Tilde Bekker
Eindhoven University of Technology, Industrial Design, Department Member
There is an increasing awareness of the importance of considering values in the design of technology. There are several research approaches focused on this, such as e.g., value-sensitive design, value-centred human–computer interaction... more
There is an increasing awareness of the importance of considering values in the design of technology. There are several research approaches focused on this, such as e.g., value-sensitive design, value-centred human–computer interaction (HCI), and value-led participatory design, just to mention a few. However, less attention has been given to developing educational materials for the role that values play in HCI, why hands-on teaching activities are insufficient, and especially teaching activities that cover the full design process. In this article, we claim that teaching for ethics and values in HCI is
not only important in some parts of the design and development process, but equally important all through. We will demonstrate this by a unique collection of 28 challenges identified throughout the design process, accompanied by inspirational suggestions for teaching activities to tackle these challenges. The article is based on results fromapplying a modified pedagogical design pattern approach in the iterative development of an open educational resource containing teaching and assessment activities and pedagogical framework, and from pilot testing. Preliminary results from pilots of parts of the teaching activities indicate that student participants experience achieving knowledge about how to understand and act ethically on human values in design, and teachers experience an increased capacity to teach for values in design in relevant and innovative ways. Hopefully, this overview of challenges and inspirational teaching activities focused on values in the design of technology can be one way to provide teachers with inspiration to
sensitize their students andmake thembetter prepared to become responsible designers by learning how to address and work with values in HCI.
not only important in some parts of the design and development process, but equally important all through. We will demonstrate this by a unique collection of 28 challenges identified throughout the design process, accompanied by inspirational suggestions for teaching activities to tackle these challenges. The article is based on results fromapplying a modified pedagogical design pattern approach in the iterative development of an open educational resource containing teaching and assessment activities and pedagogical framework, and from pilot testing. Preliminary results from pilots of parts of the teaching activities indicate that student participants experience achieving knowledge about how to understand and act ethically on human values in design, and teachers experience an increased capacity to teach for values in design in relevant and innovative ways. Hopefully, this overview of challenges and inspirational teaching activities focused on values in the design of technology can be one way to provide teachers with inspiration to
sensitize their students andmake thembetter prepared to become responsible designers by learning how to address and work with values in HCI.
Research Interests:
This article describes the development and assessment of a coding scheme for finding both usability and fun problems through observations of young children playing computer games during user tests. The proposed coding scheme is based on... more
This article describes the development and assessment of a coding scheme for finding both usability and fun problems through observations of young children playing computer games during user tests. The proposed coding scheme is based on an existing list of breakdown indication types of the detailed video analysis method (DEVAN). This method was developed to detect usability problems in task-based products for adults. However, the new coding scheme for children’s computer games takes into account that in games, fun, in addition to usability, is an important factor and that children behave differently from adults. Therefore, the proposed coding scheme uses 8 of the 14 original breakdown indications and has 7 new indications. The article first discusses the development of the new coding scheme. Subsequently, the article describes the reliability assessment of the coding scheme. The anytwo agreement measure of 38.5% shows that thresholds for when certain user behavior is worth coding will be different for different evaluators. However, the any-two agreement of .92 for a fixed list of observation points shows that the distinction between the available codes is clear to most evaluators. Finally, a pilot study shows that training can increase any-two agreement considerably by decreasing the number of unique observations, in comparison with the number of agreed upon observations.
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This paper describes a study in which the outcome of early design sessions with eight-to-twelve-year old children is assessed through expert judgment. Experts compare the outcomes of two early design methods: brainstorming and... more
This paper describes a study in which the outcome of early design sessions with eight-to-twelve-year old children is assessed through expert judgment. Experts compare the outcomes of two early design methods: brainstorming and prototyping. The design case was to come up with a solution for incapacitated children that need to attend class from home. The hypothesis is that children will generate more creative design solutions when prototyping than when brainstorming, because we reason that prototyping requires a wider range of intelligences according to Gardner's Theory of Multiple Intelligences. The outcome of the sessions is assessed on creativity and five explanatory criteria. The results show that a brainstorming method generates design solutions that are more creative. However, both methods produce creative design solutions; the brainstorming sessions generate more surprising and novel design solutions, the prototyping results are considered more relevant and workable.
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ABSTRACT This workshop, following one with the same name held at Mobile HCI 2010, aims at further exploring different approaches and challenges in studying playfulness as a mode of interacting with mobile technology.
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This paper describes three design values that we apply for designing playful interactions. Interactive play objects can stimulate social interaction and physical play by providing motivating feedback to players’ behavior; they can allow... more
This paper describes three design values that we apply for designing playful interactions. Interactive play objects can stimulate social interaction and physical play by providing motivating feedback to players’ behavior; they can allow players to create their own game goals and rules in an open-ended play context and support social player interaction patterns. This design approach is illustrated by six design cases in which our assumptions were examined in various play contexts. The results show that the application of these design values can lead to rich and appealing innovative play concepts. Players can create a wide range of (physical) games using open-ended play objects, and properties of the play objects, such as being personal or shared, influence the type of social interaction.
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Interactive technology is becoming more strongly integrated in innovative play solutions. As play is often a social experience, understanding the dynamic social context in which such play takes place is an essential step in designing new... more
Interactive technology is becoming more strongly integrated in innovative play solutions. As play is often a social experience, understanding the dynamic social context in which such play takes place is an essential step in designing new interactive play environments. In this paper, we explore the notion of social interaction in the context of open-ended play environments. We present an integrated model of interaction and transitions over time. Next, we describe two design case studies of open-ended, interactive play environments, GlowSteps and Wobble, discussing how these designs support social interaction over time. Results show that social interaction changes over time, starting with solitary play and moving towards more complex social play later on. These results are translated into implications for design, which guide designers in achieving a better understanding of how to design for the social context of their design proposals.
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Employing a mixed-method explorative approach, this study examined the in situ use of and opinions about an educational computer game for learning English introduced in three schools offering different levels of freedom to choose school... more
Employing a mixed-method explorative approach, this study examined the in situ use of and opinions about an educational computer game for learning English introduced in three schools offering different levels of freedom to choose school activities. The results indicated that the general behaviour of the children with the game was very different for each of the schools while there were no significant differences in subjective opinions or previous computer game experience as measured with a questionnaire. The gaming records and interviews informed that children do enjoy playing the game in comparison with other formal learning activities, but appreciate it less as a leisure-time activity. Furthermore it appears that children used to teacher-initiated activities tend to depend on their teacher’s directions for how and when to play. The study highlights the level of choice as one of the important aspects to consider when introducing a game in the classroom. The study also points out some suggestions for the design of educational games, such as providing communication possibilities between players and integrating fast-paced motor-skill based games with learning content in a meaningful way.
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This paper presents a research framework that relates interactive systems to behavioral change with psychological needs and bodily interaction as intermediating variables. The framework is being developed in a multidisciplinary research... more
This paper presents a research framework that relates interactive systems to behavioral change with psychological needs and bodily interaction as intermediating variables. The framework is being developed in a multidisciplinary research project that focuses on how ...
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ABSTRACT: Interactive technology is becoming more strongly integrated in innovative play solutions. As play is often a social experience, understanding the dynamic social context in which such play takes place is an essential step in... more
ABSTRACT: Interactive technology is becoming more strongly integrated in innovative play solutions. As play is often a social experience, understanding the dynamic social context in which such play takes place is an essential step in designing new interactive play environments. In this paper, we explore the notion of social interaction in the context of open-ended play environments. We present an integrated model of interaction and transitions over time. Next, we describe two design case studies of open-ended, interactive play environments, GlowSteps and Wobble, discussing how these designs support social interaction over time. Results show that social interaction changes over time, starting with solitary play and moving towards more complex social play later on. These results are translated into implications for design, which guide designers in achieving a better understanding of how to design for the social context of their design proposals.
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This paper describes a study which compares the outcome of two early design methods for children: brainstorming and prototyping. The hypothesis is that children will uncover more design ideas when prototyping than when brainstorming,... more
This paper describes a study which compares the outcome of two early design methods for children: brainstorming and prototyping. The hypothesis is that children will uncover more design ideas when prototyping than when brainstorming, because prototyping requires the use of a wider range of Intelligences according to Gardner's Theory of Multiple Intelligences. The protocols were coded using Design Rationale Theory: distinguishing between Options (design solutions) and evaluation Criteria. The results show that as expected children provided more Options in sessions that appeal to a wider range of intelligences. However, unexpectedly children provided more Criteria in the session that appealed mostly to one intelligence.
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When designing with young children, designers usually select user centred design methods based on the childrens required level of engagement and the inspiration expected to be created according to the designer. User centred design methods... more
When designing with young children, designers usually select user centred design methods based on the childrens required level of engagement and the inspiration expected to be created according to the designer. User centred design methods should be selected for their suitability for children and for the quality of the output of the design method. To understand the suitability of design methods, a framework was developed to describe design methods in terms of required design skills as identified by the Theory of Multiple Intelligences. The proposed framework could provide the basis for a tool to compare design methods and to generate hypotheses about what design method would work optimally with children in a specific school grade. The initial examination of the viability of the framework is a comparison of design methods by the number of skills involved; earlier work showed that the involvement of more skills (as with, e.g. low-fi prototyping) could result in more options for a design problem than the involvement of fewer skills (as with e.g. brainstorming). Options and Criteria were counted to understand the quality of the method in terms of the amount of design-information. The results of the current paper indicate that 8-to-10-year-old children generate significantly more options in prototyping sessions than when they are involved in sessions applying a Nominal Group Technique. The paper indicates that (a) with the framework we can generate hypotheses to compare design methods with children and (b) that the outcome of various design methods, which might lead to very different representations, can be compared in terms of Options and Criteria. Further usage of the framework is expected to result in empirical support for selecting a design method to be applied with young children.
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This article describes how to design for ambient playful interactions in public spaces, using interactive technology. Ten explorative design cases are presented, all interactive installations with the goal to elicit playful active... more
This article describes how to design for ambient playful interactions in public spaces, using interactive technology. Ten explorative design cases are presented, all interactive installations with the goal to elicit playful active behavior from teenagers. Following this, we derive three design values, based on literature, user research and the insights from the design cases. These design values describe our best practices for eliciting intrinsically motivating playful interactions: eliciting and seducing passers-by to become players, designing for emergent play to create personalized and changing play, and resonating with users' values, emotions and activities. In addition, insights gained from the cases and evaluations are discussed, and recommendations for implementing playful interactions in public spaces are given.
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In this paper we address the challenge of teaching interaction design for children’s products especially pertaining to bridging the gap between child development theories and interaction design issues. We describe our experiences from... more
In this paper we address the challenge of teaching interaction design for children’s products especially pertaining to bridging the gap between child development theories and interaction design issues. We describe our experiences from developing a one-week course on interaction design and children, that is part of a competency based Masters program in design. We conclude that key elements in this course, to support learning how to incorporate theoretical knowledge in design, are a) providing design tool that covers a child developmental model of four domains (cognitive, social, emotional and physical) , such as the Developmentally Situated Design cards for creating child personas and design concepts b) using a design exercise c) giving students the possibility to work on several iterations d) giving students more than one age-group to work with in the project, and e) providing the students with an evaluation protocol.