Digital Babysitters

It has become common practice for parents to keep children stimulated and distracted with tablet and phone based content like games and videos. It’s so easy to just give them a screen to occupy them, but it can very quickly turn into a habit, and then an addiction.

Screen Addiction

It’s possible that this practice could condition children to consume these activities excessively later in life. The excessive consumption of games and television at a young age has been linked to a number of physical and developmental issues, which is further reinforced by the WHO classifying video game addiction as a real and diagnosable disorder.

“We didn’t fall in love with the technology, we fell in love with the feeling of connection we experienced via the technology.”

- Debbie Millman, host of Design Matters podcast

Interviewing Experts

We began our research by developing a set of questions to act as a guide in interviewing several experts on the area of childhood development. These interviews were heavily conversational and we welcomed personal opinions rather than just by-the-book facts. In our talks we covered the topics of playtime, modeling, imagination, screens, confidence, and social media.

Dr. Elaina Frieda

Child Developmental Psychologist

• Adults aren’t comfortable with being alone anymore

• Wishes children could be raised in a screen-free environment

• Satisfaction with achievements vs goals

Dr. Terry Woosley

Occupational Therapist

• Imagination is the basis of courage and problem solving

• Building blocks - Legos - Critical Thinking

• Many experiences with technology are a sad replacement for using your body

Charlene Kam

Montessori School Director

• Parent’s goals vs child’s goals

• Act in activity vs outcome

• Mastery of your environment allows one to be thoughtful and make purposeful actions

• Letting a child find their own path in an activity

Interviewing Other Experts

Our next phase of research was to talk to parents with young children. This allowed us to get a wide range of thoughts and opinions on how parents feel about their child’s relationship with tech. In total we interviewed ten different parents, each with their own take on the issue.

Loren & Dan

Dan is an Industrial Designer and Loren is a chiropractor. They parent Vinny and Perrin.

• willing to admit his shortcomings as a parent and that he's always looking to learn and improve as a dad

• tv exposes the kids to scenarios they wouldn't otherwise experience (magic, dragons, etc) that they then translate into their imaginative play time ; educational supervised YouTube

• when there was just one kid, it was easier to involve them in adult chores; with 2 it's harder

Keren & Arata

Keren and Arata are both philosophy professors at Auburn University. They parent Kaito, who attends the Auburn Montessori School run by Mrs. Kam.

• "likes to find his own structure"

• mindful informed parents who want to introduce him to screens to learn

• stories as opportunity to work through conflict

• the gardener v. the carpenter

Holly & Matt

Holly is a high school English Literature teacher in Birmingham, Alabama. Her Husband Matt is a sound engineer. They parent Reese and Owen.

• "important to be silly"

• creating own world in head

• child said "I like to hear them laugh"

• adaptive rule making / contextual rule making

• social media = transcendentalist lit ; kids in her high school class are calling "BS" on social media

After our qualitative research we realized that our insights might me too subject to biases in the kinds of people we interviewed. The try and combat this we developed a short survey that we pushed out to various Facebook networks. Much of the information we got back supported our hypotheses about parent modeling and passing habits on to children.

How many hours of your personal time do you spend on your phone, tablet, or laptop a day?

How many hours a day does your child (2-8 yrs old) spend on a device with a screen?

Concept Generation

In order to generate ideas for development we created several word maps with keywords derived from both our interviews and our survey responses. This allowed us to generate concepts by essentially taking two or three words, combining them, and sketching on what that might look like.

For the sketching and idea generation phase we split up and worked independently. When we put our work together in total we produced over 400 sketches and explored around 300 concepts for what the product could be. By working independently we were able to explore similar areas but with our own takes.

Story Cards

The Story Cards represent elements of the story Via generates. Each card has associated story elements and 3D artwork that are algorithmically strung together to create a story book.

Via Mat

The mat is used as a staging area for building with Blob Blocks and laying out Story Cards, as well as for scanning things into the app.

Blob Blocks

Blob Blocks are magnetic pieces that can be joined together in a variety of ways. These blocks are recognized by the app and used to generate a protagonist named “Via”.

Via App

The Via app is where everything comes together: after scanning in your Blob Block character and your Story Cards, the app will generate a story for you to read with your child.

Animation

Part of the suite of content submitted to the IHA is a video explaining or complimenting the project. For this video we knew we wanted to convey the light and fun nature of our toy, so we studied how characters in various TV shows and movies were animated.

Our video is a sort of “quick-start guide” meant to accompany the product to give the user a quick rundown on the sequence of use.

Levels of Technology

One of the most important things we gathered from our research was that many parents want to introduce tech to their children, but are worried about the level of influence it will have. To address this, we worked in “tech tiers” to the system. With these we hope to make our system as flexible and approachable as possible for all parents.

Tier 1 - No Tech

This is the lowest level of tech involvement. In this tier, the user simply uses the Blob Blocks and Story Cards as a way to build out an imagined story. This allows the child to pass the limits of our generative storytelling and explore any themes or ideas they desire. This also allows parents to get creative and make storytelling collaboratively both accessible and understandable.

Tier 2 - App & Tactile Experience

The second level of tech involvement centers around unifying tactile and screen interactions to create one holistic experience. The Blob Block and Story Cards are scanned by the app and give the child a chance to interact with the tablet. The story is then delivered to the child in the form of both written and narrated words along with static imagery.

Tier 3 - Augmented Reality projection

The third tier introduces the ability for the child to project the 3D art scene onto a surface in their environment, and then explore it using the tablet. This is meant to prepare them for what we believe to be the direction technology is heading in: Augmented Reality and Object Recognition.

By building stories together and having creative investment, the child will gain confidence in their ability to communicate. This is based heavily on our insights from our interview with Dr. Woosley about the way that our confidence develops during childhood.

By allowing the parents to decide how much interaction the child has with the tech, we hope to create a system that can be used by anyone and everyone.

“We are all storytellers. We all live in a network of stories. There isn’t a stronger connection between people than storytelling.”

- Jimmy Neil Smith, ISC President