In this forum we will celebrate research that helps to successfully bring the benefits
of computing technologies to children, older adults, people with disabilities, and other
populations that are often ignored in the design of mass-marketed products.
Juan Pablo Hourcade, Editor
Universal Interactions:
Challenges and Opportunities
Juan Pablo Hourcade
University of Iowa | juanpablo-hourcade@uiowa.edu.
Natasha E. Bullock-Rest
Brown University| natasha.bullock.rest@gmail.com
Welcome to the new forum on
universal interactions. When
contemplating how to design
technologies, interaction design
professionals may often first think
of designs that will work for people
like themselves. This can end up
adversely affecting populations
with needs and abilities that differ from the majority of our field.
In this forum we will share and
celebrate research and practices
that focus on these populations,
including children, older adults,
people with disabilities, and people
with low socioeconomic status
(SES). In this column, we discuss
some of the key challenges for our
field in designing technologies
for each of these populations.
March + April 2011
interactions
Children
There are several obstacles and
opportunities in designing digital
technologies for children. First,
children are beginning to use digi-
tal devices at a younger age than
earlier generations. Touchscreen
devices in particular can make it
simple for very young children to
interact with software. These new
opportunities also raise issues not
only about understanding how to
design interactions for these new
age groups, but also about learning
how using these devices affects the
children, which brings us to the
concept of digital natives.
