Report from “Ethics in Interaction Design and Children: A Panel and Community Dialogue” at IDC 2018
One of the goals of the SIGCHI ethics committee is to facilitate more discussion around research ethics within the community. To this end, members of the ethics committee often organize panel discussions at conferences. This post is a report on the discussion at IDC, and the next one will be at CSCW 2018.
During the annual conference on Interaction Design and Children, we (Chris Frauenberger of the SIGCHI ethics committee, along with Alissa N. Antle, Monica Landoni, Janet C. Read, Jerry Alan Fails) organised a panel discussion on ethics which took place 21 June 2018. It followed a smaller and more informal meeting at IDC 2017 at Stanford in which a group of community members met over lunch to discuss ethical aspects in our work, and was also inspired by the 2017 keynote by Alissa N. Antle on ethical issues related to design for vulnerable populations. All agreed that ethics needs to be more explicitly on the agenda of IDC, which consequently led to organising a full panel in the main program this year (read the full panel description, Ethics in Interaction Design and Children: A Panel and Community Dialogue, in the IDC proceedings). The purpose of the panel was to raise awareness for ethical issues that underly our work with children and the development of new technologies. Specifically, we aimed to share guidance around practical issues and discuss common moral dilemnas. An outcome goal for the panel was to kickstart a community dialogue in which fundamental stances about the ethical and moral responsibilties of our work with children could be discussed. For example, there are moral questions around the motivations, purposes and agendas that we pursue in our work. A second goal was to kickstart discussion around practical issues related to research ethics with vulnerable populations such as children that are important to consider, and for which we as a community want to make known as guidelines and best practices. We created this panel as a forum to transparently discuss these issues and encourage further dialogue.
Given such high aims, it is obvious that a panel of 45 minutes can only be a starting point. As such, we decided to provide three foundational ethical questions that were purposely selected to be open enough for many community members to relate to, but also specific enough to provide structure to the session. These questions were:
- What do children gain from participating in our research and what constitutes evidence of those benefits?
- How can we explain to children what the research is that we want them to participate in?
- As researchers, what are our obligations to the community of children we work with after the research ends?
The panelists who presented on the day of the panel were Monica Landoni, Janet C. Read, Jerry A. Fails. Alissa N. Antle and Nalin Tutiyaphuengprasert (Tukta) could not be there, but sent pre-recorded video messsages. Alissa N. Antle’s video message is available online. Chris Frauenberger moderated the session. Each of the panel members had 5 minutes to respond to these questions before we opened up the floor for comments, questions and discussion. While we wanted to provide anchor points with these leading questions, we also emphasised that we were open for other themes and topics to be raised. The following is a short summary of the contributions made on the day (special thanks to Laura Scheepmaker for taking notes).
With respect to the first question, the panelists brought up a variety of different potential gains, but also highlighted the unpredictability of participatory processes and thus their outcomes. Jerry and Alissa particularly stressed how important it is to be critically reflective about children’s gains and that it is key to regularly check in with the children, their teachers or parents before, during, and after the study. While ideally, many of us would have the aspiration to provide children with a sense of agency and impact on research outcomes, this is not always possible and we need to be vigilant to create supportive and safe spaces for children to participate in our research. Janet highlighted that gains are difficult to achieve in many short-term engagements and that these need to be planned with other positive experiences in mind. Tukta described her work in an Asian context and how many children she worked with felt pride to be a part of her research. As a consequence, however, some who were not selected to participate might feel “not good enough”, a point that was picked up on in later discussions around recruitment practices. Monica highlighted the role of teachers in much of the work we do and that they are key allies as they speak the language of children. Finally, Chris mentioned that gains are very often hidden in the experiences that children have during our research, rather than in the outcomes. For example, in exposure to skills such as brainstorming or gaining insights with respect to possible roles for technologies.
Regarding question two on how to explain our research to children, there was broad agreement that this is often a challenging, but rewarding effort. In some instances, the meaning of the research becomes evident only gradually over the course of the involvement. Here again, Jerry recommended continual discussions with child participants before, during, and after their involvement, which is only possible during longer-term interactions with children. In other contexts, it needs to be translated into the lived worlds of children through metaphors or examples for them to make sense of. Janet floated the idea of creating a video explaining research to children, including aspects of funding, publishing, designing, evaluting, and showing examples of data and analysis. Tukta made a related point about the tendency in Thai culture for confirmative responses, when a lot of research relies on critical engagement. However, many subtle power relationships in research undermine constructive critique. Alissa and Monica emphasised the importance of keeping promises and giving back to the communities we engage with (e.g. by inviting a school class to visit the university, without any research agenda behind it). Chris brought up an ethical dilemma that related to the nature of participation: we cannot plausibly tell children everything that will be part of the collaboration, because if we take participation seriously, we do not know in advance.
Question three brought up themes of long-term involvement and being invested in a community or group. However, as Jerry pointed out, children grow and there is often a natural endpoint to a collaboration. Alissa reflected on her work with children in Nepal and urged us to think carefully about how we can enable children and stakeholders to sustain any positive impact our research had (e.g. leaving behind systems with ongoing support for continued use). There was acknowlegement that continuity over time can be difficult as situations often change (funding, jobs…), but we ought to think about building sustainable and resiliant networks. One important avenue for continuance is knowledge transfer.
After theses initial statements, we opened the floor for questions from the audience. Nitin Sawhney posed a question, encouraging us to take a step back: why are we working with children? In which way are we invited into their lifeworlds? In lab studies, children often (and easilly) become mere subjects, but in the field this can be different. Other questions were raised, How can we build agency? How can we support their capacities to become researchers? Janet argued that much of research is driven by the need to publish and that this also drives the research agenda and questions asked. She suggested that there is a limit as to how much children can be involved as long as the system is publication focused. Chris pointed to the work of his Ph.D. student Katta Spiel on Participatory Evaluation, who argues for opening up the measures of success to participating children.
Jason Yip asked if childhood is changing in front of our eyes and whether we need to be more attentive to this fact in our research. Greg Walsh commented that he sees more children and parents becoming involved in research projects, and a need to acknowledge and address differences in terms of socio-economic backgrounds. This lead to a discussion about recruitment to our research and whether this reflects the broader shifts in society or maybe reinforces researchers’ biases. Greg Walsh pointed to his relevant paper presented later in the week: “Towards equity and equality in American co-design: a case study” on the efforts he made to recruit children who better reflected the diversity in his home city of Baltimore.
Leah Buechley, finally, asked about the larger picture, about how we as a community of researchers engage with questions about inequality, access to technology or who gets to participate in the shaping of technology. There is a sense of urgency, as unintended consequences of technology become more visible. As technologists we have a responsbibility to consider and address these issues. There was also a question about how we can help children think critically about technology. There was broad agreement on the panel that this needs to be pursued. Janet argued that maybe we need to report more on the things that did not work in our studies to produce a more balanced view. Monica reflected on her school collaborations, where iPads are pervasive. Backgrounds in other schools are very different and the gap is huge. We need to be critical of our reinforcement of roles for technology that only work for children with afluent backgrounds. Jerry agreed, but noted that not all work will address wide variations in diversity, and argued that we should more transparently report who we do our research with.
Unfortunately, at this point the session had to be closed, although there was a sense that many more members of the community would have liked to contribute to the discussions. After the session, there was a lot of positive feedback and further discussions in the hallways. As the organisers of this year’s panel, we certainly felt that we had created an opening for bringing ethics to the forefront of the agenda within our community. There was a renewed dialogue and vigor to address the ethical questions in our community. Importantly, we all felt that these conversations need to be ongoing, which will require continuous engagement and an appropriate forum at the heart of the IDC conference each year as a prime community event.
