BabyHCI: Evaluating the Experience for Babies and Caregivers in the Context of an iPad App to Encourage Babbling

Abstract

This work presents early findings from the evaluation of a prototype iPad game designed to encourage pre-linguistic vocalisations (baby ‘babble’) which support language development in babies. The core functionality within the prototype is already known to be effective and this work sought to evaluate and understand the experience of the app within the parent-baby dyad. The study was carried out with 10 babies (and caregivers) where the baby ‘played’ with the iPad app for five minutes and the caregiver then completed a short survey. This work is one of only a very small number of studies within the IDC community involving babies. The key contributions from this early work are a set of challenges which are valuable to other working within the field of ‘BabyHCI’.