Designing Playful and Ethical Child-AI Systems
IDC 2025 Workshop | June 23, 2025 | Iceland
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The increasing presence of Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems geared towards children necessitates those who design and develop these technologies to understand how to address the emerging ethical questions in their development and use while maintaining a playful, child-friendly approach. Even more importantly, it is crucial to understand how we can address various tensions that have emerged among ethical principles. In this half-day workshop
This half-day workshop will promote hands-on and rights-based design experiences for researchers and practitioners to ideate the benefits and challenges of designing playful and ethical child-AI systems. Together, we will practice ways to incorporate ethical considerations while maintaining playful, desirable, and imaginative aspects of child-AI interactions. Additionally, we will investigate the ways this a rights-based design tool can be further tailored for researchers and serve as a practical and valuable tool for considering ethics while prioritizing children's right to playful and valuable interactions with AI.
Joint Keynote Speakers and Guest Facilitators
Dr. Angela Colvert
Dr. Angela Colvert
Lecturer in Education and Deputy Director of Innovation in the School of Education, University of Sheffield UK. She developed the Playful by Design Tool through participatory workshops with diverse companies whilst working with the UK Digital Futures Commission.
Dr. Kruakae Pothong
Dr. Kruakae Pothong
Visiting Research Fellow in the Department of Media and Communications at the London School of Economics and Political Science. She co-developed the Playful by Design principles and co-authored the Playful by Design report with Dr. Sonia Livingstone. Her current research focuses on AI in education and (child) rights-respecting design of digital services.
Dr. Colvert and Dr. Pothong will introduce their Playful By Design deck with a particular emphasis on the practical design and implementation of systems taking into account the tensions that exist between developing playful, yet ethical and (child) rights-respecting systems.
Playful By Design
Playful By Design
This includes a range of resources to provoke reflection, discussion and fresh ideas. It is freely available for anyone involved in creating digital products used by children. It can be used by product developers and designers, whatever their experience or responsibilities, working in group settings or individually. It can be used at any stage of the design process and includes three components: principle cards, prompt cards and playboards.
All participants will be introduced and receive a copy of the decks to access and explore during the workshop.
Play around with the toolkit here: https://digitalfuturescommission.org.uk/playful-by-design-toolkit/
Organizers
LEIGH LEVINSON
PhD Candidate at
Indiana University Bloomington, USA
Primary contact:
lmlevins@iu.edu
Dr. ELMIRA YADOLLAHI
Professor at
Lancaster University, UK
BENGISU CAGILTAY
PhD Candidate*
University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA
SHYAMLI SUNEESH
PhD Student at
Lancaster University, UK
VICKY CHARISI
Research Fellow at
Harvard University, Berkman Klein Centre, USA
Dr. SELMA ŠABANOVIĆ
Professor at
Indiana University Bloomington, USA
*On the Job Market!
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