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When we mentor student researchers, we do not usually start with "what's your research question?" We start before that. For a recent conference held by the Computational Social Science group at UC Davis, I asked the students to start with a topic or issue about artificial intelligence that genuinely interested them. They came back with broad topics: teenagers, menopause; which, if nothing else, gave us range. From there, we worked backward in two teams. What was the actual pr

What happens when preschoolers get to decide what they want to play? That question became the basis of an eight-week research partnership between our team at UC Davis and Lingokids, an educational app for young children. Unlike some of our other projects, we did not design the app ourselves. Instead, Lingokids already had something particularly useful for answering our question: two versions of the same app that gave children very different levels of control. In one version,

What co-designing an educational game taught us about agency, learning, and designing for children Children today have more control over their media than perhaps any previous generation. They can choose which apps to open, which worlds to explore, what their characters look like, and if they want to keep playing. However, when they open many educational games, much of that control disappears. This is a particular design challenge for educational game creators. Popular games f

On the first day of our virtual reality study at the SMUD Museum of Science and Curiosity, my research team told me we needed a sign-up sheet. I disagreed. I had worked in museums before with my research, and I was convinced we would be lucky to recruit even a few children throughout the day. Within two hours, every available slot was full. The same thing happened again the next day. And the next day. Children were eager to try virtual reality. They said it was "awesome" and