Codesign between parents and children: what is smartphone management services involving active mediation?

Abstract

Since smartphones become our everyday product, there have been lots of discussions on how to control the use of their children while keeping their autonomy. However, many current digital solutions between parents and their children could not address concerns of both user groups. Therefore, the study figured out the opportunities and challenges associated with parental intervention in the children’s use of smartphone. Parental restrictive mediation methods commonly used in existing services have problems in various aspects such as the relationship between parents and children, and the autonomy of the child. On the other hand, 'Active Intervention' encourages discussion and communication between parents and children and holds potential for new service opportunities. This study identifies the elements required when designing a child management service with active mediation. Additionally, it extracts the design opportunities and challenges of active mediation services and proposes 4 ideas. A collaborative co- design workshop was conducted in which both parents and their children participated. The findings from this study definitively delineate the boundaries of active mediation, grounded in the experiences of the participants and novel ideas for the smartphone management. The study could also serve to bridge the gap between previous studies and current digital mediation service design grounded in the principles of active mediation and multi-disciplinary knowledge. This thesis is follow-up study of my research for the submission of DRS conferences. The thesis is based on the same experiment of the researcher’s DRS submission.