Tag Archives: designers

In this episode of Into the Digital Future, Shuli Gilutz speaks with Jordan Shapiro and Laura Higgins about the Responsible Innovation in Technology for Children (RITEC) initiative, led by The LEGO Group and UNICEF and funded by the LEGO Foundation. They discuss the RITEC-8 framework, developed through research conducted with over 750 children in 18 countries. Shuli discusses the release of the RITEC Design Toolbox, which has been created as a set of tools for design teams to support their…

Please join us for the official launch of the RITEC Design Toolbox on Tuesday, November 19 at 12:00 ET. Register here! Here at the Joan Ganz Cooney Center, we talk to a lot of folks who design digital products for children. One topic that comes up consistently is the challenge of applying quality academic research to everyday design practice. We are very proud to be a part of the Responsible Innovation in Technology for Children (RITEC) project because a key…

Ever since I joined the Joan Ganz Cooney Center’s Well-being by Design Fellowship, I have found myself subconsciously auditing my entire virtual world for its well-being design considerations. Does the team budget spreadsheet system promote feelings of competence for my colleagues? How does my wedding website support guests’ sense of identity? Did this airline-app-that-shall-not-be-named consider users’ feelings of autonomy in times of a global airline outage at all? I was delighted to attend the Play Make Learn annual conference at UW…

The Call for Applications is now open through October 11, 2024.  If you follow our work, you may have seen the incredible results produced by our inaugural cohort of Well-Being by Design Fellows.  Building from the success of the first year of this program, the Joan Ganz Cooney Center is thrilled to announce a second year of the Well-being by Design Fellowship, supported by Pinterest.  We invite applications from mid-career designers of kids’ technology and media who want to prioritize…

In 2024, the Joan Ganz Cooney Center invited 10 professionals who design kids tech to join us for the inaugural Well-Being by Design Fellowship. The organizations that these fellows represent range from small startups to large, well-established companies; all of them share a passion for creating great digital experiences for young people.  Throughout the fellowship, we met regularly as a learning community, workshopping ideas informed by well-being and child development frameworks and applying them to the fellows’ digital products for…

According to NAEP only 14% of U.S. students reported reading for fun almost every day in 2023 – 13 percentage points lower than 2012 – and average reading scores have declined for most sub-groups of 8th graders since 2020. Tackling this crisis in reading requires a multi-pronged approach to understand and address the challenges. The Advanced Education Research & Development Fund (AERDF) initiative Reading Reimagined has embarked on this work, in particular through funding research on how older children (ages…

The Joan Ganz Cooney Center is thrilled to announce the 10 fellows who have joined our inaugural Well-being by Design Fellowship, which is supported by Pinterest and foundry10. The fellows were selected from a pool of nearly 100 talented applicants through a rigorous review process. The organizations that our fellows represent range from small to large companies; all of them share a passion for creating great digital experiences for young people. The purpose of the fellowship is to promote “well-being…

How can we design the digital world in the best interests of children? What principles should guide innovators of digital products and services that may impact children’s lives? In the Digital Futures Commission, we asked ourselves, how can we translate the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) into a tool that’s practical for designers and developers? Digital technologies are part of the infrastructure of children’s daily lives. They are no longer optional for children but, indeed, crucial to…

Building online communities that are healthy, inclusive, and allow people to be their authentic selves online is one of Riot’s core goals. It’s a complicated challenge and one we know we can’t do alone. That’s the inspiration behind our recent partnership with Ubisoft, our commitment to the Fair Play Alliance (FPA), and the Designing for Digital Thriving Challenge with IDEO. Back in October, Riot, IDEO, the FPA, and the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop put out a call…

This past November 7 and 8, the Joan Ganz Cooney Center, Center for Science and the Imagination and the School for the Future of Innovation in Society at Arizona State University, and Dubit convened about 60 field leaders at the inaugural Future of Childhood Salon on Immersive Media and Child Development. As salon participants, these leaders in education, research, pediatric medicine, technology policy, content creation, hardware development, and more began thinking about the opportunities and risks of immersive media (i.e.,…