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.
