Researchers' Toolbox for the Future - IDC 2020 Workshop

Thursday, June 18, 2020 1-5PM BST

The workshop is held via Zoom. If you are interested in participating in the workshop, pelase email the organizers.

This workshop takes a strategic approach towards “designing for the future,” this year’s IDC conference theme, by reflecting on the past, discussing current trends, and exploring the future.

For more information and news about events on Researchers' toolbox for the future, please see here.

Workshop Goals

In this full-day online workshop, we take stock of the past research on empowerment of children within CCI and combining a strategy process with a future-oriented lens, create a researchers’ toolbox for designing for the future for and with children. The main goals of the workshop are:

To reflect on previous research in CCI and compile a list of tools, methods, and approaches employed for empowering children in the design of their technological life worlds.
To explore known future-oriented methods and examine how they can be adapted to design with children their technological future-lives.
To explore ethical aspects in participatory methods entailing co-design with children.
To compile a set of hands-on tools and methods, with their pros and cons, that can be employed by researchers working towards designing for the future with and for children.
To create an agenda for future research and to find ways for monitoring the progress.

Accepted position papers to the workshop:

Catarina Cederved and Gunn Engvall. Using Co-Creation to Develop a Digital Game in Order to Educate Children about Health Environment’s. Department of Women’s and Children’s Health, Uppsala University, Sweden.
Iiris Tuvi, Sirkku Kotilainen, Jussi Okkonen, Guna Sprurava. Children centered living lab approach development in education. Faculty of Information Technology and Communication Sciences, Tampere University, Finland.
Behnaz Norouzi. Intergenerational Aspect of Digital Fabrication and Making with Children. University of Oulu, Finland.
Chiara Leonardi, Paolo Massa, Giulia Deppieri, and Michela Ferron. Rethinking the future “smart city” with children. Fondazione Bruno Kessler (FBK), Italy.
Guna Sprurava and Sirkku Kotilainen Young people as Empirical Experts in the Era of Datafication. Faculty of Information Technology and Communication Sciences, Tampere University, Finland.
Angel Walia and Grace Eden. Empowering Children as Co-Designers of Technology. Living Lab, Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology - Delhi, India.
Stefania Druga and Rebecca Michelson. Research Toolkit for Future-Oriented Play with Families. University of Washington, Seattle, USA.
Nandhini Giri. Child-centric Virtual Character Design and Culturally Meaningful Interaction. The Media School, Indiana University, IN, USA.

Call for Participation (now closed)

To participate, please submit a position paper (in the SIGCHI extended abstract template, PDF format, max 4 pages) mentioning the following:

Author names and affiliations
A short description of your research interests, driving values and motivations, goals, and your vision for the future of your research and children’s role in designing their technology-rich everyday life.
An overview of a study, project, or research paper that you are most proud of.
A brief discussion on how the topic of the workshop aligns with the authors’ research domain and interests.
Please also feel free to mention a method that you would like to bring with you to the workshop (not mandatory).

Please submit your position paper here by May 10th, 2020 (now closed). Selected participants will be informed during the third week of May via email. List of selected position papers, if permitted, will be added to the camera ready version of the workshop proposal for the conference proceedings. Please feel free to email the organizers if you have any questions.

Updated April 27th: For each selected position paper, at least one author must attend the workshop. Participants can register only to the workshop (without having to register for the conference) for $50 fee. For students, conference registration fee is $100 and it incldues workshop attendance under the condition that students have an accepted submission to the workshop.

Updated May 1st: The submission deadline is extended to May 10th 2020. Given the current situation, the workshop will be conducted online and the workshop date is Thursday 18th of June.

Proposed Schedule

This is a full-day workshop, where participants work in teams of 3-5. The planned schedule includes:

Introduction to the workshop and participant introductions (45 mins)
Group Activity #1 – where are we now and how did we get here? (30-45 mins)
Summary of activity #1 and discussion on current trends (30 mins)
Introduction to future-oriented methods (15 -30 mins)
<Lunch break>
Group Activity #2 – designing for the future (60 mins)
- Vision and goals: Where do we want to be?
- Approach: How are we going to get there?
- Motivations and Drivers: Who is going to do what?
- Success metrics: How will we monitor our progress?
Summary of activity #2 and wrap up (30-45 mins)
<coffee break>
Paper planning sessions (30-45 mins)

Organizers

Dr. Marianne Kinnula is an Associate Professor of human-centred design and digitalization in INTERACT Research Unit in University of Oulu. Her research focus is in how technology changes our everyday lives in many ways, in society level, organizational level, as well as in individual level. School as an organization and children’s technology use are close to her heart and currently the main focus of her studies: what is children’s genuine possibility to affect the decisions that concern them as well as their technology-rich environment.

Dr. Netta Iivari is a Professor in Information Systems and research unit leader of INTERACT Research Unit in University of Oulu. She has background in Cultural Anthropology as well as in Information Systems and Human Computer Interaction. Her long-lasting research interest concerns understanding and strengthening people's participation in shaping and making their digital futures. Her research has focused on empowerment of children in and through design and Making. Her research is strongly influenced by interpretive and critical research traditions. Currently, she is examining critical design and Making in collaboration of children.

Dr. Sirkku Kotilainen is professor of media education at the Faculty of Information Technologies and Communication Sciences at Tampere University, Finland. Her research focuses on children and youth as users online, their digital literacies and media education among children and youth. More recently, her research has focused on promoting media education among at-risk youth and, methodological developments in co-research with young people as empirical experts in their uses of online media.

Dr. Jussi Okkonen works currently as Senior Research Fellow in Faculty of Information Technologies and Communication Sciences at Tampere University, Finland. The key topic in his research work is performance and productivity. From 1997 Okkonen has approached productivity and performance issues of knowledge work and knowledge intensive organisations from theoretical and practical perspectives in several national and international research projects. Due to digitalization of work environments Okkonen has put more emphasis on extended, augmented, asynchronic and spatially dispersed work and humans in digital environments. The underlying theme still is the individual and organizational performance connected to information ergonomics. Other research topics are digital learning environments, HCI and software engineering.

Dr. Sumita Sharma is a post-doc researcher at the INTERACT research group at the University of Oulu. Her research work focuses on designing inclusive and collaborative technology for the classroom environment for children across the world, including children living in urban slums, children with special needs, and children in remote communities. She is also interested in understanding the socio-cultural barriers towards empowerment of children.