Towards smart rooms for children: mapping children's needs in the context of their bedrooms in the IoT era

Abstract

Children's bedrooms are private spaces for identity exploration and self-expression, defined in literature as "bedroom culture". With the rise of smart-home and Internet of Things (IoT) technologies, comes a great opportunity to create a "digital bedroom culture" that captures the rich meaning that bedrooms can have in children's lives. To properly understand how children perceive their bedrooms, and how they think smart-home technologies can be integrated into their rooms, we conducted interviews with 17 children in the context of their bedrooms. Using thematic coding, we mapped children's needs related to their bedroom into Emotional and Practical themes. When discussing "smart-room" technologies, children strongly associated them with practical needs and much less with emotional ones. We argue that smart-home and IoT designers should consider this gap and explore the possibilities of designing IoT technologies that will augment children's emotional needs in the context of their bedroom.