Grasping data: tangible activities for young children’s understanding and reflection on personal data

Atabey, Ayça, Lechelt, Susan, Perera, Dushani Imesha, Ramirez Duque, Andres Alberto, Hinrichs, Uta, Vines, John, Brewster, Stephen Anthony and Manches, Andrew 2026. Grasping data: tangible activities for young children’s understanding and reflection on personal data. Presented at: 25th Interaction Design and Children Conference, Brighton, UK, 22-25 June 2026. Proceedings of the 25th Annual ACM Interaction Design and Children Conference. ACM, pp. 1277-1280. 10.1145/3773077.3813773

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Abstract

Personal data and digital technologies increasingly shape children’s daily experiences, but younger children are seldom presented with opportunities to reflect in-depth about their perspectives on personal data, beyond simple warnings about not sharing information online. We present Grasping Data, a set of portable activities aimed at helping children explore what counts as personal data, why some data feel more personal than others, and how meaning changes between audiences and purposes. The demo combines three linked tangible activities: a teddy-bear proxy for card sorting-based discussion, a wooden tangible prototype for self-generated activity data, and a set of shape-changing multi-material objects for embodied interpretation of personal data. For the IDC community, the demo contributes a 10-minute encounter highlighting concrete, research-based, low-tech methods to discuss personal data with young children across formal and informal learning settings.

Item Type:	Conference or Workshop Item - published (Paper)
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Schools > Computer Science & Informatics
Publisher:	ACM
ISBN:	9798400722837
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	13 July 2026
Last Modified:	13 Jul 2026 11:32
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/188156

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