Marikken Høiseth

Interactions Between Caregivers and Young Children: Exploring Pedagogical Tact in Nebulizer Treatment

Although research in health care suggests that one of the most important factors for efficient medical delivery is the child’s willingness to cooperate, little is known about how caregivers facilitate cooperation with young children during medical treatment. In this article, we explore interactions between parents, nurses, and young children during pediatric nebulizer treatment in terms of tact as a pedagogical concept. Based on our analysis, which followed a hermeneutic approach and included video observations of five hospitalized children aged between 15 and 30 months, we present four themes related to pedagogical tact of caregivers and children’s willingness to cooperate, and discuss the role that medical products can play in this cooperation. The results benefit pediatric health personnel, as well as product designers.

Analyzing Children's Contributions and Experiences in Co-design Activities: Synthesizing Productive Practices

Today, it has been broadly acknowledged in the CCI community that children are not only active learners and users of technology, but can also actively participate in the design process. However, it remains challenging to analyze childrens experiences and creative contributions resulting from co-design activities (e.g. stories, paper prototypes, enacted ideas). Broadly speaking, a distinction can be made between researchers looking for inspiration in the form of useful design ideas, and researchers that take a more interpretative stance by looking beyond the surface level of childrens ideas to better understand and empathize with them. This knowledge about children is often used to more accurately define the problem space at the early stages of design. Both perspectives to co-design can be seen as the opposite ends of the same continuum, and many researchers combine aspects of both depending on where they are in the design process (e.g. defining the design problem, prototyping stage). This workshop will explore different ways to analyze childrens (0 to 18 years) experiences and contributions in co-design activities, the perceived benefits and challenges of these approaches, and will serve as a venue for synthesizing productive practices that will move the CCI community forward.

Identifying Patterns in IDC Research: Technologies for Improving Children's Well-being Connected to Overweight Issues

How is technology being designed to improve childrens well-being? We address this question in connection to childhood overweight issues. On a global level, overweight and obesity among children and youth is recognized to be an alarmingly growing health challenge. We have conducted a literature review to explore how studies from the Interaction design and children (IDC) community frame health challenges related to overweight amongst children and youth. Based on the available IDC research focusing on aspects connected to overweight problems, we identify patterns in type of initiative, ages of children, context of use, kind of solution or technology, focus of the research activities and theoretical frameworks. We discuss the importance of increased research and development efforts in this area within the IDC community and call for a broader approach in terms of initiatives, research focus and application of philosophical paradigms and related theory to address a holistic understanding of childrens well-being.

“Now we are going on a Journey”: Meaning-Making with a Healthcare Game during Toddlers’ Medical Treatment

ABSTRACT This study explores how toddlers and caregivers make meaning with an interactive healthcare game on a tablet during medical treatment. The data material consists of video recordings of six nebuliser treatments of two children. Using a social semiotic perspective and a multimodal analysis, the study identifies how children and caregivers make meaning with the game, defined as a multimodal text, through creating text events. The findings illustrate how the participants’ meaning-making in the text events appears to have a narrative and an analytical orientation. It is suggested that the potential of healthcare games lies in the creation of text events where the game constitutes a shared focus. When children and caregivers share their meaning-making orientations, the medical treatment can be brought into the background.

Gamification and Family Housework Applications

This conceptual work represents an initial exploration into a little researched area, namely app design for families. We explore how gamification is incorporated in applications that target family housework, also known as chores. During the last five years an increasing number of apps aim to transform routine based housework into entertaining activities. Many parents think it is important that children, at an early age, learn about family values and responsibilities that comes with the role as a family member. However, a gamified approach towards housework can influence family interaction in both positive and negative ways. We analyze a selection of so-called chore apps by building on an existing classification framework for educational apps and applying concepts of game design elements. Our findings show (1) that existing apps tend to be mostly instructive and partly manipulable, (2) that they tend to focus on external rather than intrinsic motivation, (3) that they target family members individually, rather than the family as a whole. We discuss the results from a motivation perspective by drawing attention to three concepts that relate to intrinsic motivation: Competence, autonomy and relatedness.