Globetoddler
Paulina Modlitba, C. Schmandt · 2008
In recent decades, families in the Western world have become more geographically distributed, making it more difficult for family members to achieve and maintain a feeling of connectedness. Different time zones and contexts and a limited awareness of the other family members' availability and mood are some of many factors that make "being together" more challenging when physically apart. Besides, when it comes to preschool children, existing communication technologies, such as phones and computers, may not even be an option. As a result, many families simply accept the fact that being apart leads to fragmented, or even non-existent, interaction. In this paper we describe initial work on a tangible system, Globetoddler, which aims to make remote interaction between preschool children and their traveling parents easy and enjoyable. The paper describes the process of defining design principles for this system, as well as the content and implications of these principles.