Interaction Design and Children Conference 2026 | Workshop | June 22, 2026

Frameworks in the Field:

Considering Real Life Tensions When Designing AI for Children’s Well-being

This workshop aims to build a community to foster interdisciplinary collaboration exploring how AI technologies can be designed to enhance children’s digital well-being across diverse contexts. We strive to convene researchers, educators, and practitioners to share their experiences and discuss actionable considerations for future design initiatives.

Purpose

Researchers have developed a range of design frameworks intended to help designers maximize the benefits of AI-powered systems for children while minimizing harms. For example, the POWER framework [1] (purposeful, optimal, wise, ethical, responsible) proposes principles for evaluating how AI technology supports developmentally appropriate interaction for children. Similarly, the DAD framework [2] proposes aligning to children’s cognitive, social, and emotional needs in the design of new AI tools. Additional frameworks have also been developed for specific application areas, including AI character design which looks at how children are engaged socially and gameplay. While these frameworks have been instrumental in helping researchers conceptualize the design of child-AI interactions [e.g., 3, 4, 5], many have not yet been tested against the tensions that arise when AI is introduced into children's everyday lives. As our community continues to deepen our understanding of how we may design AI systems for children's well-being, it is crucial to apply these and other frameworks to children's experiences with AI, so that we may continuously iterate and work towards an understanding of designing for children's well-being. We wish to utilize the diverse expertise in the CCI community to tackle this issue and ask:

How might we design AI technologies to enhance children’s digital well-being across contexts (e.g., AI for play, AI for socialization and creative expression, AI in the family home, and AI at school) in accordance with various developmental and child-computer interaction frameworks?
What should developers and designers consider to support (rather than undermine) children’s digital well-being?

Questions?

Please reach out to Rotem Landesman with any questions: roteml@uw.edu

Submit a Proposal

[1] Jennifer J Chen and Jasmine C Lin. 2024. Artificial intelligence as a double-edged sword: Wielding the POWER principles to maximize its positiveeffects and minimize its negative effects. Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood 25, 1 (2024), 146–153
[2] Nomisha Kurian. 2025. Developmentally aligned AI: A framework for translating the science of child development into AI design. AI, Brain and Child1, 1 (2025), 9.
[3] Sonia Tiwari. 2025. Designing ethical AI characters for children’s early learning experiences. AI, Brain and Child 1, 1 (2025), 1–17.
[4] Unicef et al. 2022. Responsible innovation in technology for children. UNICEF Office of Research (2022).
[5] Sabeehah Mahomed, Mhairi Aitken, Ayca Atabey, Janis Wong, and Morgan Briggs. 2023. AI, Children’s Rights, & Wellbeing: Transnational FrameworksMapping 13 Frameworks at the Intersections of Data-Intensive Technologies, Children’s Rights, and Wellbeing. Children’s Rights, & Wellbeing:Transnational Frameworks (2023).

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