IDC 2007 : proceedings of the 6th international conference for interaction design and children, June 6-8, 2007, Aalborg, Denmark

The IDC community is lucky in several respects. As technology moves on at a rate which many adult users find alarming, our child users embrace it with confidence and pleasure. In fact, when involved in a design team in an appropriate way, they can offer insightful advice on how to harness technological developments in new applications. As many of us have discovered, design sessions with children are never dull; part of the pleasure of working with this approach is that we are often genuinely surprised --- and delighted --- by their contributions. When given the opportunity to be involved in the design and evaluation of the technology they use in their every day lives, children have a lot to say which is worth hearing. The community is growing up. Since the first workshop (organised jointly by Tilde Bekker and Panos Markopoulos) in Eindhoven in 2002, we have worked together on a palette of design and evaluation methodologies and arrived at a clearer understanding of the circumstances under which particular approaches are effective. We have applied theoretical frameworks from other disciplines to predict the potential benefits of new technologies. We have explored a wide spectrum of emerging technologies to support children in playful and educational tasks at school, at home or in the community. This year we have contributions from researchers who are investigating exciting possibilities in tangible interfaces, games and software which enables children to express their creativity in all kinds of ways. Children with special needs have not been forgotten; there is growing expertise in effective practices for designing for and working with such users. IDC 2007 called for long papers, short papers, posters and demos reporting experimental results, case studies, reviews, design innovations, theoretical developments and reflections on the field. We have accepted 13 long papers (40% acceptance rate) and 14 short papers (34% acceptance rate). We gratefully acknowledge the time invested by our 68 expert reviewers in making these decisions.