While the current generation of artificial intelligence chatbots , the systems answer with such confidence that .

Adults, even those such as , still regularly fall for this. But spotting errors in text is especially difficult for children, since they often don’t have the contextual knowledge to sniff out falsehoods.

91̽�� researchers developed the game AI Puzzlers to show kids an area where AI systems still typically and blatantly fail: solving certain reasoning puzzles. In the game, users get a chance to solve ‘ARC’ puzzles (short for Abstraction and Reasoning Corpus) by completing patterns of colored blocks. They can then ask various AI chatbots to solve the puzzles and have the systems explain their solutions — which they nearly always fail to do accurately. The team tested the game with two groups of kids. They found the kids learned to think critically about AI responses and discovered ways to nudge the systems toward better answers.

June 25 at the Interaction Design and Children 2025 conference in Reykjavik, Iceland.

“Kids naturally loved ARC puzzles and they’re not specific to any language or culture,” said lead author , a 91̽��doctoral student in human centered design and engineering. “Because the puzzles rely solely on visual pattern recognition, even kids that can’t read yet can play and learn. They get a lot of satisfaction in being able to solve the puzzles, and then in seeing AI — which they might consider super smart — fail at the puzzles that they thought were easy.”

to be difficult for computers but easy for humans because they demand abstraction: being able to look at a few examples of a pattern, then apply it to a new example. Current cutting-edge AI models have improved at ARC puzzles, but they’ve not caught up with humans.

Researchers built AI Puzzlers with 12 ARC puzzles that kids can solve. They can then compare their solutions to those from various AI chatbots; users can pick the model from a drop-down menu. An “Ask AI to Explain” button generates a text explanation of its solution attempt. Even if the system gets the puzzle right, its explanation of how is frequently inaccurate. An “Assist Mode” lets kids try to guide the AI system to a correct solution.

“Initially, kids were giving really broad hints,” Dangol said. “Like, ‘Oh, this pattern is like a doughnut.’ An AI model might not understand that a kid means that there’s a hole in the middle, so then the kid needs to iterate. Maybe they say, ‘A white space surrounded by blue squares.’”

The researchers tested the system at the last year with over 100 kids from grades 3 to 8. They also led two sessions with the , a project that works with a group of kids to collaboratively design technologies. In these sessions, 21 children ages 6-11 played AI Puzzlers and worked with the researchers.

“The kids in KidsTeam are used to giving advice on how to make a piece of technology better,” said co-senior author , a 91̽��associate professor in the Information School and KidsTeam director. “We hadn’t really thought about adding the Assist Mode feature, but during these co-design sessions, we were talking with the kids about how we might help AI solve the puzzles and the idea came from that.”

Through the testing, the team found that kids were able to spot errors both in the puzzle solutions and in the text explanations from the AI models. They also recognize differences in how human brains think and how AI systems generate information. “This is the internet’s mind,” one kid said. “It’s trying to solve it based only on the internet, but the human brain is creative.”

The researchers also found that as kids worked in Assist Mode, they learned to use AI as a tool that needs guidance rather than as an answer machine.

“Kids are smart and capable,” said co-senior author , a 91̽��professor and chair in human centered design and engineering. “We need to give them opportunities to make up their own minds about what AI is and isn’t, because they’re actually really capable of recognizing it. And they can be bigger skeptics than adults.”

and , both doctoral students in the Information School, and , a master’s student in human centered design and engineering, are also co-authors on this paper. This research was funded by The National Science Foundation, the Institute of Education Sciences and the Jacobs Foundation’s CERES Network.

For more information, contact Dangol at adango@uw.edu, Yip at jcyip@uw.edu, and Kientz at jkientz@uw.edu.

Shortly after artificial intelligence models including Midjourney and OpenAI’s Dall-E went public, AI-generated art started winning competitions: , . Concern rumbled that AI could replace artists — and even, by some metrics, . But simultaneously, people were exploring these tools as ways to augment their creative processes, not replace them.

91̽�� researchers grew curious about how AI might affect creativity in children, specifically, so they worked with a group of 12 Seattle-area kids ages seven to 13 to explore how the kids’ creative processes interacted with AI tools. They found that for the kids to be able to integrate generative AI into their creative practices meaningfully, they often needed support from adults and peers.

The researchers presented May 14 at the ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems.

91̽��News spoke with the study’s lead author , a 91̽��doctoral student in the Information School, about the study, the importance of support and the particular creativity of kids.

What was the impetus for this research?

Michele Newman: Before coming to UW, I was working on a — AI, essentially — to measure creativity in elementary school children. When ChatGPT came out, I was at the 91̽��working with , a program where adults and kids co-create technology products for children, and I really wanted to see what effects GPT might have on children’s creativity.

So much of the early experience around this new technology was fearful. People were saying, “Don’t use it to teach, it’s going to harm kids.” Many schools banned it. So part of the impetus of the project was trying to see what a medium stance looks like — where it’s not harming or taking jobs. It’s supporting and building meaningful experiences for kids. How can we look to the future and build ethical and meaningful practices around this technology?

How did you go about designing the study? And why did you use those design considerations?

MN: In KidsTeam the primary methodology is , where kids are treated as equal partners when designing technologies. So one of our approaches was just putting the kids in front of technology — OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Dall-E, or Google’s music generator — to see what they do. What are their considerations? Where are they getting frustrated? What does it mean to have a tool that can actually kind of do the creation for you? A lot of creativity research talks about how process is very important. That’s kind of where the person’s individuality comes out. So we wanted to see the kids develop their creative processes.

We also gave the kids a more structured experience. It’s one thing to just look at a piece of technology and say, “Here’s what it can do.” It’s another thing to say, “Use this specific software to write a story.” In the sessions, we balanced the open-ended approach with more directed exploration and had kids use techniques like comic boarding, where they make comics about potential good and bad uses of AI.

What findings were the most interesting to you?

MN: Maybe the most important and practical finding is how clearly these systems are not built for children. The kids might know a lot about, say, a video game like . If the AI system doesn’t know anything about it, the kids might conclude they’re smarter than the system. So there’s a mismatch between what children are expecting these systems to be able to do and what they can do. This type of technology is generally built with adults in mind. Likewise, children’s language just isn’t the same as adults. Things like this really become an issue for kids trying to creatively express themselves.

The title of this paper is “I want it to talk like Darth Vader,” which is a quote from one of the kids. He was writing a story about Star Wars, and he turned to us and said, “I want it to talk like Darth Vader. I want it to be able to be customized.” He suggested that it would help him write a better Star Wars story. Obviously, you could prompt ChatGPT to talk like Darth Vader, and we helped walk him through that. But those aren’t things that the kids necessarily understand right away. They need extra instruction around that. Children’s creativity is unique. Because of their development and their experiences, they have different needs than adults do. They’re still building and understanding social norms, and what it means to create.

I was also fascinated by the kids’ ethical considerations.

MN: Yeah, when we asked about some typical things like cheating, the kids tended to reiterate things they’ve heard, that “I shouldn’t use it to cheat.” But when we asked them about things like whether their friend should use AI to write a birthday card for them, they started to have really nuanced takes. Some started asking how much the friend is using it. Is it to write the whole card, or just to help? Every kid starts to have different ideas. So then we’re considering how to foster an individual child’s expression.

We asked one 11-year-old how he’d feel if his favorite book series was written by AI instead of an author, and he said it would “dismantle” the joy of reading for him. We often don’t think about kids having these deep, existential questions about what it means to be an artist. But they are. They’re asking whether they lose some authenticity when AI rather than a friend writes a birthday card. Over the course of the study, we saw them changing and developing as they used these systems. By the end, it was great to hear them saying things like, “I don’t think this really expresses what I’m saying.”

But they started making certain types of adjustments to their creative process and their goals, which for me sometimes raised a red flag. Sometimes they’d add extra context to get it to do what they wanted. But other times they might try an idea and quickly say, “It’s not working, so I’m just going to change the idea.” That’s a hard problem. But we can’t just make systems that solve all these issues, because every kid’s process is different. Sometimes you do need to learn to give up on an idea. That can be part of the creative process. So the question with AI is how do you support kids and give them knowledge of their individual creative processes? Creativity is always happening in a larger context. The interaction is not just about inputting a prompt. It’s working iteratively with the system while being supported by peers and adults. And those networks of support make a meaningful experience with these systems much more likely.

Additional co-authors on this paper were , a professor in the iSchool; , an associate professor in the iSchool; , an undergraduate in the iSchool; , and , undergraduates in human centered design and engineering at the UW; , an undergraduate in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering; , who completed this research as an undergraduate in interaction design and psychology at the UW; and , a doctoral student at the University of Michigan. This research was funded in part by the U.S. Institute for Museum and Library Services.

For more information, contact mmn13@uw.edu.

When ChatGPT surged into public life in late 2022, it brought new urgency to long-running debates: Does technology help or hinder kids’ learning? How can we make sure tech’s influence on kids is positive?

Such questions live close to the work of , a 91̽�� associate professor in the Information School. Yip has focused on technology’s role in families to support collaboration and learning.

As another school year approaches, Yip spoke with 91̽��News about his research.

What sorts of family technology issues do you study?

Jason Yip: I look at how technologies mediate interactions between kids and their families. That could be parents or guardians, grandparents or siblings. My doctoral degree is in science education, but I study families as opposed to schools because I think families make the biggest impact in learning.

I have three main pillars of that research. The first is about building new technologies to come up with creative ways that we can study different kinds of collaboration. The second is going into people’s homes and doing field studies on things like how families search the internet, or how they interact with voice assistants or digital games. We look at how new consumer technologies influence family collaborations. The third is co-design: How do adults work with children to co-create new technologies? I’m the director of . We have kids come to the university basically to work with us as design researchers to make technologies that work for other children.

Can you explain some ways you’ve explored the pros and cons of learning with technology?

JY: I study “joint media engagement,” which is a fancy way of saying that kids can work and play with others when using technology. For example, digital games are a great way parents and kids can actually learn together. I’m often of the opinion that it’s not the amount that people look at their screens, but it’s the quality of that screen time.

I did my postdoc at , and we’ve known for a long time that if a child and parent watch Sesame Street together and they’re talking, the kid will . We found this in studies of “Pokémon Go” and With these games, families were learning together and, in the case of Animal Crossing, processing pandemic isolation together.

Whether I’m looking at artificial intelligence or , I’m asking: Where does the talking and sharing happen? I think that’s what people don’t consider enough in this debate. And that dialogue with kids matters much more than these questions of whether technology is frying kids’ brains. I grew up in the ‘90s when there was this vast worry about video games ruining children’s lives. But we all survived, I think.

When ChatGPT came out, it was presented as this huge interruption in how we’ve dealt with technology. But do you think it’s that unprecedented in how kids and families are going to interact and learn with it?

JY: I see the buzz around AI as a — with a surge of excitement, then a dip, then a plateau. For a long time, we’ve had artificial intelligence models. Then someone figured out how to make money off AI models and everything’s exploding. Goodbye, jobs! Goodbye, school! Eventually we’re going to hit this apex — I think we’re getting close — and then this .

The question I have for big tech companies is: Why are we releasing products like ChatGPT with these very simple interfaces? Why isn’t there a tutorial, like in a video game, that teaches the mechanics and rules, what’s allowed, what’s not allowed?

Partly, this AI anxiety comes because we don’t yet know what to do with these powerful tools. So I think it’s really important to try to help kids understand that these models are trained on data with human error embedded in it. That’s something that I hope generative AI makers will show kids: This is how this model works, and here are its limitations.

Have you begun studying how ChatGPT and generative AI will affect kids and families?

JY: We’ve been doing co-design work with children, and when these AI models started coming out, we started playing around with them and asked the kids what they thought. Some of them were like, “I don’t know if I trust it.” Because it couldn’t answer simple questions that kids have.

A big fear is that kids and others are going to just accept the information that ChatGPT spits out. That’s a very realistic perspective. But there’s the other side: People, even kids, have expertise, and they can test these models. We had a kid start asking ChatGPT questions about Pokémon. And the kid is like, “This is not good!” Because the model was contradicting what they knew about Pokémon.

We’ve also been studying how public libraries can use ChatGPT to teach kids about misinformation. So we asked kids, “If ChatGPT makes a birthday card greeting for you to give to your friend Peter, is that misinformation?” Some of the kids were like, “That’s not okay! The card was fine, but Peter didn’t know whether it came from a human.”

The third research area is going into the homes of immigrant families and trying to understand whether ChatGPT does a decent job of helping them find critical information about health or finances or economics. We’ve studied and helping their families understand the information. Now we’re trying to see how AI models affect this relationship.

What are important things for parents and kids to consider when using new technology — AI or not — for learning?

JY: I think parents need to pay attention to the conversations they’re having around it. General parenting styles range from . Which style is best is very contextual. But the conversations around technology still have to happen, and I think the most important thing parents can do is say to themselves, “I can be a learner, too. I can learn this with my kids.” That’s hard, but parenting is really hard. Technologies are developing so rapidly that it’s OK for parents not to know. I think it’s a better position to be in this .

You’ve taught most every grade level: elementary, junior high, high school and college. What should teachers be conscious of when integrating generative AI in their classrooms?

JY: I feel for the teachers, I really do, because a lot of the . So it totally depends on the context of the teaching. I think it’s up to school leaders to think really deeply about what they’re going to do and ask these hard questions, like: What is the point of education in the age of AI?

For example, with generative AI, is testing the best way to gauge what people know? Because if I hand out a take-home test, kids can run it through an AI model and get the answer. Are the ways we’ve been teaching kids still appropriate?

I taught AP chemistry for a long time. I don’t encounter AP chemistry tests in my daily life, even as a former chemistry teacher. So having kids learn to adapt is more important than learning new content, because without adaptation, people don’t know what to do with these new tools, and then they’re stuck. Policymakers and leaders will have to help the teachers make these decisions.

For more information, contact jcyip@uw.edu.

With thousands of schools and preschools closed and many states under “stay-at-home” orders to try to limit the spread of the novel coronavirus, families are facing a tough situation: trying to work — possibly remotely — while simultaneously being responsible for their children’s education.

91̽�� researchers are beginning a national study to help families discover technology that helps them both successfully navigate home-based learning and combat social isolation.

“I think some parents had idealized scenarios where they said ‘Oh, I’ll just put my kid in front of a computer for a few hours and while I work, they’ll do math and reading,'” said co-lead researcher , a 91̽��professor of human centered design and engineering. “It all sounded great, but then after one day it’s like, ‘Oh gosh, this is not going to work.'”

One major issue, the researchers said, is that it’s overwhelming trying to sort through seemingly endless technology options.

“People want to help parents manage this, and one easy way is to share resources. But in reality there are almost too many options,” Kientz said. “As a parent, I was added instantly to about five or six different Facebook groups all about trying to navigate this situation. Everyone was posting a million different resources, such as brightly colored schedules for homeschool.”

For their project, Kientz and team plan to recruit 30 diverse families with children ages 3 to 13 across the country. Participating families will be organized into three groups based on common family characteristics, such as children’s ages or work situations.

“We definitely want to include many different types of families, including parents who are still physically going to their jobs, parents who are in quarantine, intergenerational households and single parents,” Kientz said. “But we want to make sure the study itself isn’t creating more extra work for people who are already burdened.”

Each family is expected to participate for about 30 minutes a week during the 10-week study. Families will reflect on how the technology they use helps or hinders their lives.

“What we’re proposing to do here is find real stories from different types of families about what is helpful and what are the roadblocks,” Kientz said. “Then we plan to immediately share that information back out using social media and regular Medium posts. We’ll also provide a direct channel into some of the tools that support online learning, exercise and staying in touch at home.”

In the later part of the study, families will design new or redesign existing technologies — such as a new educational skill for Amazon Echo. Then the families will test simple prototypes of these designs. Most of these activities will be completed as a family, though there may be some caretaker- or child-only activities as well.

“It’s important to see things in terms of equity, too,” Kientz said. “Some people don’t have time to homeschool their kids, and a lot of these tools require high-speed internet access, iPads or other expensive equipment.”

The study will look at how families in different situations are finding tools that they are able to access and use successfully.

Kientz, who studies families and technology and is also the parent of two children ages 7 and 4, suggests the following reputable websites/apps:

• Learning
  • (note: the iPad version, , is easier for younger kids to navigate)
  • (and their remote-learning resource )
  • Preschool-aged kids iPad apps like Sago World or any app by Toca Boca.
  • Typing —
  • Coding — and /
• Staying connected with family and friends
  • Minecraft (note: families could set up Realms to create a private server for their kids to socialize with their friends)
  • Facebook’s Messenger Kids app
  • FaceTime
• Exercise
  • apps like Pokemon GO and Harry Potter Wizards Unite can make walks more entertaining (note: make sure you stay at least 6 feet away from others)
  • Freeze Dance skill on Amazon Echo
  • Just Dance for the Nintendo Switch

Additional co-lead researchers on this project are: , a 91̽��associate professor of human centered design and engineering who has done similar research projects to study ; , a 91̽��assistant professor in the Information School who studies families and technology; and , a 91̽��assistant professor in the iSchool who works with children . Rebecca Michelson, a 91̽��doctoral student in human centered design and engineering, is also a researcher on this project. This study is funded by the National Science Foundation.

For more information, contact Kientz at jkientz@uw.edu, Munson at smunson@uw.edu, Hiniker at alexisr@uw.edu and Yip at jcyip@uw.edu.

Grant number: 2027525

Many parents express concerns about privacy and online safety in technology designed for their children. But we know much less about what children themselves find concerning in emerging technologies.

Now 91̽�� researchers have defined for the first time what children mean when they say technology is “creepy.” Kids in a new study described creepy technology as something that is unpredictable or poses an ambiguous threat that might cause physical harm or threaten an important relationship. The researchers also pinpointed five aspects of emerging technologies that could contribute to this feeling of ambiguity.

The team May 8 at the 2019 in Glasgow, Scotland.

“Over the years of working with kids we realized they use the word ‘creepy’ a lot as a way to reject specific technologies,” said first author , an assistant professor in the UW’s . “But kids have a difficult time articulating what makes something creepy. So we designed a series of activities to give them the chance to work out their own thoughts and help us understand.”

Previous research indicated that adults , not scary, so the team conducted four separate design sessions to see if children felt similarly about creepy technology. These sessions had aged 7 to 11 prototype their own technologies or rank real or imagined technologies as “creepy,” “not creepy” or “don’t know.” Devices that could bring about physical harm or disrupt an important relationship were most consistently ranked as being creepy.

“When we were brainstorming about what kids were going to be worried about, we never considered that they might be concerned that somehow technology would get between them and their parents, and that this would be such a salient issue in their minds,” said co-author , an assistant professor in the iSchool.

The team found five properties of technology that led to those fears:

Deception versus transparency

Kids want to understand how technology works and what information a device is collecting. For example, when a child asked a digital voice assistant if it would kill him in his sleep and it said, “I can’t answer that,” the child was concerned.

“‘I’m afraid I don’t have an answer to that’ works well if I ask how many hairs are on the top of my head,” Yip said. “But with these types of questions, this response sounds deceptive.”

Ominous physical appearance

Kids are sensitive to how a technology looks, sounds and feels. But that doesn’t mean that only traditionally scary-looking technologies are creepy: The children were also wary of , an app with a large black dot as its interface, because it looked like a “black spirit” or a “black hole.”

Lack of control

Kids want to control technology’s access to their information and the flow of that information to their parents. For example, when kids were asked to design a technology that was trustworthy, some of the children designed an intelligent trash can that both scanned and deleted their facial recognition data each time they used it. Their trash can also had a button that allowed for manual deletion of data.

Unpredictability

Kids don’t like it when technology does things unexpectedly, like automatically knowing their name or laughing. To kids, laughing could communicate hidden, and possibly malicious, intent.

Mimicry

Kids also don’t like technology that pretends to be something else, especially when it’s trying to mimic people in their lives or themselves. Technology that mimics them could be trying to steal their identities or disrupting family relationships.

“All five themes are related to ambiguous threats. It’s a not specific monstrosity coming after them here like when something is scary; it’s more nuanced so that they’re not sure of the consequences of their actions,” Yip said. “The kids kept referencing the movie . In the story, the dolls ask Coraline to make a change: ‘If you sew buttons over your eyes and become just like us, we will love you forever.’ That prompts this feeling of, ‘Wait a second, sew buttons over my eyes? What am I compromising here?'”

The team found that trusted adults had some influence over whether or not the children thought that specific devices were creepy. For example, one child deemed smartphones “not creepy” because he saw his parents using them. Another kid thought that laptops were creepy because his parents taped a piece of paper over the camera to “keep the robbers away.”

The researchers acknowledge that their results could be used to make technology that tricks kids into a false sense of security. But the team thinks it is more important to have these results available to the public to help parents talk to their kids about technology and any types of fears that might arise.

“Children have access to so many different kinds of technologies compared to when we were growing up,” Hiniker said. “But their basic fears haven’t changed at all. Kids want to feel physically safe and anchored to trusted adults who are going to protect them.”

Other co-authors are , a research scientist at the Joan Ganz Cooney Center who completed this research as a doctoral student in the UW’s Department of Human Centered Design & Engineering; Xin Gao, and , all undergraduates in human centered design and engineering; and Justin Park, undergraduates in the iSchool; and Romaine Ofiana, an undergraduate in hearing and speech sciences.

###

For more information, contact Yip at jcyip@uw.edu and Hiniker at alexisr@uw.edu.

Parents who regularly play “Pokémon GO” with their children report a number of side benefits from playing the mobile device-based game, including increased exercise, more time spent outdoors and opportunities for family bonding, according to new 91̽�� research.

In the first study to survey and interview parents who play “Pokémon GO” with their families, some parents said the interactive and mobile nature of the game — in which players capture fictional creatures from the Japanese Pokémon franchise on smartphones and other mobile devices by “finding” them in real-world locations — made them feel better about engaging in that type of gameplay, as opposed to more sedentary forms of “screen time.”

The results, taken from a qualitative survey of 67 parents and interviews with 20 additional parents playing “Pokémon GO” with their families in a Seattle park, are detailed in a to be presented at the Association for Computing Machinery’s conference in May. The study did not include perspectives of parents who do not allow their children to play “Pokémon GO,” which is an important avenue for future research.

Some guilt among “Pokémon GO”-playing persisted, and many set limits to prevent kids from becoming so absorbed in the game that they ignored cars or other real-world hazards, as well as responsibilities. Those included setting time constraints, requiring kids to do chores or homework first, shutting down the mobile device if kids didn’t give it back when asked or parents staying in control of the smartphone while the family played.

Yet many parents — particularly moms of boys, fathers of girls and parents of teenaged children — reported spending more quality time with their children as a result of playing “Pokémon GO” together and talking more than usual, both about the game itself and about other things in their lives.

Parents also appreciated how the game motivated both them and their children to go outside and exercise in ways that were convenient and fit into their lives, as their children displayed newfound enthusiasm for walking the dog or walking rather than driving to dinner or playgrounds. For some participants, these “Poké-walks” led to walking thousands more steps per day, and one father reported that his 11-year-old daughter had lost 12 pounds.

“Location-based augmented reality games are pretty different than sitting in front of a TV or playing a typical video game, so we were interested in the way kids and their parents were sharing those experiences together,” said lead author a 91̽��doctoral student in Human Centered Design and Engineering. “People still don’t really know how to build tech that works well for families, so when this game came out of the blue and really caught on, we wanted to look at what its ingredients for success were.”

When the interdisciplinary 91̽��research team first went to observe people playing “Pokémon GO” at a popular outdoor mall shortly after the game’s release last July, they noticed a curious thing after the late Seattle summer sunset: Kids were still running around outside with their parents until as late as midnight.

“It was clearly way past everybody’s bedtime,” said senior author , assistant professor at the 91̽��Information School. “We also noticed that the parents were playing Pokémon as much as the kids were, and we’d never seen that before with Minecraft or any Nintendo game. So we knew there was something going on here that was different.”

In follow-up interviews with families who had begun playing “Pokémon GO” together, almost all parents had safety concerns about the game, from children not paying attention to where they were going to interacting with strangers. To mitigate those concerns, many parents imposed limits or rules on the gameplay, such as only allowing older children to travel a certain distance from the home and requiring younger children to only play on a parent’s device.

However, many parents reported net benefits from the overall experience, including noticing new details like artwork or pocket parks in their neighborhoods, teaching their kids how to navigate streets safely and having a shared interest with their children, particularly at ages when communication can become tricky. As one mom who played with her 8-year-old son told the interviewers:

“I think it’s just helping us find a common thing we can do together as a mom and a boy, and that’s really awesome for me … As a boy coming home from school, they don’t tell you what they ate or … what the teachers said, but now he’s telling me this stuff so it’s a good way to be communicating.”

Because the Pokémon franchise was first introduced in 1995, some parents had also grown up with the characters, which heightened their interest in playing the new location-based game. The simplicity of the game compared to others like Minecraft lowered the bar for participation, and parents’ prior knowledge about and experience with Pokémon characters often led their kids to view them as valuable “experts” who could teach them.

“Pokémon has existed for over 20 years now. Watching so many kids play and engage with their parents through “Pokémon GO” was very different and exciting,” said co-author and 91̽��human centered design and engineering graduate student , who grew up religiously watching the Pokémon TV series and movies and playing the card game with friends. “But it’s also been popular among parents who knew nothing about Pokémon.”

The research team identified how “Pokémon GO” met six conditions that previous researchers have identified as leading to productive “” for families. Those include the ability to play and learn about the game together, motivation for multiple generations to engage, and features that make it easy to put the game away, such as the opportunity to put the phone away in a pocket until the next creature appears rather than constantly having to look at the screen.

In addition, “Pokémon GO” hinges on players going outside, walking and working in teams, making parents more likely to accept or promote gameplay or jointly participate with their children. That said, some of those same parents acknowledged that the “addictive” nature of Pokémon GO could lead to never-ending requests from their children to play.

By investigating the perspectives, values and challenges of parents who play “Pokémon GO” with their children, the team of 91̽��information scientists, learning scientists and human-computer interaction researchers hope to shed new light on how to design technologies that invite families to engage in them together.

“That’s a pretty difficult thing to tap into — how do you get different generations of people to want to play, even if it’s for different reasons?” Sobel said. “These designers were able to capitalize on an older franchise that appealed to everyone from casual smartphone users to serious game players to children.”

Co-authors include HCDE graduate student , associate professor , and Information School associate professor .

For more information, contact Sobel at ksobel@uw.edu, Yip at jcyip@uw.edu or Bhattacharya at arpitab@uw.edu.