It's Cool but What Else can I Do?

Abstract

This keynote paper explores, in a critical way, the reflections of the author in regard to doing research with teenagers. The paper begins with a summary of a very successful project that explored cool and the design for cool. The paper then looks at a more recent study in which teenagers with special needs were interviewed, with their parents. This second study exposes a different challenge for design for teenagers and critiques this against the design for cool. Three challenges are described: to design what is useful, to make those things cool and then, to go back to designing for cool.