IDC

Nine months ago, I found myself in the Netherlands, attending (and very much enjoying) the International Workshop on 'Interaction Design and Children', organised by Tilde Bekker, Patios Markopoulos, and Maia Kersten-Tsikalkina, of the Eindhoven University of Technology. They deserve congratulation for their foresight in organising that event (and for coming up with its wonderfully concise but descriptive title!) ; it attracted a range of excellent papers, and a large audience of interested researchers and practitioners working in the field of interactive technologies for children. It was clear that there was a demand for more such events.Perhaps carried away by the euphoria of the occasion, my colleagues and I arrived home. t o the realisation that we had volunteered to organise a similar event for 2003. Our first problem was what to call it. We wanted to keep the title 'Interaction Design and Children'. The Eindhoven event was called 'Workshop', but looked like a conference; we decided to call the 2003 event a Conference. So, is this the first International Conference on Interaction Design and Children, or the second? Unable to solve this puzzle, we have simply called it Interaction Design and Children 2003.We are pleased to present in this volume the fifteen full papers accepted for presentation at IDC2003. They cover a range of interesting and high quality research, including applications of new technologies, evaluation of products with children, and designing products with and for children. A strong theme throughout is the search for effective methods to involve children in all stages of the life cycle of interactive products - requirements elicitation, design, implementation, evaluation, and use. Many of these methods are in their infancy; there is scope for radical innovation. This is an exciting field to be working in!Opening these Proceedings are extended abstracts of the keynote talks by Alan Dix and Yasmin Kafai. Echoing the theme of the papers above, both consider, in different ways, what we can learn from children. Alan muses on what it is to be playful, using a range of intriguing examples. Yasmin describes a series of projects in which children have designed software for younger children, and considers what we can learn from what they have achieved.Also in this volume are summaries of the posters and interactive demonstrations presented at the conference, and position statements from the participants in a (hopefully controversial) panel discussion on usability testing for children's online interfaces.