Research
Kids Team:
The work of the Kids Team at UB's School of Information Arts and Technologies (SIAT) extends research begun at the Human Computer Interaction Lab (HCIL) Maryland by Allison Druin and others who have established the concept of intergenerational team design. This process mutually involves adults and children in the work of inventing, creating, and evaluating interfaces and other software design elements. Children take part in this process not as testers or search subjects but as design partners working in direct collaboration with their adult colleagues.
The HCIL has been working with children's design teams for about 4 years, but their teams have been limited to children under age 10. Our team is responsible for discovering the issues and needs of kids ages 10-13. Currently, the SIAT Kids Team is exploring the International Children's Digital Library (ICDL), being built with the help of the Library of Congress and the Internet Archive Project, to make sure the library will be appropriate, useful and fun for this age group. The team will help design the look and feel of the software and make suggestions about how it should function.
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