From Record to Relation: Co-Designing Child-Centered Digital Preservation for Children’s Artwork

Paper Title

From Record to Relation: Co-Designing Child-Centered Digital Preservation for Children’s Artwork

Publication Info

• Topic area: Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) focused on domestic memory technologies for preserving children’s artwork.
• Keywords: child-centered design, digital preservation, family archiving, intergenerational co-design, memory technologies, ritualized transitions, ambient displays, bounded autonomy, relational preservation, household fit.

Background and Problem

• Problem / challenge: Existing domestic technologies prioritize long-term storage and indexing ("continuity of record") but fail to address the relational and emotional needs of families, particularly children, who value present-tense recognition and meaningful transitions for their creations.
• Significance: The preservation gap between parents' storage practices and children's desire for visibility and recognition impacts family dynamics, trust, and emotional well-being. Addressing this gap can improve family relationships and the role of technology in domestic life.
• Motivation and related work: Prior work in HCI has explored memory technologies, lifelogging, and family photo displays, emphasizing archival and retrieval. However, these approaches often neglect the relational and performative aspects of memory in shared spaces. This paper builds on traditions of ritual design, value-sensitive design, and child-computer interaction to propose solutions that prioritize encounterability and relational preservation.

Solution

• Proposed approach: A child-centered, relation-focused preservation kit comprising four design probes: Goodbye, Hello; Magic Frame; Co-Curator; and New Journeys. These mechanisms aim to transform storage into meaningful encounters and shared decision-making.
• Novelty:
  1. Introduction of "continuity of relation" as a design lens for domestic preservation technologies.
  2. Development of four practice-ready probes that operationalize relational preservation through rituals, ambient resurfacing, bounded autonomy, and symbolic afterlives.
  3. Integration of design principles addressing visibility, fairness, emotional closure, and household fit.
  4. Empirical evidence from mixed-methods research (survey, interviews, co-design workshops) informing these mechanisms.
• Procedure and key techniques:
  • Mixed-methods study: survey (N=327), interviews (n=32), and co-design workshops with 8 families.
  • Identification of eight design tensions (e.g., visibility, fairness, material aura) and translation into actionable principles.
  • Iterative prototyping and rehearsal of design probes within family contexts to test feasibility and fit.

Results

• Concrete findings:
  • Families reported a median influx of 6–12 artifacts per week, with low child involvement in preservation decisions (28% overall; 18% for ages 4–7, 41% for ages 8–11).
  • Perceived child attachment strongly predicted keeping artifacts (OR = 2.41, p <.001), while spatial saturation predicted discards (OR = 1.78, p <.01).
  • Post-workshop evaluations showed reduced sadness during retirements (83% of children) and fewer next-day arguments among parents.
• Advantage over baselines:
  • The probes addressed trust erosion from stealth discards, improved fairness among siblings, and transformed digital archives into visible, shared encounters.
  • Ritualized transitions and ambient displays increased child engagement and reduced parental guilt.
• Experiments / evaluation:
  • Workshops tested and refined probes through prototyping and enactment of weekly sequences. Families rehearsed flows integrating capture, decision-making, and resurfacing mechanisms.
  • Observed outcomes included increased child participation, reduced conflict, and adoption of weekly rhythms for artifact management.
• Limitations and future work:
  • Sample skewed toward urban/suburban families with reliable device access; findings may not generalize to rural or culturally diverse contexts.
  • Workshop evaluations were short-term; longitudinal field trials are needed to assess durability and unintended consequences.
  • Future work should adapt probes to multi-generational households, lower-connectivity environments, and non-Western settings.

Summary

This paper addresses the preservation gap between parents' storage practices and children's desire for recognition through a child-centered, relational approach to digital preservation. Using mixed-methods research, the authors developed four design probes—Goodbye, Hello; Magic Frame; Co-Curator; and New Journeys—that operationalize principles of visibility, fairness, ritualized transitions, and symbolic afterlives. Empirical evidence demonstrates that these mechanisms reduce conflict, enhance child participation, and transform domestic preservation into a shared, meaningful practice. The findings contribute to HCI by introducing "continuity of relation" as a design lens and offering transferable mechanisms for family memory technologies.