Allison Druin's Workshop Keynote: "Mining the Imagination from Time Travel to Anti-Gravity" - CHI 2011, Vancouver, Canada

Posted: 07 May 2011 09:30 PM PDT

The Future... thoughts shared by Allison Druin at CHI 2011:

Rethinking the meaning of interaction- well beyond the mouse, beyond the icon
Rethinking our relationships we have with our technologies
Rethinking how to transform technology
Rethinking ho transforming technology can change learning, to really change the future...

Paraphrasing ....."It starts with the experience of the child. Have you ever asked them what they think about the future? Backpacks with ice cream, storytelling machines that fly... layered stories that are tall as building?

How do you get from low-tech prototyping to what gets on tech devices? It's not about data analysis, analyzing things that are easy to analyse."

Allison works with kids and adults together, in a participatory manner, at her lab at the University of Maryland...

Video demonstrating design techniques, including low-tech prototyping, involving children and ideas:

http://www.edutopia.org/digital-generation-kidsteam-dana-video

The researchers look at what children are doing today, in homes and in schools. More recently, children's use of search at home, away from the eyes of their teachers.

How do we figure out how designs and ideas become new technologies?

Here is one example:
Story kit is a freely available app for the iPhone that can be used as a prototyping tool. Kids are asked to design music and create what it might sound like. It is considered to be a "mid-tech" tool, and supports creativity in the design process.

Three things that will happen in the future, according to Druin:

Technology Ecology - apps are cross platforms and technologies. Where ever kids are and need it (tech agnostic)
Physical/Virtual Switching --- interaction "bursts". Designing for an activity that can be interrupted, in a good way.
Creation of new neighborhood for learning. A blur between the local and the global, "Local 2.0", beyond the walls. Technologies need to accept this, and embrace this.

Allison's inspiration comes from her many years of working with children in innovative and creative ways.

RELATED
From the Q and A:
Kids now know that technology rapidly changes.
Kids continue to be creative.
Kids seem to be more confident in their creativity, and that it matters.
Kids aren't given enough opportunities to be creative these days, given all of the testing that they endure at school.

There is a feeling that anything is possible....it does happen.

LINKS
Children as Design Partners

www.childrenslibrary.org

www.cs.umd.edu/hcil

www.umiacs.umd.edu/~alisond

Workshop Website
CHI 2011 Workshop Program and Related Links: UI Technologies ant Impact on Educational Pedagogy, Related Child-Computer Interaction Papers and Courses

Cross-post: TechPsych blog

At CHI 2011 - workshop starts soon!

Posted: 07 May 2011 07:22 AM PDT

The workshop agenda has been changed slightly, and I will update the blog to reflect the changes soon. Here is a link to a previous post about the workshop:

CHI 2011 Workshop Program and Related Links: UI Technologies and Impact on Educational Pedagogy, Related Child-Computer Interaction Papers and Courses