“Happiness Inventors”: Informing Positive Computing Technologies Through Participatory Design With Children

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.

A Review of Apps and Websites for Promoting Mental Wellbeing: Findings and Initial Recommendations for Design

“…by composing more relevant copy and metadata, helping to eliminate the element of luck in finding apps/websites that are likely to be useful. This recommendation is consistent with prior research that proposes researchers should engage with the mental models of the particular child audience before deploying a positive technology intervention (Yarosh and Schueller, 2017).…”

“…Positive computing, the design of technologies that promote psychological wellbeing, is also a growing area of research in HCI (Calvo and Peters, 2013). In the first study to take a participatory design approach to developing positive computing technologies for young people, 434 ideas were created by participants (11-12 years), eight of which were prototyped (Yarosh and Schueller, 2017). The ideas revealed participants' understanding of positive psychology concepts, e.g.…”

Smartwatch Applications for Mental Health: A Qualitative Analysis of the Users� Perspectives

“…Still, Wrist-worn wearables hold tremendous potential existing studies mainly focus on the feasibility and acceptability of data collection via wearables for special populations (e.g. adolescents (Grist et al, (2017)) and children (Yarosh and Schueller, (2017))), and quantification of their stability in app stores (Larsen et al, 2016). To the best of our knowledge, from work reported in the literature, little is known about the potential of wrist-worn wearable solutions to promote mental health.…”

Desired Features of a Digital Technology Tool for Self-Management of Well-Being in a Nonclinical Sample of Young People: Qualitative Study (Preprint)

“…At the same time, capacity and financial limitations in healthcare mean that despite a small number of young people seeking professional help, mental health services struggle to parallel the number of young people accessing services, necessitating a system with greater facilities [33][34][35][36]. Advanced digital technology tools may offer an effective and cost-effective solution serving as a care-assisting resource for both mental services and young people wanting to access mental health services [37].…”

“…While problem-focused approaches aimed at directing efforts towards the stressor have been regarded as adaptive coping techniques and have been mainly associated with positive health outcomes [26], young people tend to adopt emotion-focused coping techniques in their attempt to regulate their emotions, or escape-avoidance strategies by engaging in stress-reducing activities directing their attention away from the problem or stressor [16,27,28]. Further problems can present themselves when support isn't either sought or forthcoming; young people tend to show low help-seeking behaviours that favour informal offers of support and resources over professional sources of help provision [29][30][31][32].At the same time, capacity and financial limitations in healthcare mean that despite a small number of young people seeking professional help, mental health services struggle to parallel the number of young people accessing services, necessitating a system with greater facilities [33][34][35][36]. Advanced digital technology tools may offer an effective and cost-effective solution serving as a care-assisting resource for both mental services and young people wanting to access mental health services [37].…”