Abstract
BackgroundPositive psychological interventions for children have typically focused on direct adaptations of interventions developed for adults. As the community moves toward designing positive computing technologies to support child well-being, it is important to use a more participatory process that directly engages children’s voices.ObjectiveOur objectives were, through a participatory design study, to understand children’s interpretations of positive psychology concepts, as well as their perspectives on technologies that are best suited to enhance their engagement with practice of well-being skills.MethodsWe addressed these questions through a content analysis of 434 design ideas, 51 sketches, and 8 prototype and videos, which emerged from a 14-session cooperative inquiry study with 12 child “happiness inventors.” The study was part of a summer learning camp held at the children’s middle school, which focused on teaching the invention process, teaching well-being skills drawn from positive psychology and related areas (gratitude, mindfulness, and problem solving), and iterating design ideas for technologies to support these skills.ResultsThe children’s ideas and prototypes revealed specific facets of how they interpreted gratitude (as thanking, being positive, and doing good things), mindfulness (as externally representing thought and emotions, controlling those thoughts and emotions, getting through unpleasant things, and avoiding forgetting something), and problem solving (as preventing bad decisions, seeking alternative solutions, and not dwelling on unproductive thoughts). This process also revealed that children emphasized particular technologies in their solutions. While desktop or laptop solutions were notably lacking, other ideas were roughly evenly distributed between mobile apps and embodied computing technologies (toys, wearables, etc). We also report on desired functionalities and approaches to engagement in the children’s ideas, such as a notable emphasis on representing and responding to internal states.ConclusionsOur findings point to promising directions for the design of positive computing technologies targeted at children, with particular emphases on the perspectives, technologies, engagement approaches, and functionalities that appealed to the children in our study. The dual focus of the study on teaching skills while designing technologies is a novel methodology in the design of positive computing technologies intended to increase child well-being.
Highlights
Two parallel, yet often disconnected, tracks are advancing in the science of technology and well-being
We provide empirical data to address the first 2 research questions: how children interpret positive psychology concepts and which technological approaches are emphasized in their designs
In the Discussion, we return to the third research question of how to best design and target positive computing technologies for children
Summary
Two parallel, yet often disconnected, tracks are advancing in the science of technology and well-being. We took a participatory design approach to understanding children’s perspectives on positive psychology concepts such as gratitude, mindfulness, and problem solving and worked from these perspectives to iterate ideas for positive computing technologies. The Positive Psychology Program evaluated providing language arts education that aimed to help students identify their character strengths and increase their use of these character strengths in their lives [48] These programs were foundational for the Geelong Grammar School model for positive education, which integrates well-being skills deeply into classroom education through a “live it, teach it, embed it” philosophy [53]. J Med Internet Res 2017 | vol 19 | iss. 1 | e14 | p. 3 (page number not for citation purposes)
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