Dissertation Proposal Defense - Saba Kawas
You are cordially invited to join us for the Proposal Defense of Saba Kawas, to be held on Thursday, Aug. 12, 2021, via Zoom from 9-11 AM PDT.
Title: Supporting developmentally responsive design in children's technologies
Abstract:
Technologies are impacting how children learn, play, communicate, and interact with others. Popular media and common wisdom often portray technology use by children as detrimental to their growth and wellbeing. However, in recent years, there has been a wealth of research evidence in child-computer interaction education and health informatics suggesting that well-designed interactive app use can have developmental and learning benefits for children. While there are evidence-based benefits of research apps, the vast majority of children’s apps available in app marketplaces do not incorporate child development, education, or literacy knowledge. Children’s technology designers seldom use theoretically-driven design considerations and evidence-based research to account for children's developmental needs due to a variety of barriers, including accessing and translating academic research. Additionally, designers are rarely educated in children's key developmental needs. My dissertation research explores ways to support designers to design developmentally responsive technologies for children with two main investigations. My prior work on the NatureCollections app has explored a theory-driven design framework for mobile technologies that support interest development in children and promote their interest in their natural surroundings. My proposed work investigates ways to support designers by bridging the child computer interaction research and practice gap with an actionable research-based online toolkit.
My dissertation work demonstrates the following thesis statement: Providing designers with theory-based design frameworks and access to actionable research-based design recommendations can help them create developmentally responsive designs for children’s technology. The expected contributions of this work are: (1) An interest-centered design framework for mobile technologies to promote children’s interest development in a topic; (2) Empirical evidence from several research studies that applied the interest-centered design framework to design, develop, and evaluate multiple dimensions of the NatureCollections app; (3) The design and evaluation of an online research-based toolkit for designers that works on children’s technologies; (4) Implications for research translation practices for researchers and the need for a framework for developmentally responsive designs and work that bridges the research-practice gap.
Zoom Link Details: https://washington.zoom.us/j/92610152562
Meeting ID: 926 1015 2562
No passcode.
One tap mobile: you can find your local number: https://washington.zoom.us/u/ab4FWtksyB
Supervisory Committee:
Katie Davis, Co-chair
Julie Kientz, Co-chair
Alexis Hiniker, Member
Jon Froehlich, GSR