Bieke Zaman- PhD
- Professor at KU Leuven
Bieke Zaman
- PhD
- Professor at KU Leuven
About
123
Publications
57,198
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Introduction
Bieke Zaman is professor in Communication Sciences / Human-Computer Interaction. She is Research Group Leader of Mintlab, part of the Media Culture & Policy Lab at the Faculty of Social Sciences, KU Leuven, Belgium. She is also director of the KU Leuven Digital Society Institute. Bieke Zaman pursues research programmes on Children, Media and Design; Media Convergence in a Digital Society; and Progressive Research and Dissemination Methods.
Current institution
Publications
Publications (123)
Media and communication scholars studying young people's privacy often involve them in research in order to better understand their interactions with digital technologies. Yet there is a lack of research on how, when, and why it makes sense to involve young people in the design phase of new technologies and how data protection safeguards can be tak...
Whereas past CHI-related work has paid attention to various elements of the esports industry, there exists a scarcity of such research on the increasing convergence between esports and gambling. This study, therefore, aimed to shed light on the emerging phenomeno n of esports betting in two ways. First, we theorized about its characteristics accord...
Although child participation has been on the Child Computer Interaction (CCI) research agenda for many years, there is a lacuna in research on the roles children can play in long-term, sustained Participatory Design (PD) processes. This article explores the characteristics of an infrastructuring approach to PD that revolves around long-term and on-...
The intertwining of video games and gambling, known as simulated gambling, has prompted concerns about the potential influence of simulated gambling as a stepping stone towards monetary gambling. Previous studies tend to focus overwhelmingly on loot boxes, which are video game packages where the randomized content is hidden until opening them. The...
What is nowadays taught to the game creators of tomorrow in terms of ethics? The current study addresses this question by focusing on 11 higher education (HE) and continuous vocational training (C-VET) programs for aspiring game developers taught in Belgium. We conducted textual analyses of institutional materials and semi-structured interviews wit...
Previous studies on randomized mechanics in video games have primarily focused on their links to gambling behaviors. However, gaps exist in understanding how players discuss and perceive these mechanics, such as loot boxes. Addressing these gaps, we analyzed discourses from 2023 in two popular Reddit communities for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive...
What is the potential of arts-based works to help learners grasp complex theoretical insights? In this paper, we discuss the integration of an artistically inspired course in a university curriculum. Social science students created arts-based works to explain the essence of complex social theories. These works were used to communicate theoretical i...
This article is a collective response to the 2003 iteration of James Paul Gee’s What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy. Gee’s book, a foundational text for those working in game studies, literacy studies, and education, identified 36 principles of ‘good learning’ which he argued were built into the design of good games, and w...
As the demarcating lines between video gaming and gambling are increasingly blurred due to the embedding of so called "gambling-like" elements as loot boxes and prize wheels in video games, scholarly attention for this phenomenon is on the rise. Yet this strong attention comes with a downside: terminological dispersion. Indeed, the number of terms...
By considering diverse disciplinary perspectives on the psychological impact, design and regulation of loot boxes, this paper departs from a shared need for a holistic comprehension of the platform ecosystem in which contemporary videogames are played, developed and governed. The rationale of this paper is grounded in the rapid evolution of monetis...
According to the need density hypothesis, adolescents are at risk for problematic gaming when they only experience satisfaction of their basic psychological needs within, but not outside, the gaming context. This cross-sectional study among daily gamers (N = 309, M age = 15.63, 94.8% boys) is the first to examine this hypothesis in adolescence, the...
Investigation of board games as a research phenomenon has a long tradition in the academic community. However, using them as a research method has not been explored as much. This case study presents the steps towards the development of a serious board game aimed at collecting data on how participants understand algorith-mic mediation in academic so...
While esports betting is becoming a big business worldwide, scientific studies primarily focus on an Anglo-Saxon perspective to understand the phenomenon and its users. In this cross-sectional online survey study, we therefore investigated the esports betting profile and motivations of Dutch-speaking, European adults playing or watching video games...
In 2018, Belgium made the world news for being the first country to ban loot boxes in games for all its inhabitants. As players’ freedom to purchase loot boxes was restricted, however, methods of circumventing the ban came into practice. Departing from counterplay theory, we drew from an online survey among Belgian adolescents aged 11 18 with two q...
Physical items are often taken for granted in mediated communication between grandparents (GP) and young grandchildren (GC). This article puts “constitutive nonhumans” at the center of inquiry to understand the potential of physical items and communication technologies to communicate over distance. The notion of phaticity operationalizes the role o...
Coding and robotics education has drawn a lot of interest in recent years to get children ready for the future labour market and advance their digital skills. This paper focuses on coding and robotics workshops in non-formal educational settings in Belgium, Denmark, and Italy. Building on data from a comparative/cross-national study, part of the br...
Over the past decade, videogames have become increasingly gambling-like in their design. Scientific and regulatory attempts to unravel such design seem particularly oriented towards the effects and regulatory treatment of paid-for loot boxes, favoring either measurability or complexity. Departing from gamble-play theory, this paper, therefore, atte...
Experimental research on selective exposure on online platforms is generally limited by a narrow focus on specific parts of the information selection process, rather than integrating the entire sequence of user-platform interactions. The current study, focusing on online search, incorporates the entire process that stretches from formulating an ini...
This card deck is a reflection tool and contains guidelines for the design and evaluation of science stories. It is not a prescriptive checklist, but a reflection support. The guidelines on the cards are posed in the form of questions to stimulate thinking and spark discussion. The cards are characterized by three properties, including dimensions,...
Despite the growing interest of academia in public outreach, little is known about what university students, among who are future researchers, take away from their academic education in terms of research dissemination opportunities. In this study, we analyzed social science students’ discourses on creative dissemination practices in relation to sta...
Implications of algorithmic mediation can be studied through the artefact itself, peoples' practices, and the social/political/ economical arrangements that affect and are affected by such interactions. Most studies in Academic social media (ASM) focus on one of these elements at a time, either examining design elements or the users' behaviour on a...
In the game studies community, there is a long tradition of studying games as a research phenomenon. However, the power of board games as a research method and the challenges that come with this choice remain unexplored. Our work aims to discuss the methodological potential and challenges of designing board games as a creative qualitative method fo...
The use of reflective interfaces has been proposed as a useful strategy to reduce cyber harassment amongst adolescents on social networking sites (SNS). By using machine-learning techniques, harassing online messages can be detected before a user submits it online, whereafter a message prompts the user to reconsider the post. This study builds furt...
Purpose
The use of recommender systems is increasing on academic social media (ASM). However, distinguishing the elements that may be influenced and/or exert influence over content that is read and disseminated by researchers is difficult due to the opacity of the algorithms that filter information on ASM. In this article, the purpose of this paper...
The goal of Work Package 4 of the ParCos project is to support science storytellers in their creation of participatory science stories via methods, tools, and principles. In this report we offer science communication guidelines in the form of an evaluation framework to support the design of participatory and creative science stories and curation to...
Authors have proposed that nudges need to be sufficiently transparent to lose their manipulative character. Transparency has already become a standard requirement for policymakers in most democratic countries that apply nudging. It has been suggested by some, however, that transparency could decrease or even completely eliminate the effectiveness o...
Drawing from a present need as well as a growing interest towards developing methods to engage participants in research remotely [1,2], this workshop focuses on identifying opportunities and challenges around designing with children from an embodiment perspective [3,4,5,6,10,11,12,13,15]. Themed around whole body interaction and digital technologie...
Academic social networking sites (ASNSs) are increasingly using recommender systems to deliver relevant content to their users. Meanwhile, the profound opacity of the algorithms that filter information makes it difficult to distinguish among the elements that may suffer and/or exert influence over the interactions within ASNSs. In this article, we...
Although researchers and designers have paid attention to children’s empowerment in Participatory Design (PD) processes, there is a lacuna in research into manifestations of empowerment in and as a result of PD processes concerned with the building of dynamic infrastructures. In a response, we conducted a case study in which 10–12-year-olds partici...
Academic social networking sites (ASNSs) are increasingly using recommender systems to deliver relevant content to their users. Meanwhile, the profound opacity of the algorithms that filter information makes it difficult to distinguish among the elements that may suffer and/or exert influence over the interactions within ASNSs. In this article, we...
Although gambling-related behavior develops in preadolescence, there is a scarcity of research into the early socialization processes in this specific age cohort. For this study, preadolescents’ early perceptions of and practices relating to games of chance, gambling, and video gaming were explored. To account for the perspectives of preadolescents...
There is a growing body of research evidence featuring scientific knowledge translation and dissemination initiatives. These are meant to narrow down the gap between science and the public. This protocol outlines the procedure for conducting a systematic review to identify criteria for creative and interactive forms of dissemination practices to im...
While many modern cultures around the world appreciate ‘cuteness’, few empirical studies have been conducted on the kinds of responses cuteness evokes. This chapter explores the results of two studies to examine people’s perceptions and preferences regarding cute aesthetics. The first study investigated 2D online gambling aesthetics in video games...
This workshop aims to identify and generate critical pathways to more sustainable impact, that maximizes the value of IDC research in children's everyday lives. Whilst the importance of collaboration between research and practice has been well established, and notably embedded into IDC research, the most effective strategies to maximize subsequent...
What are the public discourses about parental guidance of children’s digital media use in Australia and Belgium? The findings of a multi-method interpretive content analysis suggest that both risks and opportunities are made significant, (re-)claiming power for parents to decide what is realistic. Belgian critical-optimistic commentary suggests tha...
This chapter critically reflects on a participatory design (PD) approach that was used by an interdisciplinary team to design new Internet of Toys applications for the home and school environment (the WOOPI project). PD aims to empower people in the design of technology and is characterized by three core principles: having a say, mutual learning an...
Recent academic debates have urged us to rethink children’s roles in Participatory Design (PD). In this article, we feed this discussion by putting the role of process designer into practice, allowing children to define a PD process and methods. We report on a case study in which we involved children (aged 10 – 12) to generate ideas about the ‘Stie...
This paper reports on a study to understand the effects the MemoLine visualization tool has on the interview process for evaluating long term user experience with children. Modifications were made to the MemoLine to try to improve consistency in reporting periods of no play. A within-subject design study was conducted using the MemoLine with interv...
This paper presents the Collaborative Design Thinking (CoDeT) co-design approach, its theoretical framework, and its application in a case study with 49 children aged 9 to 10 in two schools. CoDeT aims to scaffold children’s collaboration and design thinking in co-design settings characterised by a high child-to-adult ratio (ca. 1 adult for 15 to 2...
De effecten van ouderlijk toezicht op het mediagebruik van adolescenten zijn niet eenduidig en kunnen niet verklaard worden door enkel ouderlijk gedrag onder de loep te nemen. Een beter begrip bereiken we dankzij een systematische kruisbestuiving tussen inzichten uit mediastudies en communicatiewetenschappen enerzijds en pedagogiek en ontwikkelings...
How are children’s play objects shaped by technological inventions? As toys become increasingly connected online, Bieke Zaman, Donell Holloway and Leila Green research the ‘Internet of Toys’. The the data they report in this post show that parents generally welcome these changes because they offer new ways of playing, learning, and the possibility...
Do game design elements like badges have one, fixed motivational effect or can they have several different? Self-Determination Theory suggests that people situationally appraise the functional significance or psychological meaning of a given stimulus, which can result in different motivational states, but there is little empirical work observing ac...
This paper contributes to the debate on benefits that children can gain through their involvement in Participatory Design (PD) and highlights the importance of user gains in relation to vulnerable children. As vulnerable children are prone to marginalisation, this paper explores the user gains they may acquire when participating in PD processes. We...
Although many studies have focused on the potential of implementing gamification in education, the existing literature remains inconclusive about its effectiveness. In order to make sense of the contradictory findings regarding the effectiveness of implementing game design elements in an online learning environment, this paper complements the avail...
Honourable Mention Award at the 17th ACM International Conference on Interaction Design and Children (IDC 2018) for the paper 'When Toys Come to Life: Considering the Internet of Toys from an Animistic Design Perspective'. Award winners are determined through a selective process. An awards panel, chaired by Mike Horn and Elisa Rubegni, determined t...
Although seemingly evident, 'fun' in Participatory Design (PD) processes involving children generally remains implicit. In this paper, we explore fun as a user gain since the benefits that children gain from PD are relatively unexplored. We reflect on 'Making Things!', a case study involving children in the design of FabLab workshops for the future...
Children's play objects are increasingly shaped by technological innovations that can transform them into hybrid, internet-connected toys, a phenomenon referred to as the Internet of Toys. Previous research has presented user research on connected toys, but little is known how to approach them from a design perspective. This paper investigates whet...
When holding parents responsible for the consequences of young children's online interactions, we overlook design opportunities that support a meaningful role for parents in these interactions. This paper considers the perspectives on online risks and opportunities, as studied in parental mediation studies, and on the capabilities of young children...
Previous research on the interaction with game design elements in an educational setting has presented both desirable and undesirable outcomes, but misses out on a theoretical and empirical explanation of the underlying psychological processes at work when interacting with gamified systems. This article aims at gaining an in-depth understanding of...
Research on gamified educational platforms has chiefly focused on game elements motivating continued engagement, neglecting whether and why people choose to use them in the first place. Grounded in Uses & Gratifications Theory, this study therefore combined use diaries with follow-up interviews to explore the situated reasons for use of 83 students...
In this study, we focus on early gambling practices in online games via surveys administered among primary school children and their parents. The convergence of gambling and digital games comes along with new challenges for parental awareness and mediation. The lack of an obligatory strict classification system and labelling of simulated gambling g...
The portability and personalized nature of smartphones facilitates ubiquitous (mobile) being online and constant connectivity, also at school. These affordances extend children’s online opportunities but also pose new challenges. This chapter investigates practices and meanings associated with the presence of smartphones in a school environment. We...
Although children's roles in Participatory Design (PD) processes have been more or less stable for the last two decades, the recent academic debates have urged us to rethink these traditional roles in order to aim for genuine forms of participation. In this article, we feed this discussion by exploring a play perspective towards the role of childre...
The emerging trend of teaching computer programming to more and younger people has led to the development of game-based learning and teaching approaches. In this context, educational games are considered as a promising learning platform. However, research in the field of programming games has mainly focused on what is being taught in these games. L...
Zaman, B., & Mifsud, C. L. (2017). Editorial: Young children’s use of digital media and parental mediation. Cyberpsychology: Journal of Psychosocial Research on Cyberspace, 11(3). http://dx.doi.org/10.5817/CP2017-3-xx
Gamification, a design technique that uses the motivational elements of games in other contexts, is increasingly looked at as a possible solution to the dropping levels of motivation observed in learners. However, previous research has presented mixed results as to the demonstration of whether gamification in education works or not. To better evalu...
Previous literature on reflexivity in research has presented very few concrete guidelines on how to “critically examine the entire research process” and achieve a well thought “acknowledgment and identification of one’s place and presence in the research” (Underwood, Satterthwait, & Bartlett, 2010, p. 1585). By means of a post-hoc reflection on a m...
Artikel in De Tijd, m.b.t. het invoeren van programmeren in het leerplichtonderwijs, en onderzoek daarrond
Currently, educational games are being developed to teach children the basics of computer programming. Research and design of such games is usually based on general learning theories. Yet, computer programming poses specific types of difficulties to novice programmers. Taking into account these particular characteristics and problems of computer pr...
In this paper, we focus on the MemoLine, a retrospective tool for capturing changes in long-term user experience of games with children, which has had little attention from the Child Computer Interaction community. To investigate the appropriateness of the MemoLine, two studies were performed. In the first study, 16 children aged 7–12 were instruct...
This research report provides:
1. A thoughtful understanding of the functionalities of parental controls to guide families with children and adolescents to use them wisely;
2. A fine-grained analysis of the characteristics of technical mediation, to support parental mediation researchers in the development of up-to-date scales and analysis schemes...
In research on educational games, the majority of studies have been executed in controlled school settings: the home as a context in which educational games are played, is still underexplored. However, the home context is becoming more important, as children are increasingly encouraged or even required to engage with learning content at home throug...
Technologies are increasingly adopted and used by young children at home. Parents play an important role in shaping their media use, keeping certain possibilities open for children to play, learn and socialize while limiting others. Nevertheless, the literature on parental mediation of young children’s media use is scant. In this article, we descri...
Gamification is often proposed as a solution to motivate students in an educational context. In this paper, we investigate whether personalized gamification systems tailored to the needs of the specific users show more potential than a one-size-fits-all-approach. We report on a qualitative study with 40 Dutch university students who used an online...
To conduct a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials assessing the effectiveness of serious games in improving knowledge and/or self-management behaviors in young people with chronic conditions.
The authors searched the databases PubMed, Cochrane Library, Web of Sciences, and PsychINFO for articles published between Janu...
Supporting young children's play in the digital world is a challenging endeavor. Little is known, however, about the parental beliefs and mediation practices regarding children’s facilitated play in hybrid (mixed digital/physical) environments and how one can account for this through design. Following a Value Sensitive Design approach, we performed...
In this paper we explore whether Social Interdependence Theory (SIT) is a useful theoretical framework to anticipate on challenging intragroup dynamics in co-design with children. According to SIT, there are five variables that mediate the effectiveness of cooperation: positive interdependence, individual accountability, promotive interaction patte...
Parental control software enables parents to support riskmanagement of their children’s digital media use. However, tools to support online opportunities are left unexplored. This paper presents an explorative inquiry into stakeholder values related to parental software for young children, using a Value Sensitive Design approach. By studying values...
The recent booming popularity of gamification has incited researchers to investigate the effectiveness of this technique. However, by identifying different possible implications for both user and context, this paper wants to move beyond effectiveness and to elaborate on different ethical ramifications of the use of gamification. The paper concludes...
We describe a study of Monkey Tales, an educational game targeted at primary school children. Starting from the assumption that all meaning is socially constructed, we focus our attention on the way an educational game, and its balance between fun and serious aspects, is constructed in public texts (game manufacturer's communication and game review...
Online Poker has become an increasingly popular form of gambling. In this study, the qualitative method of laddering interviews based on means-end chain theory was used to offer new insights in online Poker players’ psychological motives, and the way in which Poker website characteristics shape gambling preferences. A total of 18 Belgian young adul...
To encourage ethical practices in participatory design with children the CHECk tool was created. This paper reports on an expert review of the CHECk tool and a validating case study. Four main challenges to the CHECk tool are identified: (1) how to inform children on the research and their role herein, (2) distinguishing between project values and...
This paper presents a structured way to evaluate challenging group or ‘co-design dynamics’ in participatory design processes with children. In the form of a critical reflection on a project in which 103 children were involved as design partners, we describe the most prevalent co-design dynamics. For example, some groups rush too quickly towards con...
Recently, there has been an increased interest in long-term user experience. This paper reports an explorative study concerning the MemoLine instrument, a child-friendly adaptation of the UX Curve method to study long-term user experience concerning games in a retrospective way. The results suggest that children aged 9-11 years were able to use thi...
This article provides a detailed evaluation of two summative evaluation methods, This or That and Smileyometer. The methods’ reliability and validity were examined, using a sample of 113 preschoolers (ages from 33 to 90 months). The results show considerable promise for This or That for measuring preferences across entertainment products. This or T...
A significant proportion of research in the field of human-computer interaction has been devoted to game design. Yet, a multitude of good ideas and enthusiastic game design initiatives exist, where the games never see the light of day. Unfortunately, the causes of these failures remain often unexplored and unpublished. The challenges faced by resea...
This paper explores the potential of extreme input stimuli in brainstorming. Extreme stimuli contain unfamiliar, ambiguous, critical and or provocative elements. The instrumental use of extreme input has only recently been investigated as a promising technique in ideation to get participants to think beyond the already known. It is not clear, thoug...
This paper explores challenging co-design dynamics in children, which are defined as a system of intragroup dynamics occurring within a group of at random or purposefully selected children sharing a common design goal. These dynamics impact children’s development of creative solutions in co-design, but have rarely been addressed in literature. Ther...
Laddering is an interview technique that provides rich qualitative data, and subsequent content analysis allows crossing over from qualitative to a quantitative measurement. However, the method is not tailored to data coming from user experience studies, and result-ing data analysis of UX Laddering studies risks to lack scientific rigor with respec...
This paper reports on an ongoing project which aims to develop and evaluate web-based mini-games for language learning in an evidence-based and user-centred approach. In recent years, a shift is taking place towards more learner-centred learning environments, and designers of Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) software have stressed the nee...
This paper will report on an ongoing project which aims to develop video games for language learning through a user-centered and evidence-based approach. Therefore, co-design sessions were held with adolescents between 14 and 16 years old, in order to gain insight into their preferences for educational games for language learning. During these sess...
This chapter describes the User-Driven Creativity Framework: a framework that links several Participatory Design (PD) activities into one combined method. This framework, designed to be accordant with the mental process model of creativity, aims to integrate user involvement and creativity in the early stages of application requirements, gathering,...
In this paper, we suggest Laddering as a promising empirical method to evaluate the impact of tangibility on young children’s
user experiences. In the first part of this paper, we explain what Laddering is. We explicate the conceptual foundations of
Laddering, discuss the typical Laddering interviewing technique and focus on the Laddering data trea...
This special issue is devoted to the topic of tangible user interfaces and children. It emphasizes research on tangibility
that transcends system descriptions, focusing on the empirical support of theories and design guidance. The papers result
from the organization of a workshop at the CHI 2009 ACM conference in Boston, USA. As an introduction to...
The research objective of this paper is to examine the parameters used to categorize male and female gamers as casual and hardcore gamers and the relation between these parameters. Four focus groups were organized, with in total 21 participants. A persona based approach was used as outline for the focus group interviews. Furthermore, this paper loo...
In this paper, we investigate the usefulness and feasibility of Laddering with young children in User eXperience evaluations. We start with a revision of theoretical literature and guidelines. Developmental literature suggests that children aged two to seven years old have the cognitive capabilities to perform as Laddering interviewees. Next, we pu...
This chapter untangles the ways in which young audiences, especially digital-media and internet users, have been researched, and how they can be approached. The first part discusses the policy concept ‘children and young people’, since it has clear implications for how the research agenda is defined. The second part examines different theoretical a...
