Designing technology for parent-child shared environment : A Social Media Use-Case

Abstract:  Technology needs to be designed considering various usage contexts. Today many parents use social media. Children are allowed to have a social media account by some social media websites if they are above a certain age. Social media is diverse in content that it is sometimes suitable for viewing by children and sometimes not. Parents sometimes wish to show some specific content from their social media page to their children. The page that they wish to show could have a content that is not suitable for viewing by children. This presents a problem to both the parent and child as users who sit together to view the intended content. This thesis intends to study on the different use contexts when the parent and child would want to sit together viewing a social media page sharing the same device. The study would also try to understand how the parent would envision to have the social media user interface during such usage contexts. This study also aims to trigger further research on the problems related to computer mediated interaction of people and children using the virtual sphere especially in social media encompassing the data analytics that would be needed in the background to ease such a communication.