Designing screen peripheral for mediating children's screen time

Abstract

As young children's screen time has significantly increased in recent years, their healthy use of digital media is a topic of interest. To support children's healthy screen use, we designed Romi, a screen peripheral with a friendly character. Romi aims to help children to transit from screen to out of the screen with minimum screen time withdrawal. To specify the design concept, we conducted the preliminary interview and ideation session focusing on screen time transition. Then we set the design criteria and attributes of physical presence, connection with the screen, and friendliness through character and designed Romi. To explore the influence of peripheral and its physicality, we conducted a user study with seven children and their parents. The result includes children's awareness of time, interest in screen time manipulation, emotional response from transitions, and peripheral presence. We discussed the influence of physicality and peripheral functions of Romi on children's screen time and design considerations for screen peripheral for supporting children's screen time. We believe that our design process and series of findings could contribute to suggesting motivation and inspiration for designing a physical device for mediating screen time.