IDC

Welcome to the 13th international conference on Interaction Design & Children, June 1720, 2014, in Aarhus, Denmark. The mission of the IDC conference is to bring together researchers, designers and educators to explore new forms of technology, design and engaged learning among children. The conference incorporates papers, presentations, speakers, workshops, participatory design experiences and discussions on how to create better interactive experiences for children. IDC 2014 offers wideranging program, supporting and facilitating the exchange of ideas within and between all of these communities. The theme of this year's conference is 'Building Tomorrow's Technology Together'.

We live in a global society where digital artefacts have become part of the everyday lives of children. Be it education, sports activities, rehabilitation or play, technology has come to play an important role in the way children relate to their physical, social and cultural surroundings. IDC 2014 invites researchers and practitioners to share their work on how technology affects children's wellbeing and sensemaking in a global context and how children, their parents, teachers and peers can contribute to the design of new technology. We invite researchers and participants to share thoughts on emerging technology, new theoretical perspectives, design methods and approaches, and the understanding of these ideas for the benefit of children's development by questioning how we can build tomorrow's technology together.

In Denmark, the Interaction Design and Children community is forged from research institutions and leading industry partners exploring aspects of children's play, learning and leisure as a foundation for technology design. For the IDC 2014, Aarhus University (AU), The LEGO® Foundation and INTEL have come together to create a venue for researchers and practitioners to work with theoretical, practical and methodological challenges in IDC.

Director of Transformative Learning Technologies Lab at Stanford University, Paulo Blikstein opens the IDC 2014 conference with a keynote on the designers' mission in the age of ubiquitous technology. According to Paulo Blikstein, we need to design devices, environments, and activities that reflect children's multiple epistemological resources and heuristics. The keynote is followed by two days of 18 full paper presentations, 44 short papers and 21 demos carefully selected through a double blind review process by the IDC program committee.

A new feature of IDC 2014 is a full day interactive forum for all conference attendees around the topic: How does the interaction with digital creative tools support child development? The focus in this session is on how children will develop with digital technologies and the ways we can inspire them to create their own digital tools. Different aspects of this question is addressed in groups prior to the workshop. Professor Marilyn Fleer from Monash University kicks off the session with a keynote on the relations between play and learning in digital environments -- the significance of motives and demands. The keynote is followed by a challenge session facilitated by The LEGO® Foundation and LEGO® employees from different parts of the research and product development groups. The day ends with a closing panel session where topics from the challenge sessions and the IDC 2014 Conference in general are discussed and elaborated by people from research and industry. The interactive workshop day is hosted by The LEGO Foundation in their headquarters in Billund, Denmark. The LEGO Foundation provides IDC 2014 attendees an opportunity to go on an exclusive factory tour as part of the IDC closing program.