Thesisland

Homebook is a camera working with a mobile application used by family to help generate and facilitate more meaningful parent-child conversationa.

The target audiences are working parents with 6-10 year-old child. The goal of the Homebook is to reduce parents’ stress as they learn more about their child’s viewpoints, personality, emotions/feelings, likes and dislikes, and potentially learn more about the struggles and challenges that most children don’t like to share with their parents, and to make children feel less defensive and share more of themselves which in turn will result in a happier child in the long run.

Homebook creates an opportunity for an informal and more effective parenting which uses the power of game and storytelling to make children talk more about their thoughts and feelings.

Parents first buy the Homebook camera and download the free Homebook application. Based on the age and gender parents set up for their child, the app will suggest a list of stories for them to read together. During reading stories, the app will prompt missions which will be automatically transferred into the camera. Then child can complete missions by shooting pictures at home, at school, or everywhere he/she likes. Afterwards, pictures in the camera will be automatically transferred back to the phone and continue stories. By watching the process of their child to complete missions, parents can discover their child’s viewpoints, new interests, and feelings. In the end, they can have a printed version of the story which will become a valuable shared memory. 

OVERVIEW

I am designing a camera and a mobile application used by parents and their child to help generate and facilitate more meaningful conversation about child’s feelings.

WHO

Working Parents

They always put a lot of energy into work and family. They wish they had more time spending on their child to listen her/his stories, to discover her/his new interests, to know her/his best friends, and to understand her/his sadness. But they feel distracted by work even at home, they wish there is a more effective way to get involved in their child’s daily life.

6-10 year-old children

They are interested in playing game or shared activities with parents, and always want to show and tell what they have done in school and something new they found. They wish parents could understand what they mean when they say, and sometimes they are facing problem in school but they have a difficult to communicate it precisely.

WHAT

A kid camera works with a mobile application.

WHY 

For parents to reduce their stress as they learn more about child’s viewpoints, personality, emotions/feelings, likes and dislikes, and potentially learn more about the struggles and challenges that most children don’t like to share with their parents.

For children to feel less defensive and more willing to trust their parents and share more of themselves.

For all family members to improve communication which in turn will result in more effective parenting and a happier child in the long run.

HOW

Fantasy/ imaginary based game

DESIGN PRINCIPLE

Camera (for child)

No force, more proactive, missions, feedback, hints, simple, connection.

Mobile application (for child & parents)

Sit side-by-side, work on same things together, rewards.

1. Seven-year-old Alice had made plans to spend the afternoon with her friend Lea. Suddenly, she remembered that her Brownie troop met that afternoon. She started to cry.

Positive:

MOTHER: Oh, you’re disappointed. You were looking forward to playing with Lea this afternoon.

ALICE: Yes. Why can’t the Brownies meet another day?

Mother’s goal (from high to low): make her feel better, make her feel known and understood, make her be cared for.

Mother’s action: to understand, to reflect her feelings to her.

Negative:

MOTHER: Well, you can’t be in two places at the same time. How come you made plans to play with a friend when you know that Wednesday is Brownie day?  

Mother’s goal: solve the problem.

Mother’s action: criticizing, nagging and lecturing.

2. Carol’s favorite cousin Susie was going home after staying with her during the summer. Carol gave her mother a deadly look and escaped to her room, closing the door behind her.

Positive:

CAROL (with tears in her eyes): Susie is going away. I’ll be all alone again. 

MOTHER: It will be lonely without Susie. You miss her already. It is hard to be apart when you are so used to being together. The house must seem kind of empty to you without Susie around.

Mother’s goal: make her feel better, make her feel known and understood, make her be cared for.

Mother’s action: acknowledge.

Negative:

CAROL (with tears in her eyes): Susie is going away. I’ll be all alone again. 

MOTHER: You’ll find another friend. 

CAROL: I’ll be so lonely. 

MOTHER: You’ll get over it. 

CAROL: Oh, Mother! (Sobs.) 

MOTHER: You’re twelve years old and still such a crybaby.

Mother’s goal: solve the problem.

Mother’s action: deny her feelings, make her feel guilty.

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Scrpits from http://www.enotalone.com/article/4388.html

WHO

Double-income family with first child who is 7-10 years old.

WHAT

A product or service to facilitate parent-child communication. To encourage child to communicate his/her feelings precisely; to increase parents’ awareness of child’s feelings, and coach parents effective ways of interaction with child.

WHY

For parents to understand their child’s feelings and thoughts in order to educate him/her in more effective ways; for child to practice expressing emotion appropriately in order to have a healthier mental growth, better communication skills, as well as strengthening family relationship.

WHERE

Kitchen or living room

WHEN

After dinner or before sleep

HOW

A device capturing child’s feelings.

An activity for family to do it together.

A service providing parenting support.

WHO

Double-income family with first child who is 7-10 years old.

WHAT

A product or service to facilitate parent-child communication.

WHY

For parents to understand their child’s feelings and thoughts in order to educate him/her in more effective ways; for child to practice expressing emotion precisely in order to have a healthier mental growth as well as better communication skills.

WHERE

At home (a space where family gets together, ex: kitchen or living room.)

HOW

To encourage child to communicate his/her feelings effectively; to increase parents’ awareness of child’s feelings, and to coach parents effective ways to interact with their child.

I talked to two family(father&mother and a mother) last night and this morning. They are both double-income family. Here are some key findings:

• During a day, the longest conversation with child is happening on the way from school to home.
• During week day, average of getting togther time is 3 hrs.
• There is no certain role for mother or father(they would take turn,) but each of them has his/her own requirement for child.
• For parenting, father intends to have his principle and follow his belief; mother intends to ask people and seek for guideline.
• They all wish can have more time with their childs to do some activities or go somewhere together.
• When they had first child, they really didn’t know what is the right parenting. They would try different ways and revise it.
• Parents wish to know child’s social relationship, learning attitude, emotion, interests, and thoughts on certain things(to see if they have incorrect perception of some things.)
• Parents think it is not hard to discover child’s emotion; child can’t hide his/her feelings well(parents think child doesn’t mean to hide, but child might not know how to communicate his/her feelings appropriately.)
• Parents would like to communicate life wisdom to their child.
• After dinner, they would have chance to do some activities together.
• Use real-life examples for education

I think it is time to talk to kids!

We did a group exercise under Manuel Toscano’s guide this afternoon. He talked about viability in the marketplace and how to create frameworks for mapping our projects’ opportunities. Personally, I really feel benefit from this exercise because I think the problem I focus on for my thesis might not be solved by a single product. It would be good to consider how “Key Partners” and “Customer Relationship” could shape my concept.

According to some of my research, when parents think about changing or improving parenting skills, they intend to ask friends or specialists instead of having communication with their child. Parents would worry if their punishment or rule is too harsh but they would not directly ask child’s thought on it because they think child always wishes less work and doesn’t know what is actually good for himself or herself.

I talked to two mothers, and following are some findings of things parents would like to know and the methods they use to find out answers.

• How to control balance of learning and playing for their child. Instead of having communication with child, they intend to feel and observe if there is any complain from child.  
• What happened in school? Instead of having communication with child, they intend to ask teachers directly. (but child loves to talk about their school life)
• If their punishment is too harsh or right.  

Besides, parents think it is hard to think about one child’s feelings since they have more than one child and many other works to do.

Also parents take on the roles of “good cop” and “bad cop” in the family. The goal of these roles is to educate child properly rather than maintain relationship.

I had a wonderful first meeting with my thesis advisor Paul Pangaro on last Thursday. Paul tried to help me find out how the system might work. The important first step would be defining the goals and methods. But we can’t complete the system diagram at that time since I didn’t clarify the problem space. Paul asked me to think about WHO, WHAT, WHY,WHEN, and HOW of my concept. Following are some summary of the meeting and the statement of 4W1H:

WHO
8-10 year-old child

WHAT
A product that captures child’s feelings about school, and coaches
parents the effective way to respond it.

WHY
Parents are busy and not aware things happened to child in school.

WHEN
After school/ every day

HOW
1. Encourage child to express his/her feelings.
2. Make parents aware of child’s feelings as well as effective interaction.
3. They work on it together.

Long Term Goals:
Experience shared memories in order to improve relationship.
Short Term Goals:
Encourage child to express feelings effectively (so that parent can
understand and empathize.)

Child’s Actions:
Diary» Face to Face
Drawing or crafting
Story tellling
Play game or toy
Role playing
Physical exercise
Play music
Yelling or singing

Parent’s Actions:
Patience»Hurried
Positive feedback
Rewards for communication
Carefully listen
Do activity together
Ask question (right tone)
Demonstration
Stories in common
Use child’s vocabulary

Go back to see most research I have done so far, I found that parents have less problem working on their child’s homework issue. Because there is a completed education system supporting students wih learning disabilities, therefore, their homework would be well designed for them which means they can complete homework with less pain. It seems has a huge conflict with my initial hypothesis. I made this mistake because the lack of thinking of the whole system. I started to question this direction not just because the research but also my hope for this thesis project. My hope is my design can have positive effects on children’s future growing as well as their family relationship.

Two weeks ago, we had a intensive two days rumble workshop. During the rumble, Clint, Mike, and I did an exercise which we have to find out appropriate communication channels between parents and child. We also discussed topics parents want to communicate to child versus things child wants to talk. And what things they want to hide.

This exercise reminded me some interviewees(parent and therapist) said communication might be the most difficult issue between parents and child.

To take a look at how my thinking has shaped up during that time. I re-evaluated potential areas of concentration. I will focus on leveraging communication gap between parents and child, and extend my audience from children with special needs to gerenal children.

My research is trying to find answers for following questions:

• Information technology is a challenge or an opportunity for school-aged children
   with ADHD?
• What’s their environment? What factors on or off screen affect their concentration?
• How to engage my audience in staying longer on seat for learning?
• What is the mental model of my audience while they are doing schoolwork? What is
   their pain point of doing it?
• What kind of assistance my audience need while studying at home?
• What is the role of parents when my audience is doing homework? How could they
   get involved in the system to improve my audience’s learning experience?

After conducting interviews with therapists, pediatric psychologist, parent, and a person with ADD. I put all data on post-its and sorted it by subject:

Parents: help organize, manage, don’t sit side by side, easily get angry.

Time Management: make it routine, set a timer, taking a break.

Learning Material: interesting, touching, finding, let them move around, collect things, put things together, real movement in real time.

Technology: constant feedback, interaction, help organize, put all information together, related to poor reading skill and social skill, parents have to control.

Motivation: positive feedback, reward, surprise.

Audience’s Wish

“I like we have more fun together, rather than put me to a position constantly have to be a control person.” - a mother of 9-year-old boy with ADHD

“I wish there was less blame and more understanding.” - 25-year-old man with ADD

Opportunities

1. Children and parents create something meaningful and
   educational together on children’s learning experience
   at home. 
2. Parents manage their children’s learning at home. Parents
   and teachers exchange coaching information and learning
   progress.
   

I would like to thanks Dr. Anthony Rao again for talking with me on last Friday.

(Dr. Anthony Rao’s site: http://anthonyrao.com/)

Following is our conversation:

Me: Would you suggest parents to get involved in children’s learning and assist them to complete their schoolwork?
Dr. Anthony: The problem is more you spend sitting next to child and help them with homework they become dependent on you, and they don’t do on their own even they can. It is more fun and better if someone else sitting next to you. So I will tell parents that to help them organize then you tell them what are the things you need to do today.
You make an order of them but do natures. Set a timer, do half hour reading then take 10 minutes break to do exercise. You manage but you don’t sit side by side and help them do it.
Regular homework is very boring for them. A lot of handwriting is very difficult. Try to make their homework interesting.For example, I want you take an article out of a paper or magazine. Some types of works like touching, finding, things they never seen before, let them move things around, and something like treasure hunter. These can increase their learning ability.

Me: With advanced technology, young people do more and more works on screen as well as use smart phone to access information. Do you think it will be a challenge or an opportunity for school-aged children with ADHD?
Dr. Anthony: I think is both. Technology is advancing so quickly. More and more young people will use it to socialize and to learn.
The positive side: it is a terrific tool for people with ADHD to be organized and to put all information together (ADD people is very disorganized.)
The negative side: All the studies I know show that more and more screen time is related to problems such as poor reading skill and poor social skill. Also children who spend long time on watching television is correlated to ADHD diagnosis.  Correlation doesn’t mean cause but there is association for some reasons. 
Therefore, maybe if parents could be very careful to how much time they allow children to be exposed on screen and what types of usages. Using it for learning instead of entertainment. Technology is increasing so quickly. It is very complicated. We psychologists, therapists, and teachers haven’t figured it out what all these mean yet. I’ll also say that until there are well-designed programs or apps for children with ADHD, right now screen is more about entertainment and is unhelpful.

Me: How to avoid out-of-seat behavior and recall their attention during their studying?
Dr. Anthony Rao: Have more hands on learning that is called exploratory tactile learning: use their hands to build something, and use motion in some way to help. Because the long hours of sitting is very frustrating, they have more meaning for moving and react to sit longer and longer. So homework and school require a lot of sitting in one seat and have to listen to someone, and those are not strain for ADHD child. Let them go outside and have series of places they can collect things and put them together in an interesting way. Real movement in real time seems really help them. It is true that they will sit for screen to play computer game that excites them a lot to listen and to participate. So if you can get them to participate instead of playing a passive role, or like there is a button can allow them to go back and forward and interact with them, they would be more willing to sit and learn.

Me: Does he use computer as a learning tool?
Mother: He doesn’t have computer in his room. He uses my computer 4 or 5 hours a week to play some educational games, and I monitor him closely while he uses it. He loves computer, but I don’t like him to use it too much. I want him read books and write more.

Me: When and where does he usually do school work? What problems does he usually have? 
Mother: Last year, we have to help him more to complete his homework. But this year (in special class) he doesn’t have so much homework. Now the homework he does get usually could be done and more organized. So far, homework seems not problematic. Sometimes he doesn’t want to do it, but it is routine when he comes home we sit down at kitchen before dinner. Sometimes we would do their homework on train, believe it or not, it really works. Sometimes he could be distractible but in this case the homework everyday is usually going pretty well. Therefore, we are working more on his behavior. 

Me: What role do you play while he is doing schoolwork? 
Mother: I try to be manager. Also I try not to do much for him. I would be in the same room (kitchen) making dinner. It depends on what work it is. If it is math and science, he is very good at it, so I don’t really need to help him. If it is writing, I have to really sit with him to help him. There is also a learning specialist in school to assist his writing once a week.

Me: What are the difficult parts to play your role? 
Mother: It gets frustrating if he is not listening then I lose my patient; try to stay focused with him; try to keep him to finish without getting frustrating with him; working hard to follow his needs.

Me: Could you tell me any change you have made to help your child do better in studying at home? What works? What doesn’t work? 
Mother: You can’t have music or television on while homework time. It is good to do homework at same time everyday. Give him positive feedback and set up a reward rule: sometimes he is allowed to watch TV or play video game for 5 minutes after he completes homework. Use charts or stickers for reward system. For example, after collecting five stickers, then there is a little surprise for him. Don’t keep the process too long since he is easy to lose interest.
Taking break is important. Sometimes we would try to do half of homework before dinner, and half of it after dinner.

Me: What information you would like to know while he is studying?
Mother: How he does in school versus how he does at home. What kind of learners he is? Is he a visual learner or an oral learner? What methodology works better to him? What kind of material will help him learn better? Is there a timeframe that he can work?

Me: Is there an ideal situation you wish to have with your son?
Mother: I like him to be a much better listener. I like we to have more fun together, rather than put me to a position constantly have to be a control person. I think it is important to have fun and Ben and I both need more fun.

I would like to thanks Ms. Alice Locke Chezar again for talking with me on last Friday.

(Alice Locke Chezar’s site: http://paloaltoparenting.com/)

Following is our conversation:

Me: As parents of children with ADHD, parenting is probably the most challenging job. How to use “parenting solution” to reduce conflict caused by learning issue?
Alice: As a therapist, I will educate parents: your kids do the best they can. Understanding and compassion between parents and children is most important.

Me: Would you suggest parents to get involved in children’s learning and assist them to complete their schoolwork? 
Alice: I will tell parents get out of their learning. Parents always easily get angry at their children’s inattention. They are hard to work together. Parents then will feel frustrated. The most difficult parts for children with ADHD are sit down and write something on paper. I will suggest kids take a 10mins break every 20mins.

Me: Before starting doing homework, is there anyway to help them get involved into their learning?
Alice: Cut out a circle from a paper; draw something on it.

Me: What is the limitation of medication?
Alice:  Besides drug side effects, most parents don’t like their children take medicine. As a therapist, I also suggest non-drug treatment.

Me: With advanced technology, young people do more and more works on screen as well as use smart phone to access information. Do you think it will be a challenge or an opportunity for school-aged children with ADHD?
Alice: I’m not sure. But there should be some opportunities. For example, ADHD children love constant feedback. When they are reading, it is difficult for them to filter out nonessential information. They are not good at organizing and put their thought on paper.

Project Summary

The goal of this thesis project is to create an assistive technology tool to be used by school-aged children with ADHD/ADD and their parents to solve the problem of inattention while studying on or off screen at home. The purpose of this research is to understand the role parents play in ADHD/ADD children’s learning as well as the difficulties for ADHD/ADD children to complete their school work.


Research Questions

•    Is it better for my audience to work on or off screen? What is the difference for them?

•    What’s their environment? What factors on or off screen affect their concentration?

•    Dose feedback or reward engages my audience in staying longer on seat?

•    What is the mental model of my audience while they are doing schoolwork on or off screen? What is their pain point of doing it?

•    What kind of assistance my audience need while studying at home

•    What is the role of parents when my audience is doing homework? How could they get involved in the system to improve my audience’s learning experience?

Last Saturday, I went to an event: Breakthroughs in Child Psychology: A conversation with Christine LaCerva and Dr. Anthony Rao.

The coversation emphasized on relationship between ADD children and their parents. The idea is that parents have to build a good relationship and effective communication channel with their children. The way suggested  by Christine LaCerva is that children and parents can create something meaningful together. And Dr. Anthony Rao said parents should change environment to help children do better. He also mentioned something like behavior chart and reward system which help set a rule for their children. After event, I got a chance to briefly talked to Dr. Anthony Rao.

It is an used book costing me $5 on amazon, however, it gives me a priceless point of view from ADHD children.

It is written by Blake Taylor, a freshman at UC Berkeley, suffering from ADHD for his entire life.

Following are some key quotes from this book:

“I am shocked by the explosion of color and artwork that decorates the room”

“I should have been more careful about taking my medication”

“If your desk, books, papers. pens, and so on are organized, your thoughts will be more structure and more clear”

“avoid working in ablank, white-walled room”

“I prioritize my list, descide what i need to accomplish, and then promise myself a break as a reward”

“Routine reinforce what you’re trying to do”

“I’m a visual learner. I remember facts by their format, pictures, and placement on a page”

“I use Microsoft Outlook to help me keep track of assignments”