Juan Pablo Hourcade

• University of Iowa

BACKGROUND Personal Health Record (PHR) software has the potential of aiding with patient engagement and data collection in longitudinal research to better understand the long-term impact of treatments on patients with rare medical conditions. OBJECTIVE We engaged with groups of patients with neuroendocrine tumors (NETs), a rare medical condition,...

The advent of mobile touchscreen devices lowered barriers to enable young children to use computing devices. However, the new opportunities afforded by these devices have been eclipsed by its most common uses, which often involve unimaginative and isolating experiences, and sometimes include dark patterns that induce compulsive use and disregard pr...

Child-agent interaction research has largely focused on automated voice agents, although privacy concerns and quality of interactions serve as a rationale for using teleoperated agents in some settings. Research on neurodivergent children's interactions with voice agents has largely focused on therapy and classroom contexts as opposed to home conte...

This paper presents a study with kindergarten teachers to assess the advantages, challenges and opportunities of commercial robots to teach computational thinking to young children. Recent studies have highlighted the potential benefits of introducing CT concepts at an early stage. Robots are an engaging and effective educational tool for teaching...

As developmental barriers to children’s access to technology have lowered, dark patterns in apps geared toward children encourage privacy invasions and compulsive use of technology. With StoryCarnival, we use a web app with e-book and printable stories and an adult-operated voice agent to encourage the opposite: mindful and minimal use of technolog...

Robotito is an educational robot developed in Uruguay to stimulate the development of computational thinking in young children. We conducted an exploratory study to detect difficulties that emerge during the first approximation of preschool children to Robotito (Study 1). Based on the lessons learned, we implemented improvements in robot design and...

There is growing interest in teaching computational thinking (CT) to preschool children given evidence that they are able to understand and use CT concepts. One of the concepts that is central in CT definitions, is the concept of control structures, but it is not clear which tools and activities are successful in teaching it to young learners. This...

Child–computer interaction (CCI)¹ is a multidisciplinary field of research that concerns the phenomena surrounding the interaction between children and computational and communication technologies. During the last two decades, several endeavors and contributions have significantly furthered CCI research. The pace of children-relevant technological...

In the 21st century the academic field of Child-Computer Interaction (CCI) arose alongside burgeoning interactive technology and digital media industries that targeted children. We believe that the field of CCIU is at an important point in its development, analogous to when a child becomes a teen. Over the last few years we have each had many infor...

We conducted a systematic review of empirical studies aimed at exploring robot-mediated activities to promote the development of computational thinking in preschoolers. In this study, we investigated the robots used, proposed activities, and evaluation processes. We also analyzed research contexts and the stated motivations to conduct the studies....

In recent decades, technological developments related to computing, informatics, and digitization have generated radical changes in our lives. This new reality brings with it the need for children and young people to develop new basic skills linked to what has been called computational thinking. Computational thinking taught from an early age may a...

Despite the Child-Computer Interaction (CCI) community’s rapid growth in the past two decades, there has traditionally been less focus on developing a curriculum to teach CCI to students. This entails a risk for a gap between the accumulation of knowledge and the transfer of this knowledge to new generations of researchers and designers. Building o...

This paper employs hierarchical clustering, strategic diagrams, and network analysis to construct an intellectual map of the Child–Computer Interaction research field (CCI) and to visualize the thematic landscape of this field using co-word analysis. This approach assumes that an article’s keywords constitute an adequate description of its content...

In this forum we celebrate research that helps to successfully bring the benefits of computing technologies to children, older adults, people with disabilities, and other populations that are often ignored in the design of mass-marketed products. --- Juan Pablo Hourcade, Editor

Participatory Design (PD) is a design approach which aims to support users to contribute as partners throughout the entire design process of a product or service intended for their use. PD researchers are interested in employing and/or developing methods and techniques that maximise users’ contributions. By accommodating specific populations, PD pr...

The Interactions website (interactions.acm.org) hosts a stable of bloggers who share insights and observations on HCI, often challenging current practices. Each issue we'll publish selected posts from some of the leading and emerging voices in the field.

While the design of Voice User Interfaces (VUIs) has mostly focused on applications for adults, VUIs also provide potential advantages for young children in enabling concurrent interactions with the physical and social world. Current applications for young children focus mostly on media playing, answering questions, and highly-structured activities...

This course will cover child development frameworks from the "classics" that have had a significant impact on interaction design, such as Piaget, Vygotsky, and Papert, to more recent ideas, such as dynamic systems approaches. The materials presented will include concepts such as embodiment, emergence, and plasticity. Hourcade will examine how these...

Despite its inherent challenges, participatory design (PD) has unique benefits when designing technology for children, especially children with special needs. Researchers have developed a multitude of PD approaches to accommodate specific populations. However, a lack of understanding of the appropriateness of existing approaches across contexts pre...

Research predicts that 196 million people will be diagnosed with Age-Related Macular Degeneration (AMD) by 2020. People who experience AMD and other vision loss face barriers that affect their Quality of Life (QoL). People experience only modest improvement from technologies (e.g., screen readers, CCTV), tools (e.g., magnifying glasses, tactile but...

The global refugee crisis is a significant current challenge affecting millions of children. The process of refugee migration comes with major immediate as well as long-term risks to children's physical and mental health, education, and prospects. Despite the multiple dangers and challenges during migration, most refugee families have access to and...

The design of Voice User Interfaces (VUIs) has mostly focused on applications for adults, but VUIs provide potential advantages to young children in enabling concurrent interactions with the physical and social world. Current applications for young children focus on media playing, answering questions, and highly-structured activities. There is an o...

Our research explores the development of a novel technology-based prototype to support children and designers during brainstorming, one of the most challenging activities within Participatory Design (PD). This paper describes a proof-of-concept prototype for a tool that aims to empower children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) during PD to maxi...

In this forum we celebrate research that helps to successfully bring the benefits of computing technologies to children, older adults, people with disabilities, and other populations that are often ignored in the design of mass-marketed products. --- Juan Pablo Hourcade, Editor

Our research explores the development of a novel technology-based prototype to support children and designers during brainstorming, one of the most challenging activities within Participatory Design (PD). This paper describes a proof-of-concept prototype for a tool that aims to empower children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) during PD to maxi...

This SIG will provide child-computer interaction researchers and practitioners an opportunity to discuss topics related to challenges brought about by the increasing ubiquity of computing in children's lives, including the collection, and use of "big data". Topics include control and ownership of children's data, the impact of personalization on in...

Seymour Papert’s vision of constructionism called for children to be active, empowered, creative learners, building public entities linked to their strong interests in order to connect with powerful ideas. The increasing ubiquity of technology use by children under five, and its information access bias call for more widely-available, constructionis...

Many children begin Kindergarten without important skills such as the ability to pay attention, to follow instructions, and to wait for their turn. There is evidence that some of these deficits are associated to poor self-regulation, which relates to the ability of controlling attention and emotion in order to complete an action. Based on the activ...

In this forum we celebrate research that helps to successfully bring the benefits of computing technologies to children, older adults, people with disabilities, and other populations that are often ignored in the design of mass-marketed products. --- Juan Pablo Hourcade, Editor

This SIG will provide child-computer interaction researchers and practitioners an opportunity to discuss topics related to ethical challenges in the design, and use of interactive technologies for children. Topics include the role of big data, the impact of technology in children's social and physical ecosystem, and the consideration of ethics in c...

The fragmentation of the state and civil war in parts of Africa and the Middle East, the rise of xenophobic nationalistic fervor in some Western countries, and military intervention to change international borders have brought to the forefront the challenge and consequences of armed conflict. The ubiquity of interactive technologies, and their infl...

This SIG will provide child-computer interaction researchers and practitioners an opportunity to discuss four topics that represent new challenges and opportunities for the community. The four areas are: interactive technologies for children under the age of five, technology for inclusion, privacy and information security in the age of the quantifi...

This monograph lays out a discussion framework for understanding the role of human-computer interaction (HCI) in public policymaking. We take an international view, discussing potential areas for research and application, and their potential for impact. Little has been written about the intersection of HCI and public policy; existing reports typica...

This monograph lays out a discussion framework for understanding the role of human-computer interaction (HCI) in public policymaking. It takes an international view, discussing potential areas for research and application and their potential for impact. The aim is to provide a solid foundation for discussion, cooperation and collaborative interacti...

Child Computer Interaction is a community within CHI that has been steadily growing. It hosts its own annual IDC conference and is a highly recognizable and vibrant contributor to the ACM CHI conference. In 2015, the CCI SIG aims to take advantage of the positioning of CHI in Seoul to consider how it might, as an academic community, best direct its...

We know very little about the use of computers by children under the age of three. While few children in that age range used computers before the advent of smartphones and tablets, these devices have made computers much more accessible to infants and toddlers. In this paper, we provide a window into how these children are using tablets through an a...

The discipline of Child Computer Interaction (CCI) has been steadily growing and it is now firmly established as a community in its own right, having the annual IDC (Interaction and Design for Children) conference and its own journal and also enjoying its role as a highly recognisable and vibrant contributor to the ACM CHI conference. Having recent...

Many children face significant challenges communicating, expressing themselves, and sharing their creative thoughts and ideas with others. Interactive technologies are playing an increasing role in addressing these challenges. This workshop will be an opportunity to discuss design, implementation, and evaluation methods, the needs of specific commu...

As human computation tools and techniques increase in power and pervasiveness so too does their impact on factors affecting the likelihood of armed conflict, and on armed conflict itself. Some factors such as rapid economic decline, environmental stress, private motivation, a failure of the social contract, and social distance to potential enemies...

To examine the impact of a personal health record (PHR) on medication-use safety among older adults. Online PHRs have potential as tools to manage health information. We know little about how to make PHRs accessible for older adults and what effects this will have. A PHR was designed and pretested with older adults and tested in a 6-month randomize...

Computers are increasingly mediating the way people make decisions, including those that can have an effect on conflict and peace. In addition, recent research provides empirical data on the factors that affect the likelihood of armed conflict. These conditions provide an unprecedented opportunity to the human-computer interaction community to play...

The child-computer interaction community has been steadily adding research infrastructure over the past 20 years through books, the Interaction Design and Children conference, being a featured community at CHI, through an official IFIP group, and more recently through a journal. In this SIG we will discuss the next steps to further strengthen the r...

We tested PointAssist, software that assists in pointing tasks by detecting difficulty through a sub-movement analysis and triggering help, with adjustments proposed to personalize the assistance provided to individuals with motor impairments. A within-subjects study with sixteen individuals with fine motor skills impairments resulted in statistica...

The increasing rates of diagnosis for Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASDs) have brought unprecedented attention to these conditions. Interventions during childhood can increase the likelihood of independent living later in life, but most adults with ASDs who benefited from early intervention do not live independently. There is a need for novel therapie...

Given the rapid evolution of social networks and online communities, interest in participatory cultures—online and offline social spaces with low barriers to entry and support for creating and sharing knowledge—is increasing. Design-based research (DBR) that invites children to share in the process of designing the technologies that support their l...

In this forum we celebrate research that helps to successfully bring the benefits of computing technologies to children, older adults, people with disabilities, and other populations that are often ignored in the design of mass-marketed products. Juan Pablo Hourcade, Editor

The advent of Internet connectivity, mobile devices, and social media provides a powerful cocktail for computing and HCI to be key components in peaceful change at both an individual and societal level. A group of researchers with a common interest in peace and conflict reduction met for a workshop at CHI 2012. The universal appeal of the topic was...

The increasing ubiquity of computing devices coupled with recent empirical research on the factors that affect the likelihood of conflict provide HCI researchers with new opportunities to conduct research on interactive systems designed to prevent, de-escalate and recover from conflict. Approaches used by HCI researchers in this field have included...

This panel will be a call for HCI professionals to become involved in U.S. public policy. Panelists representing a range of commitments to public policy work will share compelling stories and lessons from concrete situations where insights from HCI have (or have not) influenced U.S. public policy.

People are increasingly using wireless mice from across rooms as they use computers as entertainment centers. As a consequence, they often have to point at targets occupying small visual angles. In this note we present the results of a study on pointing performance for targets occupying small visual angles. Our results suggest there is a steep degr...

In spite of great improvements in early diagnosis and interventions, most children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are unlikely to live independently when they reach adulthood. We have been conducting research on novel computer-based interventions with the goal of promoting social skills. Working with 26 children with ASD, their teac...

Our aim in this SIG is to discuss the role human-computer interaction can play in bringing about peace by influencing socio-economic factors that affect the likelihood of conflict as well personal values involved in making decisions to support conflict.

Online Personal Health Records (PHR) software has the potential to provide older adults with tools to better manage several aspects of their health, including their use of medications. In spite of this potential, we still know little about how to make PHRs accessible for older adults. We also know little about how to design PHRs in a way that will...

Over the past fifteen years, the discipline of Child Computer Interaction has been steadily growing. As the community matures and as methods and processes are refined, and become situated, there is an urgent need to start to develop a theory around CCI that can be used with some confidence by the research community. The CCI Community SIG at CHI is...

We present a study of the sub-movement characteristics of two individuals with Parkinson's disease completing pointing tasks. We describe the performance of the two individuals and we compare it with that of young children and older able-body adults. The analysis suggests that we need new strategies that incorporate an individual assessment of diff...

Peace is an important value for the human-computer interaction research community, yet it has not resulted in the development of a research sub-community or even a research agenda. In this paper we seek to address this void by first motivating the need for computing research on promoting peace and preventing war. We then review evidence on the fact...

This panel will contribute diverse perspectives on the use of computer technology to promote peace and prevent armed conflict. These perspectives include: the use of social media to promote democracy and citizen participation, the role of computers in helping people communicate across division lines in zones of conflict, how persuasive technology c...

Some of the key challenges and opportunities of designing technologies for younger population, older adults, and people with low socioeconomic status, are discussed. Emphasize must be given towards role of technology in children's lives in respect to the potential negative consequences of isolation, a sedentary lifestyle, exposure to harmful conten...

Hospital infections cost the lives of more than 100,000 people in the United States every year. Understanding how infections spread in hospitals is critical to reducing this problem. To help in this endeavor, we developed an interactive, multi-touch hospital contact-network visualization and disease spread simulation. The system visually animates h...

Marginalization threatens basic issues of fairness and equal opportunity for a significant portion of children around the world. In this extended abstract, we frame the problem of marginalization in light of new economic forces and the increasingly ubiquitous role of digital technologies. We then summarize the contributions to the IDC 2010 workshop...

Perceptual, cognitive and motor deficits cause many older adults to have difficulty conducting pointing tasks on computers. Many strategies have been discussed in the HCI community to aid older adults and others in pointing tasks. We present a different approach in PointAssist, software that aids in pointing tasks by analyzing the characteristics o...

In spite of all the attention paid to multi-touch tabletop displays, little is known about the collaborative tasks they are best suited for in comparison to alternatives such as multi-mouse Single-Display Groupware setups. In this paper, we share the results of a study we conducted comparing a multi-mouse Single-Display Groupware (SDG) setup (two m...

Multi-touch and tabletop input paradigms open novel doors for post-WIMP (Windows, Icons, Menus, Pointer) user interfaces. Developing these novel interfaces and applications poses unique challenges for designers and programmers alike. We present PyMT (Python Multi-Touch), a toolkit aimed at addressing these challenges. We discuss PyMT's architecture...

The Windows Vista personal firewall provides its diverse users with a basic interface that hides many operational details. However, concealing the impact of network context on the security state of the firewall may result in users developing an incorrect ...

Uruguay became one of the first countries to follow the vision of One Laptop Per child (OLPC) Foundation launched by Nicholas Negroponte aimed at providing low-cost XO laptops to poor children to enhance the learning process. The laptop's sugar environment aims to support educational activities and provides a very different user experience from tha...

In spite of the increasing amounts of digitized data that will be available to children when they grow up, little attention has been paid toward preparing them for the process of exploring data, researching related information, synthesizing findings, and presenting them to peers. In this paper we present our observations on activities conducted wit...

Like literacy itself, access to digital media both reflects and shapes the ways people play and learn, and more generally, how individuals and groups perceive themselves, relate to others, treat things, and occupy space. We see both opportunities and risks in today's infatuation for all things digital. As organizers of the IDC 2009 workshop on "Dig...

Peace is an extremely important value for humankind, yet it has been largely ignored by the computing and human-computer interaction community. This paper seeks to begin a discussion within the human-computer interaction community on how we can design technologies that have peace as an explicit goal. To begin this discussion, I review empirical stu...

Children's difficulty in point-and-click tasks using indirect pointing devices such as the mouse has been documented in several studies. This difficulty is manifested in a lack of control near the target, which often results in children clicking inaccurately. This paper presents and evaluates PointAssist, a tool that helps children in pointing task...

In this paper, we discuss children's and teachers' experiences in a small rural town in Uruguay where every child in elementary school has received a laptop from the OLPC Foundation. In conducting activities in classrooms, observing children, and speaking with their teachers we found that the laptops have had a positive impact so far, with children...

The discipline of Child Computer Interaction (CCI) has been steadily growing and it is now firmly established as a community in its own right, having the annual IDC (Interaction and Design for Children) conference and its own journal and also enjoying its role as a highly recognisable and vibrant contributor to the ACM CHI conference. Having recent...

Identity theft is one of the fastest growing crimes in the nation, and phishing has been a primary tool used for this type of theft. In this paper, we present B-APT, a Bayesian anti-phishing toolbar designed to help users identify phishing Websites and protect their sensitive information. Bayesian filters have shown great performance in content-bas...

In spite of the increasing popularity of handheld touchscreen devices, little research has been conducted on how to evaluate and design one handed thumb tapping interactions. In this paper, we present a study that researched three issues related to these interactions: 1) whether it is necessary to evaluate these interactions with the preferred and...

Several experiments have documented how older adults have greater difficulty using input devices than young adults. None of these experiments, however, have provided information on the challenges faced by older adults when using pens to interact with handheld computers. To address this need, we conducted a study comparing the performance of twenty...

When researchers and practitioners conduct research studies or software evaluations where children use mice, it is unclear whether using different mouse sizes would affect the results of these studies and evaluations. To answer this question, we conducted a study with 50 four and five year olds who were randomly assigned to use either small or regu...

In this report we describe our experience conducting a class activity where students learned and practiced observation skills. In the activity, students in small groups observed and were observed making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. The groups then used their observations to sketch designs for a peanut butter and jelly maker that they present...

When authoring in visual storytelling environments, children are often limited to use characters and props available in libraries or have to create their own using software. We present a novel alternative in the early design and implementation of Vuelta, a tool for creating animated characters and props using real-world objects. Vuelta authors can...

This editorial paper introduces an emerging area for human–computer interaction research, which concerns interaction design and children. To avoid treating children as a homogeneous user group, it discusses some perspectives on their development, their use of technology for entertainment and education and, finally, how to involve children in the va...

Several studies have shown that children's performance with input devices in pointing tasks increases with age. However, none of these studies analyzes the sub-movements children make during pointing tasks. This paper analyzes mouse event data from a previous study to compare, at a sub-movement level, the way preschool children and young adults con...

The effect of the decline in cognitive, perceptive, and motor abilities on older adults' performance with input devices has been well documented in several experiments. None of these experiments, however, have provided information on the challenges faced by older adults when using pens to interact with handheld computers. To address this need, we c...

Public government web sites offer a promise of quick, convenient, and easy access to information and services. This has led many governments to push for an unprecedented move of publications, forms, and other information and services to this medium. There are many design challenges in developing public government web sites. In this SIG we aim to id...