More reflections

Other comments that I have received:

• It is important not to give the child a false sense of control. For example, you don't want to give the child the impression that he or she can get in touch with mom or dad at any moment in time through the new application if that is not the case. Thus, seen from that point of view, it may be better to have a system that let's the child be the consumer of information/content that is being sent by the remote parent and implement a notification system to alert the child when something new has been uploaded.
  
  My comment: I personally don't believe in developing an application that doesn't allow children to interact and influence the interaction. Children are usually active and curious. I'd rather create a system that clearly indicates when mum or dad is available or not. For example, an image/video of your sleeping mum/dad, a sleeping avatar, or a picture of a moon may be used for that purpose.
  

• Children tend to like to revisit experiences, e.g. to re-experience emotions, so you should probably consider designing an application that stores content.
  
  My comment: I absolutely agree. Again, this links back to the first topic regarding control. Letting children revisit pictures, audio messages etc. when they miss their mum or dad feels like a very important feature.
  
  
• You should maybe focus on a certain age group since children develop a lot over the years. Maybe even focus on a specific gender.
  
  My comment: Based on my initial studies, I've chosen to focus on preschoolers (2-5 years). Mainly because it seem like this is when children (1) do not appreciate talking on the phone, (2) have a hard time understanding the concept of traveling and remote locations, (3) appreciate interacting with and through transitional objects the most.
  
  When my advisor Chris' son was about 3 years old he used to love when his dad brought a stuffed animal on one of his trips and sent back pictures of it. When they talked on the phone, Chris' son only wanted to talk to the stuffed animal (Chris had to distort his voice). One of my colleagues had a similar experience with his three-year-old son.
  
  Gender, however, is a much more complicated issue that could turn into a thesis topic of it's on. Thus, since I have decided to focus on toddlers and preschoolers, I will make the simplified assumption that children behave more or less the same irrespective of gender. (Personally, my impression is that the way children interact with their parents is more dependent on personality and the relationship they have with the specific parent, than on gender.)
  
  
• A thought: do you think kids would rather be w/ mom, or have mom be w/ them .. In other words, do you think kids would rather see what mom is up to, or just be able to show what they’re up to? (so kid would have the doll, which mom eyejacks into)
  
  My comment: Based on the families and parents that I have interviewed and talked to, it seems like children often feel left behind when the parent travels. They want to go be with the parent and experience the same things. Again, children are curious and active beings. Here is an example:

  ...only last week I took a day train to [A] and I thought [J] wouldn’t mind since I wont spend the night away, but she got really upset – when we spoke about it later she said she wanted to ride the train too and see the sand/sea .. (so she felt she was missing out on some fun) .. anyways, I had to explain that in fact, I was in meetings all day.

  Besides, my initial goal was to design an application for children to experience what their parents are experiencing (there are already so many child surveillance systems out there). So, my answer to that question is: I want to design a system that (first and foremost) helps children "be together" with their remote parents, and I believe that children would enjoy such an approach. However, my hope is that parents will enjoy and benefit from using the application too.
  

Dale Hubert on The Flat Stanley Project

Image: the Flat Stanley project

Yesterday, I talked to the founder of the Flat Stanley Project, Dale Hubert, over the phone. Dale is a Canadian Grade 3 teacher who started the project back in 1995. Since then, the project has grown and is being used in schools all over the world.

Among other things, I asked Dale what he thinks made the Flat Stanley Project so popular, and a fairly long list of possible reasons. Flat Stanley...

• creates a (global) community - he is a mutual friend that you can communicate "through"
• makes abstract remote communication more graspable
• makes ordinary writing tasks more meaningful
• enables outcome-based education: strong incentives (e.g. honor to be Flat Stanley's host)
  
• adds a level of imagination
  
• generates global experiences
• enables proxy-traveling
  
• makes it easier to discuss sensitive topics like obesity or abuse since you communicate via Flat Stanley (Flat Stanley needs to lose weight...)
• can be used to teach children about traveling both in space (geography) and time (history).
  

Dale Hubert would like to see Flat Stanley being used more in hospitals, in order to comfort children who are too ill to leave their beds. Flat Stanley could, for example, be used as their physical travel-proxy who send home postcards from different cities and countries.

What is a week?

I have now conducted all five interview user studies. I talked to 5 mothers, 2 fathers and 6 children in total . Naturally, the families were all different and I must admit that I am finding it really hard to discern common behaviors and needs.

The first family I interviewed was very experienced and advanced when it comes to both technology and traveling. Not only did the parents travel frequently, they were also fairly experienced geocashers. Thus, it doesn't surprise me that their daughter was very interested in maps and traveling. None of the other children I talked to seemed to share that interest. Rather, their focus (if any) was on:

1. time ("When is mum coming home?")
2. activities ("Why is dad going on this conference? What is a conference? Was his day O.K?")

I would say that time was the one most obvious concern in all families. I already mentioned that the children's limited sense of time was a common concern. In addition, the time difference makes communicating a lot more complicated, since it restricts the families' (already) tight schedules.

I started reading the three books I ordered a while ago, and so far Charlie Hudson's (who apparently is a woman!) book The Parent's guide to business travel has impressed me the most. In the book Charlie dedicates a whole chapter ("How long is a week?") to 0-5 year-old children and their sense of time. I quote her:

Ages Three to Five

The ability to grasp the concept of "trip" is easier in these years, although understanding the passage of time will probably be limited; hence the title of this chapter, "What is a week?" Forging and maintaining a strong communication link during absence is important and can span from low-tech to the latest electronic gadgets - only the means of communication should change as your children advance in age...

The second challenge was keeping in touch with my son and, while I called on a regular basis, a preschooler doesn't have a lot to say during a phone conversation. I would send him cute postcards or greeting cards with a sentence or two, although that first summer I wasn't aware of how meaningful those cards were to him. I missed a couple of weeks due to very heavy workload, and my father said that one day when he went to the mailbox and pulled out some kind of advertisement that was on a colorful card, my son eagerly took it and said, "This is for me from Mommy... My son was too young to care what I wrote, and the messages [on the cards] were essentially all the same, but it didn't matter - he was getting "mail" from me that he could hold in his hand, and that was the important thing for him...

The key point at this age is that, just like the repeated question "Are we there yet?," small children do not distinguish segments of time well. It's crucial to find a method of counting days or weeks they are comfortable with so they can feel confident of when they will see you again. Otherwise, their question, "When are you coming home?" cannot be answered in a way they understand, and it will reinforce the frightening thought that you aren't really going to return.

This is also the age when it may be difficult to distinguish between imagination and reality, and a child may become fearful of something that doesn't occur to you. For example, if you have taken a trip to Arizona, but your child doesn't know where or even what Arizona is, he or she may conjure up disturbing images of you in a terrible place.

Another common feature is that bedtime seemed to be the most cherished and valuable time of the day. All five families mentioned that, if possible, bedtime is when the distributed family members would talk on the phone. The procedure of saying "Goodnight" seemed to be very important.

More on transitional objects

My colleague Cati just posted an entry about transitional objects.

Transitional objects

Image: Wikipedia

Today, I finally found what I have been looking for - a scientific term for the concept of emotionally "charged" objects and toys. Wikipedia says:

Donald Woods Winnicott (1896-1971) introduced the concepts of transitional objects and transitional experience in reference to a particular developmental sequence. With ‘transition’ Winnicott means an intermediate developmental phase between the psychic and external reality. In this ‘transitional space’ we can find the ‘transitional object’.

I have found a number of interesting books and papers on the topic:

Papers

The Creation of a Shared Space through Fantasy between a Seven Year Old Child and his Therapist: A Case Study (Lydia Cohen-Kreisberger)

Transitional objects and transitional phenomena; a study of the first not-me possession (D.W. Winnicott)

Attachment to a special object at the age of three years: Behavior and temperament characteristics (William Garrison and Felton Earls)

The three-year-old and his attachment to a special soft object (David Boniface and Philip Graham)

Books

Playing and Reality (D.W. Winnicott)

Collected papers, through paediatrics to psycho-analysis (D.W. Winnicott)

Winnicott On the Child (D.W. Winnicott)

11/19/07: Crit Day

I presented my work at our Lab-wide Critique Day last week. Although the presentation didn't go as well as I had hoped (at this stage I should have a more clear idea of the system than I actually do), I got really good feedback. Here are some comments:

I would have hoped to see a better idea of the parental and child interfaces at this point...the UI ideas need to be firmed up quickly. I fear that it will be difficult to examine the psychological impact in the course of a masters project.

Paulina's project is potentially of great benefit and interest. Parents and children have a hard time separating, and travel can be a particularly stressful time for all. While others work on research to reduce the need for travel, it is certainly appropriate for us to be exploring ways to lessen the impact on loved ones.

Using a object intermediary does make this the sort of work that tends to polarize people's opinion of the lab. The "cuteness" of the project is likely to both enthrall the press and attract criticism of triviality. This raises the bar of the work needing to be both innovative engineering and well grounded / well evaluated in terms of the psychological impact.

I think Paulina should narrow to a particular child age range (toddler 2-4?) and get the psychology expertise for this group and start running prototypes by them.

This is a really interesting problem, but I feel that Paulina has not quite articulated accurately enough what the unique novel idea is that she will be exploring in her solution. One suggestion I have is that she goes & talks to some child psychologists, in addition to interviewing a lot of parents & kids...Especially literature on role playing, on connecting/communicating through an object, etc. Maybe by reading some of this literature she would be able to better articulate what the key idea is and why the whole physical object proposal is important/key.

I completely agree with these comments. My concept is too weak and it has to be nailed down as soon as possible.

Logitech avatars

Images: Logitech

A couple of years ago Logitech introduced a face tracking/video effects software for their most advanced chat web cameras. Logitech explains the technology in the following way:

The Video Effects technology uses Face Tracking to determine the location and/or movement of your face. Video Effects uses this tracking information to either map a Face Accessory over your existing video or completely replace your video with a 3D Avatar that moves based on your actions.

Here is a fun homemade video of some of the video effects.

I am currently considering using Logitech's technology in my project since it offers a fairly easy way to make video chatting more fun for children.

X8 embodied webcam

Apparently, a company called X8 makes embodied web cams. The actual camera is neatly hidden in the nose of the stuffed pet.

When kids get to choose

Readings

I just ordered three books on the topic of traveling parents:

Keeping Your Family Close When Frequent Travel Pulls You Apart (1998)

The Business Traveling Parent: How to Stay Close to Your Kids When You're Far Away (2000)

Parent's Guide to Business Travel: Practical Advice and Wisdom for When You Have to Be Away (2003)

In this article Dan Verdick gives the following recommendations:

"I really try to think of things from my children’s perspective and how it will affect them,’’ Verdick says.

Before he leaves, Verdick puts together a detailed itinerary and might ask for one back from his daughter (his son’s not old enough) that will highlight her class schedule and after-school plans so they’ll both always know what the other is doing.

He also uses this opportunity for a geography lesson. "I make the most of the situation by teaching my daughter how to read a map, and then I’ll correspond by mail or e-mail, talk on the phone and have conversations about what I’m seeing,’’ Verdick says.

In another article Charlie Hudson says:

“Millions of parents face family separations and work-related travel on a regular basis,” says Charlie Hudson. “One of the most vital points for successful dealing with the time away is solid, two-way communication that begins at the earliest ages.”

The books mentioned above are all fairly old. So are the articles. I wonder why...

Nokia 6110 Navigator

I am currently waiting for a couple of Nokia 6110 Navigators. Nokia Research has been kind enough to support my project by donating a few to our group. Needless to say, I am very excited.

MIT writing center

I visited the MIT Writing Center to get my thesis proposal reviewed. I can strongly recommend a visit. Especially foreign students, like myself, can get a lot of help when it comes to spelling, grammar, and structure.

It is free and you can book several appointments.

Initial interview study started

I conducted my first user study interview a while ago. A family of four: dad, mum, and two daughters. The interviews were carried out as a semi-structured discussions; I had a fairly structured script but added and removed questions as the interview/conversation proceeded. I interviewed the mother, the traveling father, and the oldest daughter (aged 6) and got some really good feedback.

The family was very tech-savvy and used both cell-phones and computers (IM without video) to stay in touch remotely. The traveling father sometimes sent home photos and videos via email. He also geo-tagged and uploaded some of them to Google Earth in order to connect the photos to a certain location.

The family also used a world map, attached to the wall, to mark out future and passed destinations with pins. Each family member has a unique pin-color.

The most important tool, however, was the family calendar. The parents use drawings to indicate upcoming events and activities - a plane means traveling. As soon as a day has passed, it is crossed over. Thus, the girls have a fairly good idea of what is happening.

To conclude, the most important and interesting observations were:

• The daughter was clearly interested in her father's trips. Whereas her mother mostly wants to find out if her husband is alright, the daughter wants to hear about her dad's current location and activities.
• Maps are being used to map out future or ongoing trips both in real-life and online.
• The current system works fine for one destination, but doesn't really support mapping out a whole sequence of destinations (with time- and order information).
  
• Icons/drawings/symbols are important since the daughter can't yet read.
• The father mostly sends photos via email (to the mother), but the mother sometimes forgets to show them to their daughters.
• The daughter likes to watch old photos and videos to "remember" passed events.
• The daughter usually talks to her dad and watches his photos to feel his presence, but likes to do those two things separately.