Re-building the parents’ image for the left-behind children
A design research for the left-behind children in China
Left-behind children and their loneliness
In July 2015, my colleagues and I conducted an in-the-field design research at two villages in Bazhong area, Sichuan province. Through this field research, we have discovered some real life problems from three active groups of people in rural China: women, left-behind children and volunteer teachers. The one that worries us most is local left-behind children’s loneliness.
In China, there are 61,025,500 children who are living in rural areas while their parents are working in big cities. [1] These children are called left-behind children. They are usually taken care by their grandparents. Without the necessary communication between the children and their parents, the left-behind children are lonely and under significant mental pressure. [2, 3]
Mr. Jin is the school principal of the only one primary school in the village. He told us a story between his students and a volunteer teacher.
The volunteer teacher finished his stay in the village and returned to the city. After that, local students picked up bunches of wild flowers on their way to school and left the flowers at the window of the classroom where they had been studied with their teacher. Every morning, a new bunch of flowers would appear at the window, and it lasted for more than one month.
In China, college students are the main source of educational volunteers from big cities to villages. Their stay in village is usually one-time and short-term. [4, 5]
It was a very long, quite and muddy path connects the village and the local school. To find and pick wild flowers on such a rough road was never enjoyable. When we were walking through this path, we could imagine how strong the children cherished the memory with their teacher and how lonely they were after their teacher left.
After talking to Mr. Jin, we arranged a group interview with the local elderly, who are grandpas and grandmas of the left-behind children. We learned that the left-behind children were eager to know how their parents’ daily life was in big cities. Being left in the village and without a frequent communication with their parents, the lonely children were disconnected with their parents.
With our intelligence and professional knowledge, we are determined to help the left-behind children feel the care and love from their parents.
It’s more than transmitting information
When the feeling of being taken care and loved is developed, different levels of emotional changes are involved. The most positive one is triggered by receiving the help when needed.
It appears that if an instant information transmission channel could be established between the left-behind children and the outside world, they will be able to talk to their parents or volunteer teachers in the cities when they feel lonely and need help.
Building such an instant messaging channel is not quite possible in the villages we visited. Most children living in the village do not have a mobile phone. Whenever left-behind children would like to talk to their parents, they have to borrow mobile phones from their grandparents or use landlines at home. This is not an ideal instant way for communication. However, the grandparents prohibit left-behind children from calling their parents or volunteer teachers too frequently, as the fee of voice call is a burden to the family.
When we tried to introduce some smartphone instant messaging apps, such as WhatsApp and Wechat, we found that these mobile phones are usually being used without any activated data plans. The fee of a data plan is another expense which needs carefully planning from the family. The actual cost of sending an instant message on WhatsApp is affordable, but the villagers have an impression that anything needs to access Internet on a mobile phones will cost lots of money.
What if we could change their impression and existing behaviour? The instant message channel still couldn’t established even when the left-behind children could call or send messages to their parents freely. The parents, who left their children in the village, are those who are working hard in big cities. Most of them are working as construction workers and assembly line workers. It is impossible for them to answer calls or reply instant messages during working hours, as their job requires them to be fully focused.
With these insights, we understood the problem was more than transmitting information. Our design research continued on finding ways to present a positive image of parents to the left-behind children when they feel lonely. We expected the positive image of parents would help alleviate the pain of loneliness.
Our design idea
An IoT device was designed to help the left-behind children. It is a wearable device, with multiple components inside: a speaker, the memory card, the mobile data network module, the battery, and a button. The wearable device looks like a big button, so we named it as the Speaking Button. It is designed to be a one-way information collector.
For the left-behind children,
The Speaking Button can be attached to any souvenirs they kept and carried everyday, for example: a family photo with father and mother; a school bag given by volunteer teacher and etc. When the left-behind children feel lonely and helpless, they can touch the Speaking Button. With a light touch, they will hear the voice of their parents or volunteer teachers from the Speaking Button.
For the parents and volunteer teachers,
Although they have a busy working life in big cities, they can use their fragmentary time and send voice messages to the Speaking Button via Wechat. The voice message can be a quick expression of how they miss the children, any news they would like to share with the children or a simple sentence of I love you.
The design reflects our intentions of bringing positive stimulations to both left-behind children and their parents. By leaving voice messages to the children at any time, the parents and the volunteer teachers will feel less anxious for not accompanying the children. When the left-behind children touching the Speaking Button, they can listen to these voice messages. These messages and the souvenirs, which the Speaking Button is attached to, together can help left-behind children re-build the image of the parents and volunteer teachers.
Re-building the image, not repeating the memory
The Speaking Button is designed to help the left-behind children re-build the image of their parents, rather than repeating their memories with the parents.
In our opinion, the attempting to repeating pieces of fading memories left by the parents, at a certain degree, can help the left-behind children remember their parents. For example, when looking at a family photo, a feeling of joy grows as we are enjoying repeating the good memories. A desire of reunion with family members and getting in touch with them also grows and overrides the initial enjoyment. Simply repeating old memories doesn’t offer a way to get updates from the loved ones. We were seeking a way to allow parents to synchronise their life in the big cities with left-behind children. From our previous design research, we understood building an instant messaging channel is not feasible. A design solution, which can asynchronously synchronise parent’s life with the left-behind children is needed.
Re-building the parents’ image can help us resolve the asynchronous vs. synchronous contradiction. The Speaking Button is designed to be an attachment of any souvenirs. The scenarios of its usage are:
- When the left-behind children are on their way to the local school, they carry the school bag given by the volunteer teacher and listen to them talking about any news in the big city. The long, quite and muddy path to school will become interesting.
- When the left-behind children are afraid to sleep alone, they hold their favourite toy given by their parents and listen to how much the parents are missing them. The nights in village will be full of accompaniments.
The voice messages stored in the Speaking Button will always be played with the presence of souvenirs, such as a school bag, a family photo or a toy. Although their memories with parents or volunteer teachers from the souvenirs are fixed and fading away, the left-behind children can re-build the image of their parents or volunteer teachers with information delivered from the voice messages. These messages inspire their imaginations. The re-built image won’t be the same as the parents’ real life in big cities. However, the process of using imaginations can greatly foster positive stimulations. These positive stimulations will result in positive image of the parents, which can help the left-behind children alleviate the pain of loneliness.
Similar concept: The experience of re-building image
Live Photo, an innovative photo recording and browsing feature, becomes available with the release of iPhone 6s and iOS 9. When enabled, Live Photo automatically record few seconds video clip for each taken picture. When an individual photo is being pressed, its corresponding video clip will be played to create a context for the viewers. This context will help viewers combine their memories of each photo with new imagination. Each time when a live photo is viewed, a new experience is re-built and enjoyed by the viewers.
Storing information for re-building the image
A one-way and asynchronous information transmission mechanism has been designed to store and release voice messages that can inspire the left-behind children’s imagination to re-build the image of their parents.
One-way transmission
As we have understood, the left-behind children are not allowed to call their parents or volunteer teachers too frequently as the family couldn’t afford a large phone bill. The information transmission with the Speaking Button is designed to be one-way: The parents can transmit information to their children. Although the parents, who are working in the cities, are in better financial status, they have limited free time for phone calls. We decided to integrate WeChat with the Speaking Button. WeChat is a very popular app used in big and small cities across China. The parents can leave voice messages to the children via WeChat. The messages will be later proceeded by our server and transmitted to the Speaking Button held by the left-behind children.
Delayed information
After a piece of voice message has been sent by parents to their children, it will be treated as a piece of asynchronous information. Asynchronous means the voice message will not be played back immediately when it is received. All received messages will be stored in memory card, inside the Speaking Button. Only when the left-behind children touches the Speaking Button, the received messages will be played. The information is designed to be delayed with two reasons:
- When the left-behind children feel lonely and need help, replaying those voice messages can trigger positive emotional changes and make the left-behind children feel receiving the help.
- When the left-behind children are busy with their daily activities, the Speaking Button is still receiving voice messages from their parents. As these messages are designed to be delayed, they can be transmitted through a slower but much cheaper 2G mobile data network. In the way, the data cost on the left-behind children side will be reduced.
The Speaking Button Continued
In March 2016, we have just completed another in-the-field design research with the left-behind children, in Beichuan, Sichuan Province.
I’m looking forward to sharing with you our findings and plans for the speaking button in 2016, soon.
References
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- 当前农村留守儿童心理问题及其防治, 2014, http://www.qstheory.cn/society/2014-09/10/c_1112429478.htm
- 农村留守儿童生存现状调查报告, 2015, http://zgnydxsk.cnjournals.net/ch/reader/create_pdf.aspx?file_no=20150303006&flag=1
- 支教的反思 — — 大学生短期支教双赢模式的探索, 2011
- 中国山区为何留不下支教志愿者？, 2013, http://cn.nytimes.com/letters/20130905/cc05letters-delta/
