GeneyTM: designing a collaborative activity for the palmTM handheld computer
Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Supporting sociable literacy in the international children's digital library
Proceedings of the 2004 conference on Interaction design and children: building a community
Mobile Technology for Children: Designing for Interaction and Learning
Mobile Technology for Children: Designing for Interaction and Learning
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Pet Pals is a game that facilitates social interaction in a real world group context. Early user research of pre-teens indicated that children establish a social hierarchy through sharing and trading. The needs revealed in the study led to a game design to mediate peer interaction through trade. A functional prototype was developed to test the game on two groups of users. Pet Pals is a game of trading that globally monitors who is participating in real-time by tracking the exchange of objects and dynamically altering each object's value to encourage those not participating to interact with each other, in part by making their objects more valuable to others. Through bouth and neagative reinforcement, the system promotes face-to-face communication.