Children’s Creativity Lab : creating a ‘pen of the future’

This work is funded by EPSRC and SICSA.Technology is changing the way we acquire new skills and proficiencies and handwriting is no exception to this. However, while some technological advancements exist in this area, the question of how we can digitally enhance the process of learning handwriting remains under-explored. Being immersed in this process on an everyday basis, we believe that school aged children can provide valuable ideas and insights into the design of future writing tools for learners developing their (hand)writing skills. As end-users of the proposed technology, we explore including children in a form of informed participatory design during a creativity lab where we invited 12 children, aged 11–12, to put themselves into the shoes of a product designers and create a Pen of the Future using prototyping materials. In this paper we describe our methodology and discuss the design ideas that children came up with and how these may inform the design of future writing tools.Postprin

Childbearing Age, Family Allowances and Social Security

Although the optimal policy under endogenous fertility has been widely studied, the optimal public intervention under endogenous childbearing age has remained largely unexplored. This paper examines the optimal family policy in a context where the number and the timing of births are chosen by individuals who differ as to how early fertility can weaken future earnings growth. We analyze the design of a policy of family allowances and of public pensions in such a setting, under distinct informational environments. We show how endogenous childbearing ages affect the optimalpolicy, through the redistribution across the earnings dimension and the internalization of fertility externalities. It is also shown that, contrary to common practice, children benefits differentiated according to the age of parents can, under some conditions, be part of the optimal family policy.endogenous fertility ; childbearing age ; family benefits

Capturing the Design Thinking of Young Children Interacting with a Parent

Children have often been labeled as “natural engineers” whose curiosity about the world around them evokes comparisons to skills used by professional engineers and taught to undergraduate engineering students. Building towers out of blocks, taking things apart and figuring how things work are a part of childhood and have been considered to be precursors to engineering thinking.However there has been considerable debate around what engineering looks like for young children. Can young children engage in design and if so, what does that look like? How can we differentiate “design” (especially “modeling” or “create”) activity from normal everyday play?Several design models have taken into account the developmental stages of young children, but they often are based on assumptions and have minimal evidence.In the GRADIENT (Gender Research on Adult-child Discussions within Informal ENgineering environmenTs) study, a collaboration between researchers at a museum and university, we looked at how parents with young girls engage in two different engineering activities in informal settings. The first setting is a Preschool Play dates program for children 3-5 years old, where the parent-daughter dyads were asked to build a tower first out of familiar materials (foam blocks)and then out of unfamiliar materials (dado squares). The second setting is a pneumatic ball run that is part of an engineering exhibit at the museum and was focused on children 6-11 years old.In each setting, 30 dyads were video recorded, and the verbal and non-verbal segments were open and axially coded for engineering talk and action.We found that children engage in the engineering design process in ways that are similar to other models of the engineering design, that include problem scoping, idea generation, modeling,testing, evaluation and revision. We also found that children engage in both predictive and reflective behavior, and often add context to the problem. However, we want to acknowledge that the way children engage in engineering thinking is different from the way that adults do(especially with idea generation and revision) and we will discuss this further in the paper. This work lays a foundation for future research, as understanding how children engage in the design process can help us understand how children learn engineering design skills, and how people develop engineering design skills across pre-college, undergraduate, and professional practice.The work also has implications for the development of learning experiences in both school and out-of-school settings

Linking families with pre-school children from healthcare services to community resources: a systematic review protocol

Background: Poor health and health inequalities persist despite increasing investment in health improvement programmes across high-income countries. Evidence suggests that to reduce health inequalities, a range of activities targeted at different levels within society and throughout the life course should be employed. There is a particular focus on addressing inequalities in early years as this may influence the experience of health in adulthood. To address the wider determinants of health at a community level, a key intervention which can be considered is supporting patients to access wider community resources. This can include processes such as signposting, referral and facilitation. There is a lack of evidence synthesis in relation to the most effective methods for linking individuals from health services to other services within communities, especially when considering interventions aimed at families with young children. Method/design: The aim of this study is to understand the way health services can best help parents, carers and families with pre-school children to engage with local services, groups and agencies to address their wider health and social needs. The review may inform future guidance to support families to address wider determinants of health. The study is a systematic review, and papers will be identified from the following electronic databases: Web of Science, Embase, MEDLINE and CINAHL. A grey literature search will be conducted using an internet search engine and specific grey literature databases (TRiP, EThOS and Open Grey). Reference lists/bibliographies of selected papers will be searched. Quality will be assessed using the Effective Public Health Practice Project Quality Assessment Tool for quantitative studies and the CASP tool for qualitative studies. Data will be synthesised in a narrative form and weighted by study quality. Discussion: It is important to understand how health services can facilitate access to wider services for their patients to address the wider determinants of health. This may impact on the experience of health inequalities. This review focuses on how this can be achieved for families with pre-school children, and the evidence obtained will be useful for informing future guidance on this topic

Edutainment System for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

I have always believed that a qualified designer should design products that can help society; therefore, I have kept my eye on core social issues. My graduate thesis is definitely a great opportunity for me to help minority groups in society through a designer\u27s perspective. As we all have noticed, the number of families that have a child with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is increasing year by year, and these families are all struggling with difficult issues. That\u27s why I chose ASD as my thesis topic. I want to help children with ASD through design. Because ASD is a broad subject, my project started with plenty of research from books, online articles, and community activities, in order to narrow down the main topic and to decide on a target group. The design process included background research, research of children with ASD and their families, the creation of a problem definition, ideation, design advancement, and specifications. I hope my final design will not only help children with ASD with their physical performance, but also help them with their social and communication skills. All in all, I think my thesis design shows how a product designer can care about individuals with unique needs in the society and originate a new product system that can help resolve issues for them. In the future, I also would like to develop this project into a universal design that can help all children, whether they are challenged or not

The Use of Diverse and Varied Cultural Inspiration in Visual Development

This thesis aims to show different cultures in children\u27s literary works, to help them to understand different cultures and backgrounds. Our world is quickly developing, people can observe various kinds of cultures through the internet. We are becoming more and more aware of education, which also casts a vigorous development on the children\u27s education industry. How to show different cultures in children\u27s literary works to let them understand each other from different cultural backgrounds? My thesis is based on oriental culture and adapted from Andersen\u27s story The Snow Queen from Western culture. Through the combination of different elements, this visual adaptation will make the Oriental culture more receptive to the Western market. This project will study different possibilities of visual development, scenes design, story art, and character design. I hope this can provide a good direction for visual development in the future

Designing Haptic Interfaces to Uncover Gestural Patterns in Children

Children with sensory processing differences such as Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) may have different gestural patterns compared to their neurotypical peers. However, the evaluation of sensory differences is complicated and subjective, especially when it\u27s related to the tactile sense. Haptic interfaces (i.e., tools that transmit information through touch) allow changing vibrotactile patterns to stimulate children\u27s tactile senses, affecting how children interact with the interface. Therefore, haptic interfaces can be used to collect data on how users interact with them and uncover their gestural patterns. However, it is unclear how to design active haptic interfaces vibration using touch (e.g., mobile phone), wearables (e.g., smartwatch), or ultrasonic (e.g., Stratos) to support the data collection of gesture interaction. As the first step in this work, we proposed the design of Feel and Touch, a haptic game that could be developed for different haptic interfaces, such as mobile, wearable, and ultrasonic. In future work, we proposed to develop the game in the three interfaces and evaluate their usefulness and effectiveness in collecting gestural data, especially for children with ASD. We would like to thank: Ivonne Monarca and Monica Tentori from CICESE Research center