Baby steps: evaluation of a system to support record-keeping for parents of young children

  • Authors:
  • Julie A. Kientz;Rosa I. Arriaga;Gregory D. Abowd

  • Affiliations:
  • University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA;Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, USA;Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, USA

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
  • Year:
  • 2009

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Abstract

Parents of young children often want to keep a variety of records on their children's early years, for the purposes of preservation of memories or at the request of their pediatrician. However, time constraints, motivation, and forgetfulness may hinder their ability to keep consistent records. We developed a system, Baby Steps, which is designed to improve the record-keeping process. In this paper, we present the results of a 3-month deployment study of this technology with 8 families and their pediatricians. The study showed that when compared to a control condition, experimental design features of Baby Steps encouraged parents to more frequently collect and review records, provided higher confidence in reporting, and improved parent-pediatrician communication.