Abstract
Children have different needs, motivations, interaction styles, and perspectives than adults as they utilize technology and explore the world around them. We present an overview of technologies for children outdoors and lessons learned from developing some of those technologies as well as a survey of adults’ experience with technology while hiking. The literature and our experience inform our recommended design considerations for technology for children outdoors, namely that it should: support social interactions; accommodate groups that are generally led by an adult; motivate via a narrative that piques children’s interest; promote exploration in open, generative and creative ways; and keep children safe and allow communication with parents.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
References
2018 Outdoor Participation Report. en-US. Technical report, Washington, DC, United States of America: Outdoor Foundation, July 2018. https://outdoorindustry.org/resource/2018-outdoor-participationreport/. Accessed 29 August 2019
Anderson Z, Lusk C, Jones MD (2017) Towards understanding hikers’ technology preferences. In: Proceedings of the 2017 ACM international joint conference on pervasive and ubiquitous computing and proceedings of the 2017 ACM international symposium on wearable computers, UbiComp ’17, Maui, Hawaii. ACM, New York, NY, USA, pp 1–4. ISBN 978-1-4503-5190-4. https://doi.org/10.1145/3123024.3123089, https://doi.org/10.1145/3123024.3123089. Accessed 17 Sept 2019
Ardito C et al (2012) Enriching archaeological parks with contextual sounds and mobile technology. ACM Trans Comput-Hum Interact 19(4):29:1–29:30. ISSN 1073-0516. https://doi.org/10.1145/2395131.2395136., http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/2395131.2395136. Accessed 11 Sept 2019
Avontuur T et al (2014) Play it our way: customization of game rules in children’s interactive outdoor games. In: Proceedings of the 2014 conference on interaction design and children. ACM, New York, NY, USA, pp 95–104. ISBN 978-1-4503-2272-0. https://doi.org/10.1145/2593968.2593973, http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/2593968.2593973/ Accessed 18 Apr 2018
Chipman G et al (2006) A Case study of tangible flags: a collaborative technology to enhance field trips. In: Proceedings of the 2006 conference on interaction design and children. ACM, New York, NY, USA, pp 1–8. https://doi.org/10.1145/1139073.1139081, http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1139073.1139081. Accessed 14 Nov 2017
Chipman G et al (2011) Paper vs. tablet computers: a comparative study using tangible flags. In: Proceedings of the 10th international conference on interaction design and children, IDC ’11. ACM, New York, NY, USA, pp 29–36. ISBN 978-1-4503-0751-2. https://doi.org/10.1145/1999030.1999034, http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1999030.1999034. Accessed 10 Nov 2018
Consolvo S et al (2008) Activity sensing in the wild: a field trial of ubifit garden. In: Proceeding of the twenty-sixth annual CHI conference on human factors in computing systems, CHI ’08. ACM Press, Florence, Italy, p 1797. ISBN 978-1-60558-011-1. https://doi.org/10.1145/1357054.1357335, http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=1357054.1357335. Accessed 3 Jan 2019
Cordes C, Miller E (2000) Fool’s gold: a critical look at computers in childhood. Alliance for Childhood. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED445803. Accessed 5 Sept 2019
Cumbo BJ et al (2014a) Connecting children to nature with technology: sowing the seeds for proenvironmental behaviour. In: Proceedings of the 2014 conference on interaction design and children, IDC ’14, Aarhus, Denmark. ACM, New York, NY, USA, pp 189–192. ISBN 978-1-4503-2272-0. https://doi.org/10.1145/2593968.2610449, http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/2593968.2610449. Accessed 11 Sept 2019
Cumbo BJ et al (2014b) What motivates children to play outdoors?: potential applications for interactive digital tools. In: Proceedings of the 26th Australian computer–human interaction conference on designing futures: the future of design. ACM, New York, NY, USA, pp 168-171. ISBN 978-1-4503-0653-9. https://doi.org/10.1145/2686612.2686637, http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/2686612.2686637. Accessed 30 Jan 2018
Druin A (1999) Cooperative inquiry: new technologies for children. In: Proceedings of the ACM SIGCHI Conference on human factors in computing systems, CHI 1999, ACM Press, p 8. https://doi.org/10.1145/302979.303166
Eliasson J et al (2013) Using smartphones and QR codes for supporting students in exploring tree species. In: Proceedings of the 8th European conference on scaling up learning for sustained impact, vol 8095. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp 436–441. ISBN 978-3-642-40813-7. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-40814-4_35, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-40814-4_35. Accessed 11 Sept 2019
Fails JA (2007) Mobile collaboration for young children. In: Proceedings of the 6th international conference on interaction design and children. ACM, New York, NY, USA, pp 181–184. ISBN 978-1-59593-747-6. https://doi.org/10.1145/1297277.1297324, http://doi.acm.org/10. 1145/1297277.1297324. Accessed 14 Nov 2017
Fails JA, Druin A, Guha ML (2010) Mobile collaboration: collaboratively reading and creating children’s stories on mobile devices. In: Proceedings of the 9th international conference on interaction design and children, IDC ’10. ACM, New York, NY, USA, pp 20–29. ISBN 978-1-60558-951-0. https://doi.org/10.1145/1810543.1810547, http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1810543.1810547. Accessed 15 Nov 2017
Fails JA, Guha ML, Druin A (2013) Methods and techniques for involving children in the design of new technology for children. Now Publishers Inc., Hanover, MA, USA. ISBN 978-1-60198-720-4
Fails JA et al (2014) GeoTagger: a collaborative and participatory environmental inquiry system. In: Proceedings of the companion publication of the 17th ACM conference on computer supported cooperative work & social computing, CSCW Companion ’14. ACM, New York, NY, USA, pp 157-160. ISBN 978-1-4503-2541-7. https://doi.org/10.1145/2556420.2556481, http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/2556420.2556481. Accessed 13 Feb 2017
Fails J et al (2015) Geotagger: a collaborative environmental inquiry platform. In: 2015 international conference on collaboration technologies and systems (CTS), June 2015, pp 383–390. https://doi.org/10.1109/CTS.2015.7210453
Frauenberger C et al (2018) Ethics in interaction design and children: a panel and community dialogue. In: Proceedings of the 17th ACM conference on interaction design and children, IDC ’18, June 2018. Association for Computing Machinery, Trondheim, Norway, pp 748–752. ISBN 978-1-4503-5152-2. https://doi.org/10.1145/3202185.3210802, https://doi.org/10.1145/3202185.3210802. Accessed 22 Jan 2020
Guha ML, Druin A, Fails JA (2013) Cooperative inquiry revisited: reflections of the past and guidelines for the future of intergenerational co-design. Int J Child-Comput Interact 1(1):14–23. ISSN 2212-8689. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijcci.2012.08.003, http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2212868912000049. Accessed 14 Nov 2017
Hourcade JP et al (2017) Child-computer interaction SIG: ethics and values. In: Proceedings of the 2017 CHI conference extended abstracts on human factors in computing systems, CHI EA ’17, May 2017. Association for Computing Machinery, Denver, Colorado, USA, pp 1334–1337. ISBN 978-1-4503-4656-6. https://doi.org/10.1145/3027063.3049286, https://doi.org/10.1145/3027063.3049286. Accessed 22 Jan 2020
Kamarainen AM et al (2013) EcoMOBILE: integrating augmented reality and probeware with environmental education field trips. Comput Educ 68:545–556. ISSN 0360-1315. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2013.02.018, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu. 2013.02.018. Accessed 6 June 2018
Kellert SR et al (2017) The nature of Americans: disconnection and recommendations for reconnection: conservation tools. Technical report, April 2017, p 363. https://conservationtools.org/library_items/1574-The-Nature-of-Americans-Disconnection-and-Recommendationsfor-Reconnection. Accessed 5 Sept 2019
Ma Y et al (2019) A review of design interventions for promoting adolescents’ physical activity. In: Proceedings of the 18th ACM international conference on interaction design and children, IDC ’19, Boise, ID, USA. ACM, New York, NY, USA, pp 161–172. ISBN 978-1-4503-6690-8. https://doi.org/10.1145/3311927.3323130, http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/3311927.3323130. Accessed 14 Aug 2019
Paavilainen J et al (2017) The PokéMon GO experience: a location-based augmented reality mobile game goes mainstream. In: Proceedings of the 2017 CHI conference on human factors in computing systems, CHI ’17, Denver, Colorado, USA. ACM, New York, NY, USA, pp 2493–2498. ISBN 978-1-4503-4655-9. https://doi.org/10.1145/3025453.3025871, http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/3025453.3025871. Accessed 10 Sept 2019
Pauw D et al (2017) Connecting affinity spaces to places and back: a look at Pokemon go. In: Companion of the 2017 ACM conference on computer supported cooperative work and social computing, CSCW ’17 Companion, Portland, Oregon, USA. ACM, New York, NY, USA, pp 275–278. ISBN 978-1-4503-4688-7. https://doi.org/10.1145/3022198.3026345, http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/3022198.3026345. Accessed 10 Sept 2019
Posti M, Schöning J, Häkkilä J (2014) Unexpected journeys with the HOBBIT: the design and evaluation of an asocial hiking app. In: Proceedings of the 2014 conference on designing interactive systems, DIS ’14. ACM, New York, NY, USA, pp 637–646. ISBN 978-1-4503-2902-6. https://doi.org/10.1145/2598510.2598592, http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/2598510.2598592. Accessed 2 Feb 2018
Richard L (2008) Last child in the woods: saving our children from nature-deficit disorder. Algonquin Books, English. Updated and Expanded edition
Rideout V (2017) The common sense census: media use by kids age zero to eight 2017|Common sense media. English. Technical report. Common Sense Media, San Francisco, CA, USA, p 64. https://www.commonsensemedia.org/research/the-common-sense-census-mediause-by-kids-age-zero-to-eight-2017. Acessed 1 Oct 2019
Rogers Y et al (2004) Ambient wood: designing new forms of digital augmentation for learning outdoors. In: Proceedings of the 2004 conference on interaction design and children: building a community, IDC’04, Maryland. ACM, New York, NY, USA, pp 3–10. ISBN 978-1-58113-791-0. https://doi.org/10.1145/1017833.1017834, http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1017833.1017834. Accessed 5 Sept 2019
Samariya A (2019) Investigating the effects of social and temporal dynamics in fitness games on children’s physical activity. Ph.D thesis. August 2019. https://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/td/1570
Samariya A, Fails JA (2018) Making physical activity fun & playful: investigating fitness games with children. In: 20th international conference on human-computer interaction with mobile devices and services. ACM, Barcelona, Spain. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1to1Nr12CqRimmmnqw-Xs2w93w9-x2jm9/view?usp=sharing
Samariya A et al (2018) Technology as a bridge for children to explore the world around them. In: HCI outdoors: a CHI (2018) workshop on understanding human–computer interaction in the outdoors (CHI), Montreal, Canada, April, p 2018
Sobel K et al (2017) It wasn’t really about the PokéMon: parents’ perspectives on a location-based mobile game. In: Proceedings of the 2017 chi conference on human factors in computing systems, CHI ’17, Denver, Colorado, USA. ACM, New York, NY, USA, pp 1483–1496. ISBN 978-1-4503-4655-9. https://doi.org/10.1145/025453.3025761, http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/3025453.3025761. Accessed 10 Sept 2019
Soute I, Lagerström S, Markopoulos P (2013) Rapid prototyping of outdoor games for children in an iterative design process. In: Proceedings of the 12th international conference on interaction design and children, IDC ’13, New York, New York, USA. ACM, New York, NY, USA, pp 74–83. ISBN 978-1-4503-1918-8. https://doi.org/10.1145/2485760.2485779, http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/2485760.2485779. Aceessed 11 Sept 2019
Soute I et al (2017) Design and evaluation of RaPIDO, a platform for rapid prototyping of interactive outdoor games. ACM Trans Comput- Hum Interact 24(4):28:1–28:30. ISSN 1073-0516. https://doi.org/10.1145/3105704, http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/3105704. Accessed 11 Sept 2019
Tong X et al (2020) Examining the efficiency of gamification incentives for encouraging physical activity-social collaborations or interactive mobile games? In: Proceedings of the 10th EAI International Conference on Pervasive Computing Technologies for Healthcare, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/266025077_Deconstructing_gamification_Evaluating_the_effectiveness_of_continuous_measurement_virtual_rewards_and_social_comparison_for_promoting_physical_activity
Turkle S (2011) Alone together: why we expect more from technology and less from each other. Basic Books, Inc., New York, NY, USA. ISBN 978-0-465-01021-9
What is Childhood Obesity? Published: Retrieved Sept 12, 2018 from https://www.obesityaction.org/geteducated/understanding-childhood-obesity/what-is-childhood-obesity/, https://www.obesityaction.org/get-educated/understandingchildhood-obesity/what-is-childhood-obesity/. Accessed 5 Mar 2019
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Fails, J.A., Jones, M. (2020). The Design of Outdoor Technologies for Children. In: McCrickard, D.S., Jones, M., Stelter, T.L. (eds) HCI Outdoors: Theory, Design, Methods and Applications. Human–Computer Interaction Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45289-6_11
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45289-6_11
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-45288-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-45289-6
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)