ChatterBall

Connecting young children with remote FIFO family members through play

ChatterBall Prototype

Background

On any given day a young child will be handed a smartphone or table with the hope that they will connect with their loved one during a video call. Initiated with the best of intentions the call will often deteriorate within moments, as the child wanders off in pursuit of more engaging objects, leaving the caller staring at a bleak ceiling unable to reach out or interact with the child. That is, of course, if the child hasn’t instead set their heart on pressing every button in sight and unintentionally hung up on the caller.

Despite the progress made in telecommunication technology and the proliferation of social media platforms, such as Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat, too few options appeal to young children under the age of five. This has limited their ability to establish and maintain relationships with their remote adult family members and can have a significant impact on families separated due to divorce, incarceration, the military, and Fly-in, Fly-out (FIFO) work.

After the birth of my niece in 2012, I observed the limitations of the technology first hand as my parents, who lived and worked overseas at the time, attempted to establish and maintain a relationship with my niece. My niece, unsurprisingly, showed no interest in interacting with them during phone calls and even to this day will quickly lose interest in a video call. On one memorable occasion my mum was attempting to talk to my niece (who was able to hold down a simple conversation at this point) but got only a few sentences out before my niece turned around to look at something else and left my mum to contend with a wiggly, wobbly babies bottom shoved in her face.

Their experience and the impact on their relationship inspired me to explore alternative methods for establishing and maintaining remote relationships between young children and their remote family members. The following process and prototype were completed as a part of a final year project for my B. Engineering.

Process

Understanding the Problem

Prior to the development of any prototypes I needed to understand the problem and look beyond my family’s situation. As such, I began the project by writing a comprehensive literature review (also a requirement of the course) and conducting contextual interviews with FIFO workers, who were related to young children under the age of five.

Through the literature review I sought to gain an understanding of both young children and FIFO workers. In terms of young children I wanted to understand:

• the extent FIFO work impacted their relationship with their oft-absent family member;
• their experiences using both traditional communication mediums, such as the telephone and video chat, as well as more experimental communication mediums, such as huggy pyjamas or the share table;
• their rapid rate of development, noting their quick progression from non-verbal infants learning to suckle to active preschoolers eager to run, jump and shout at the top of their lungs;
• the extent to which their abilities informed their use of tools;
• their relationship with objects; and
• their desire to engage and interact through play.

In regards to FIFO workers, I wanted to understand:

• who participates in FIFO work and why;
• the impact of the work on the worker, their family, friends and the wider community;
• their routines, habits and relationship with objects (particularly in relation to the young child in their family);
• how they approached maintaining their relationship with the young child (and the rest of their family) when away from home; and
• their perceptions of their relationship with the child.

Whilst there has been significant academic research exploring the use of traditional communication mediums and exploration of IoT based prototypes, I felt that too few projects had focused on the 0–5 years age group and the implications of their rapid rate of development. In fact, what was most apparent to me was the lack of focus on the asymmetric communication needs of young children and adults. Some of the questions I had to ask myself were: Does the interaction need to be symmetric? Can we facilitate the needs of both within the one exchange without expecting either party to compromise?

A story board used to communicate to others the problem I was seeking to address

Aware of the importance of play in children’s development I also explored the role of objects in our lives, particularly habituated objects, as a lot of the children's lives and indeed the lives of their FIFO family members were strongly informed by their routines. Notably, I was influenced by the work of one of my supervisors, Margot Brereton.

Taking steps towards a potential solution

Armed with the knowledge gained from the literature review and contextual interviews and ever aware of the constant tick tock of the quickly approaching deadline I pushed on to explore potential solutions.

The first step was to identify an object that was suited to children from birth up until their fifth birthday (and even beyond) and met the following guidelines:

1. Technology enhancement of the object should have an added value.
2. Focus should remain on the object and the interaction itself and not the technology.
3. Technology should be unobtrusive, if not invisible.
4. Technology should be reliable, durable and safe.
5. Technology should support the high dynamics of play environments.
6. The object should be in a form suitable for all age groups.
7. The object should be gender neutral.
8. The object should be adaptable for a wide variety of users — an appropriate size and shape for approach, reach, manipulation and use regardless of user’s body size, posture or mobility.
9. The object’s functions should be clear and easy to understand regardless of the child’s experience, knowledge, language skills or concentration level.
10. The object should promote development by holding the child’s interest, encouraging exploration and discovery.
11. The object should be fun and should allow for different approaches to play.
12. The object should facilitate remote interaction between a child and an adult.
13. The object should carry signs that it is associated with the remote FIFO family worker or allow for personalisation. [This criteria was not met → looking forward to future iterations]
14. The object should be identifiable as a prototype and not ‘polished’ to encourage honest evaluation and promote exploration of alternative forms/functions.

The criteria above draw heavily from the Universal Design for Play guidelines, the Universal Design Guidelines for Toys and Guidelines for Designing Complex Adaptive Tangible Interfaces. They are also informed by Vaisutis et.al. suggestions for connecting individuals through habituated objects.

Identifying an object that met the criteria involved visits to the homes of friends and family with young children, dwadling wide-eyed through toy stores and researching online. After a conversation with my supervisors I quickly settled on the idea of a ball, which was appropriate for all ages and had the potential to be modified so that it could be attached to other objects, such as mobiles and strollers.

A sketch of what the balls attachment might look like

A story board exploring different ways the ball may be used by a child as they progressed through the different stages of development

I was influenced by Vaisutis et.al paper “Invisible Connections: Investigating Older People’s Emotions and Social Relations Around Objects” and as such intended that the ball be one that young children in the target group were already familiar with, ideally incorporated in their play routine and exhibit some level of significance. Hence I wanted to use a ball sold locally rather than make one.

I was initially unable to find a ball suitable for the project and set about making my own out of a styrofoam ball coated in rubber latex. However, I eventually came across a pre-existing ball that suited the project and embedded the electronics within it.

ChatterBall (excluding its ribbon & loop attachment)

The augmented ball is capable of streaming a live video feed, capturing images and vibrating. The video feed is fed to the website which allows the adult user to observe the child, take a photo and play with the child by pressing a button which vibrates the ball. Photos are uploaded to a Dropbox folder associated with the account for offline access by the remote family member. The ball is accompanied by a pouch with a ribbon and plastic loop attachment. The pouch facilitates use by children unable to physically grasp the ball and made it possible for users to attach the ball to other objects such as strollers.

Diagram of the prototypes implementation

The decision to include the video feed and the ability to capture images and move the ball was based primarily on the outcomes of the interviews, which found that the majority of adult participants did not want to take additional objects with them preferring to rely solely on their phone for interaction. The FIFO workers wanted to be able to observe the child during day to day activities, capture photos for later and did not want to have to rely on a third party to facilitate the interaction. In order to facilitate their end of the interaction I developed a responsive website that could be used both on their laptops (for those that had access) and smart phones. The site was very loosely based on Google’s Material Design Guidelines.

A story portion of the story board describing the FIFO workers interaction with the website

Screenshot of the Responsive website

Test, test, lets test this out!

I invited four FIFO families with children aged between 6 months and 5 years old to spend some time interacting with the prototype. The ball was handed over to the children, who despite being shown the relationship between the ball and video feed by their parent/guardian quickly began to treat the ball as they would any other ball. They slobbered, rolled it and were eager to kick it (something their parents weren’t keen on). One thing they didn’t do was notice the vibration (excluding the four year old) suggesting the remote play aspect needs significantly more work.

Within those same families I invited the FIFO family member to provide feedback on both the ball and website. The FIFO family member was not required to be from the child’s immediate family unit as families may take on various forms.

Some findings

The following is a brief glimpse into the findings (recalled 6 months later).

• Overall the children wanted to treat the ball as a ball.
• Only the older children registered the balls vibration when the move button was pressed. Those that registered the motion reacted with a smile. Suggesting a need for more obvious movement or to engage other senses e.g. flashing light, twinkle sound etc. More exploration required.
• Bath time is an important time for some families with young children to connect over the phone and video chat.
• FIFO workers felt hindered by their reliance on others to send photos of the child and were concerned about missing out on the child(ren)s day to day activities. They were also worried about the viability of a video feed with some experiencing significant hurdles when attempting to have a phone conversation at work.
• The longer a FIFO worker was away from home the more concerned they were about the impact of the separation on their ability to maintain a relationship with the child(ren).

Interestingly, what the adults wanted for the prototype was not necessarily representative of the findings of the literature review or the observable actions of the children, however, I feel significantly more work is required to understand the problem space.

What I learnt…

This was my first HCI research project and strongly contributed to my desire to pursue a career in UX. The opportunity to take the initiative and explore the problem space under little guidance was an eye opener: I conducted my first user testing sessions based solely on theoretical knowledge, developed a high fidelity prototype that survived being thrown around and slobbered on, and gained a lot of knowledge about children’s development (extremely handy for building a relationship with my niblings).

Some other take aways:

• Conducting interviews in the homes of participants helped them to relax, prompted talking points both in terms of building rapport and assisting with their recall, gave insight into their living situation/routines, and allowed children to interact with the prototype as they wished (one child temporarily lost the prototype amongst their other toys).
• It is important to build a rapport with both the parent/guardian and child(ren) early in the conversation. Parent’s need to feel they can not only trust you to interact with their child but trust the prototype.
• Colouring in thank you sheets (refer below) are invaluable for building a rapport with children and provide a wonderful distraction when necessary.
• Test, test and test again. Test early and often. I did not test early enough in the process. In the future I will conduct more testing with lower fidelity prototypes.
• It is important to give each user engaged in the experience the opportunity to speak for themselves. Assumptions made on behalf of one user by another often conflicted with what the user stated/demonstrated they needed or desired.

What next?

I am now engaged in full time work and as such this project is on hold on my end but I look forward to exploring the space further in the future where time allows. If you have any thoughts or ideas please feel free to comment below :).

Colouring in Sheet provided to children who participated in the user testing sessions.