Exploring the affordances of smart toys and connected play in practice

What does children’s play look like in the smart toy era? What conceptual frameworks help make sense of the changing practices of children’s connected play worlds? Responding to these questions, this article re-frames discussions about children’s smart toy play within wider theoretical debates about the affordances of new digital materialities. To understand recent transformations of children’s play practices, we propose it is necessary to think of toys as increasingly media-like in their affordances and as connected to wider digital material ecosystems. To demonstrate the potential of this conceptual approach, we explore illustrative examples of two popular smart ‘care toys’. Our analysis identifies three examples of affordances that smart care toys share with other forms of mobile and robotic media: liveliness, affective stickiness and portability. We argue that locating discussions of smart toys within wider conceptual debates about digital materialities can provide new insights into the changing landscape of children’s play

Orphaned Films: Digital Film Practices by Today’s Children

Today’s children start making digital films at a very young age by the use of smartphones, compact cameras and other mobile media devices. For these youngest filmmakers, filming is a form of play. In general, once the film has been recorded, the child loses interest in it. We propose to call children’s digital video recordings “orphaned films,” not only because they are generally destined for oblivion, but also because they are not claimed by their very own makers. Instead of studying these digital “home movies” within the tradition of domestic media practices, we take them as a starting point for discussing children’s contribution to media archaeology as a practice, that is, as a concrete engagement with media’s materiality and temporality. By probing the borders between recording and recorded, for instance, children intuitively create connections between the past, the present and the future of the moving image. They are resisting the planned obsolescence of today’s technological devices by repurposing them, by turning them into playful tools and by using them to explore not only the world around them but also the limitations and potentialities of the media.As crianças atuais começam a criar filmes digitais muito cedo, pelo uso de smartfones, câmeras compactas e outros dispositivos de mídia digital. Para estes jovens cineastas, filmar é uma forma de brincar. Em geral, uma vez que o filme tenha sido gravado, a criança perde interesse nele. Nós propomos chamar gravações de vídeos digitais feitas por essas crianças de “filmes órfãos”, não apenas porque são geralmente destinados ao esquecimento, mas também porque não são reivindicados por seus próprios criadores. Ao invés de estudar esses “filmes caseiros” na tradição de práticas de mídia domésticas, nós o tomamos como ponto de partida para discutir a contribuição de crianças à arqueologia da mídia como uma prática, ou seja, um engajamento concreto com a materialidade e temporalidade da mídia. Examinando as fronteiras entre gravação e produto gravado, por exemplo, as crianças intuitivamente criam conexões entre o passado, o presente e o futuro da imagem em movimento. Elas estão resistindo à obsolescência planejada dos dispositivos tecnológicos atuais de forma a reaproveitá-los, transformando-os em ferramentas lúdicas e usando-os para explorar não apenas o mundo a seu redor, mas também as limitações e potencialidades da mídia

Developing a Health Game to Prepare Preschool Children for Anesthesia : Formative Study Using a Child-Centered Approach

Funding Information: The authors acknowledge generous funding from the Icelandic Technology Development Fund; the Children’s Welfare Fund; SUMARGJÖF - the Friends of Children Society; and the Remembrance Fund of the Icelandic Landspitali Hospital, Iceland. Publisher Copyright: © Brynja Ingadottir, Elina Laitonen, Adalheidur Stefansdottir, Anna Olafia Sigurdardottir, Berglind Brynjolfsdottir, Heidi Parisod, Johanna Nyman, Karitas Gunnarsdottir, Katrín Jónsdóttir, Sanna Salanterä, Anni Pakarinen.Background: Every year, millions of children undergo medical procedures that require anesthesia. Fear and anxiety are common among young children undergoing such procedures and can interfere with the child’s recovery and well-being. Relaxation, distraction, and education are methods that can be used to prepare children and help them cope with fear and anxiety, and serious games may be a suitable medium for these purposes. User-centered design emphasizes the involvement of end users during the development and testing of products, but involving young, preschool children may be challenging. Objective: One objective of this study was to describe the development and usability of a computer-based educational health game intended for preschool children to prepare them for upcoming anesthesia. A further objective was to describe the lessons learned from using a child-centered approach with the young target group. Methods: A formative mixed methods child (user)-centered study design was used to develop and test the usability of the game. Preschool children (4-6 years old) informed the game design through playful workshops (n=26), and usability testing was conducted through game-playing and interviews (n=16). Data were collected in Iceland and Finland with video-recorded direct observation and interviews, as well as children’s drawings, and analyzed with content analysis and descriptive statistics. Results: The children shared their knowledge and ideas about hospitals, different emotions, and their preferences concerning game elements. Testing revealed the high usability of the game and provided important information that was used to modify the game before publishing and that will be used in its further development. Conclusions: Preschool children can inform game design through playful workshops about health-related subjects that they are not necessarily familiar with but that are relevant for them. The game’s usability was improved with the participation of the target group, and the game is now ready for clinical testing.Peer reviewe