to reimagine technologies to mediate parent-child interactions. First, we present an overview of the current parental controls. Second, we explain the gradual shift away from the idea of ‘harmful’ digital media in parental mediation studies and introduce previous work in CSCW and HCI that has proposed solutions to support discussions about digital media between parents and children. Then, we hypothesize that an emphasis on collaboration and mutual learning might help researchers and designers to rethink and reimagine technologies that support parent-child interactions with and through digital media. Finally, we share our findings of two co-creation workshops with children and parents on ways to instill parental involvement in children’s digital media use. The workshop yielded insights on the differing views between parents and children about how technologies might instill long-term negotiations based on parents’ and children’s experiences, enriched by real-use data.

Involving End-Users in Game Based Ideation: A Case Study in Hospital Logistics

In this paper we investigate the use of a board game to facilitate ideation with end-users for the study of applications of future technology. In the described case study, we focus on the use of wearable technology for logistical work in hospitals. Based on prior ethnographic research, we designed a tailor-made board game. This game was played with personnel in two hospitals. The game-based ideation provided valuable insights concerning preferred workflow and interaction, and we observed a high level of engagement during the sessions. We present and explain three recommendations for the use of game-based ideation: use collaboration to improve discussion, abstract technology, and stage the game.

Playful Sounds From The Classroom: What Can Designers of Digital Music Games Learn From Formal Educators?

In this paper, formal music education is seen as a starting point to understand how digital music games can further innovate to heighten their educational potential. In the paper, seven opportunities for innovation of digital music games are presented. These are the result of observations of music lessons, and interviews and stimulated recall sessions with music educators. During the data analysis, the researchers looked at the strategies used by the educators and compared these to an overview of digital music games they had made, in order to formulate the suggestions for innovation for digital music games.