Critical agenda driving child–computer interaction research—Taking a stock of the past and envisioning the future

Abstract

There is a revitalized interest in power and politics around design and technology in the Human–Computer Interaction (HCI) field. Child–Computer Interaction (CCI) research community has also shown arousing interest towards the topic. However, despite this emerging interest, the CCI research community has remained quite silent about the potential of a critical agenda for CCI. Few studies have explicitly addressed critical research or critical design. This study introduces the notion of a critical agenda for CCI research and identifies CCI studies that are linked with the critical agenda, revealing that there are CCI studies showing emerging interests and seeds for addressing the critical agenda. Overall, this study explores the state-of-the-art critical research tradition in CCI and explicates the potential of this tradition for making the world a better place through design and technology in collaboration with children.