User Interview
User Interview summary:
Interviewee: Parents in their 40s, children ages 6 and 12 (male)
Note: This interview was conducted with the idea of doing a pilot study with just one family instead of multiple families, so it is not necessarily representative of all families in this generation. However, we felt it was important to test the perspective of a family actually raising children.
There are five main categories of interview questions:
- Questions about the child's drawing experience
- Children's usage of the app and their opinions on it
- Opinions on the introduction of AI technology
- Opinions about children and parents drawing together
- Feedback on the service/app we want to provide
Q: How did you start drawing, what is your experience with drawing?
Kids started drawing in kindergarten, when they were about 7 or 8 years old.
The first things they drew were characters like Zolaman.
Parents help them to attended to art institution, or children participate in after-school activity.
Family members have no experience of drawing together.
Kids used some coloring books.
Q: What is it like for parents and kids to draw together?
Kids don't think it's fun to create with their parents.
Parents are often forced to participate in school assignments.
Voluntary participation is a bit difficult because parents have to work full time and don't have enough time.
Q: Tell us how kids are using your app.
YouTube/Game is 99% and the remaining 1% is KakaoTalk. Kids watch lots of youtube shorts.
Dad installs the game and the kids play.
Girls of the similar age tend to use KakaoTalk/TikTok more than boys.
Q: What motivates kids to use the app?
The older kid is often influenced by his friends. If other kids try something and it seems interesting, then the big kid makes a deal with parents to play it. The younger kid sees what his older brother doing, then begs his parents to let him play. Peer interaction plays an important role in this case.
Q: Are there apps that kids and parents use together?
Kakaotalk. It's pretty much all about the messenger. Other than that, they use Hi School, Hi Class as school app together. Each school has a shared communication app and uses it to make announcements and communicate. Kid's reaction: The teacher do not read my message.
Q: What is your perspective on kids using app, and how do you control it?
Since kids are focused on playing games with it, so parents controls that kids can't install any game without making a proper deal with parents. As a results, parents face huge number of requests from children. This family do not set strict time limit for children, but there are many other acquaintance families that put thorough time limitation to kids about 1
2 hours per day, or not after 1011 pm. They worry about children's app usage rather than expecting something productive, since 99% of apps that kids install are games.
Q: Are you interested in driving creative activity through an app/smartphone?
Parents: I'm interested, but it's hard to induce them to do it naturally. Honestly, it's hard to find the time to search for it, and I'm not sure they'll do it in their free time instead of playing games. I had zero interest in drawing apps, but from what I've heard, it sounds like a good idea.
Parents have bought a drawing device from Samsung, and kids used it often. The use of simple drawing-related electronic device is not only common in interviewer's case (about 20 years ago), but also in the case of children these days.
Q: Please feel free to share us your opinions about AI and stable diffusion.
Kids do not care about it. Dad is not using any AI related apps or services because his job is not related with it. However, he is interested of it since there are a lot of talks about new AI tech in both internet community and news. Parents have heard about ChatGPT, but do not use it.
Parents think that the development of AI will have a big impact on their children's future. In addition, when children become adults, AI technology would expand much further and it would be the part of their daily lives to the extent that parents could hardly imagine. Parents think children will need coding classes, and child should be taught not to rely extensively on AI, which would be difficult.
Advances in technology may not necessarily be helpful in every directions, for example, there is a research that there is correlation between increase in number patients with dementia and advances in navigation system. I think kids could end up asking AI for help with things that aren't too complicated, like using a calculator for simple calculation problem. AI should be used well at the right time and place, otherwise it may become a social problem.
Q: Would it be positive if AI could support children's drawing and overall activities related with art & creativity?
Parents think it is positive thing unless it goes off-limit. They think AI tech would be helpful if it supports people to do their work, but they also think it would be counterproductive if it goes beyond that and creates a lot of works that doesn't need people to involve.
Q: to parents: Would you be willing to draw with your child in real time?
Though it could be attractive to the parents, but for the child, it's not something you can force them to do if they're not interested. Childrens are not controllable.
Q: Which among these three AI/ML features: 3D drawing/Stable Diffusion/animated drawing is attractive to the kids?
Animated Drawing > 3D drawing > Stable diffusion.
Even if the patterns are limited, kids are more excited to see their drawings in motion.
Kids are not very interested in improving the quality of their drawing via stable diffusion.
The fact that the drawing itself is moving is immediately interesting to kids.
Q: What do you think is more important in drawing with kids: making memories or real-time playfulness?
Parent: I think both are good concepts... but I'm sure it's great for kids with strong attention spans, but as a mom of boys, it's important to get it done quickly. Girls are more concerned with completeness, boys need to see the result as soon as possible.