Smart-Thing Design by Children at a Distance: How to Engage Them and Make Them Learn

In recent years, research in child-computer interaction shifted the focus from design with children for giving them a voice in the design process, to design by children so as to bring child participants different benefits, such as engagement and learning. Design workshops, encompassing different stages, are however challenging in terms of engagement and learning, e.g., they take a prolonged commitment and concentration capabilities. They are potentially more challenging when held at a distance, as it was the case in recent years due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper explores at-a-distance smart-thing design with children, and how it can engage different children and support their learning in programming.The paper reports on a series of design workshops with 20 children, aged from 8 to 16 years old, all held at a distance. They were uniformly framed with the [anonymous name] design framework and toolkit. The first workshop enabled children to explore what smart things are, start ideating their own and scaffold their programming. The other workshops enabled children to evolve their own smart-thing ideas and programs. Data were gathered in relation to children's engagement and learning, from different sources. Results are promising for future editions of smart-thing design at a distance or in hybrid modality. They are discussed in the conclusions of the paper, along with guidelines and difficulties faced with design by children at a distance.