The following are the outputs of the real-time captioning taken during the Fourteenth Annual Meeting of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Berlin, Germany, from 25 to 29 November 2019. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid to understanding the proceedings at the event, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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>> MODERATOR: Hello, everybody. Dear guests, welcome to our session, How and Why to Involve Perspectives of Children Effectively. My name is Daniela. I'm media policy advisor of Deutsches Kinderhilfswerk. A German children's fund. And child rights organization. Which mainly works on topics of children's rights and on the full realization of children's rights in Germany. As member of the coordination office for children's rights within our organization, me and my colleagues are working on various topics, for example, child justice and children's rights in the digital environment. We are funded by the German Ministry of Family affairs. And therefore I'm proud and happy to realize this workshop with fantastic partners and colleagues and speakers today to discuss children rights which effect them regarding the Internet. We would like to provide three good practice examples and after these presentations, you are invited to create your own idea, which might be helpful to think about the ‑‑ about involving perspectives of children in your daily work. So let me now introduce our speakers. At first I welcome Phakamile, from media Africa. And those who came with her, this is joy and Russ from South Africa. And they're going to present a project named Web Rangers.
After this, we have Felix from designing for children's rights and he is going to present the designing for children's rights guide.
And last but not least, Daniela Beyerle from minds and makers, and she's going to present, yeah, her kind of work, and she's going to guide us through a tutorial, yeah. Thank you very much in advance. Phakamile, you have the floor.
>> PHAKAMILE KHUMALO: I will present to you the organization that provides child presentation. I will be brief and give the floor to the young people in the room and give the experiences of what their experiences and how it empowered them as young people.
So I work like I said I work for Bona Bana in Africa, a human rights organization in Johannesburg. It is to promote an ethical and fair society where journalists or media promote a fair and just society. We encourage them to promote a culture with a respect of human rights, and they ensure that the powerful are held accountable and they also respect human rights. Human rights organization. And we do various work. One of our children's work is called the children's program is the Bona Bana program. It is a word that means look at the children. With this title in the program, it is called look at the children. We want to focus on children and ensure that children's rights and views and opinions are taken adversely. On the agenda. It is our pleasure to be here at IGF to show examples of children's participation is successful. We see the impact child participation has around the world.
So before we even start, the assumption is always that we know what child participation is. But just a quick view of what do we mean from MMA perspective, what do we mean when we talk about child participation. Child participation involves encouraging and enabling children to make their views known on issues that affect them. Two very important things there. Providing an opportunity or environment or platform where children can make their views known on issues that affect them. So that is the first point. The second point is for child participation to be meaningful. Adults. So everyone else in it the room that is an adult over the age of 18 have to listen to children's views, take them seriously, and take action together with children. So what that means is that the adults in the room have to listen when children speak and take their views and opinions seriously.
But further to that, after having listened, we have to take action together. So what that means is holding each other's hand when no one is feeling more equal or no one is feeling that they have all the power, but working together with children. To create solutions that are beneficial with children and make sense to children. Why is child participation important for Africa? But it is a right. I think you will understand that. It is a right. This right is enshrined in the U.N. on the Rights of the Child and Africa welfare rights. And that is a way to understand how we want to understand children's problems child participation right. Article 12 says States Parties shall assure to the child who is capable of forming his or her own views, the right to express those views freely in all matters affecting the child. The views of the child being given new weight in accordance with the age and maturity of the child.
And the African charter rights and rights of the child, Article 7 says every child capable of communicating his or her own views shall be assured the rights to express his or her opinions freely, to disseminate for prescriptions as prescribed by the law. Therefore, you can see that it is really important and really use legislation to encourage child participation. That is from MMA's perspective. In South Africa why is it important? Because 35% of the population is children. That is a huge portion of population. If we exclude them in discussions they could view and express their opinion, that means we're excluding 35% of our population, which speaks to issues of exclusion. We cannot solve issues around children when 35% of the population are not including children. That is another important point.
Looking in terms of your specific countries, understanding that if once children are represented on important issues, then those children that are forming part of those discussions are representative of the whole population that fall on the children. That is really important.
So next is what child participation should look like for Miramar and Africa. It should be transparent and fair, everything should be laid out in a way that makes sense to children. For a lot of times ‑‑ as an example, we do people that work with children, we go out on sites and we do surveys, we just give the children surveys and we expect them to complete them without having to explain what the survey is for and what the information is going to be used for. That is a simple example of being transparent and up‑front about all the information you are requesting or needing from children. So that is transparency voluntary, obviously, always giving consent, consent is always ongoing consent. Always ongoing consent and need to ask are you comfortable with this? Are you still on board with this? If not, we will stop at any moment. Child participation should be safe and minimize risk. If at any point in any kind of event or activity where you are including children's voices and opinions and there is a possibility that that child's best interest is not going to be paramount experience, as a child practitioner, it is your responsibility to ensure that you stop the activity because whatever effort or whatever activity you are doing, it should be with the framework to put the child's best interest on the agenda. It is always on the agenda.
Should be relevant to the child and make sense to the child, should be in the best interest. Should be child friendly, inclusive and we will talk about inclusivity and talk about different the capacity of different children in different ages, but also children that are differently abled. A lot of times we don't talk about children that are differently abled. We tend to exclude them from discussions because they are harder to include in discussions and participation.
When talking about inclusivity, that is what we are talking about. It is penitentiary to ‑‑ important to get voices of children that are differently abled. This is highlighted. Inclusive of trained adults, adults that understand child participation and rights based approach that is necessary when including children's views. It should be lastly, accountable. It should be accountable to the beneficiaries and children you are working with at all times. That is what child participation should be according to the MMA at a glimpse.
How do we do child participation? We have had experience in working with children and media for over 15 years and with various partners and we want to improve the portrayal and participation of children in the media including social media.
We have various ways to do this. The first is around children's monitoring project. We have children monitoring project that works to empower children to be able to critically analyze the media to understand how children are represented in media and to understand when violations happen in the media, what the media should be doing about ‑‑ how the media should be representing children. So we actually have media monitors that look at newspapers, look at media content and are able to then analyze which media platforms are enduring to ethical standards of representation of children, but also media platforms that violate children's rights.
When you have the violation, we have children confronting and speaking to power on the media platforms and saying why are you doing this? This is not good practice.
We have a children's news agency, which is an agency to trains young people on how to report. They write for mainstream media. This directly speaks to power. This directly speaks to children being able to speak to power in a way that is phenomenal, and a way that is very unique.
We have the Web Rangers program. We will talk about that, because we have our two participates that will have two minutes to speak. The digital literacy program that empowers people to be safe online but also digital participates to use it safely. And we have the wits accredited course on reporting on children. We have young people coming into the wits course, that is one of the biggest universities. They come and train ‑‑ they become trained as young journalists and how to report ethically and responsibly on children. That is powerful. We have young people who have lived experience on how they should be treated. They're the ones training the journalists how to report responsibly on children.
This is the projects that MMA works and we are really proud of the work we have done in terms of involving children in all of the aspects of our work.
I will hand over now to our two on child experiences and how this experience has empowered them as being beneficiaries of the Web Rangers program.
>> JOY: Hello, everybody, my name is Joy. I will be breaking down what the Web Ranger program is for everybody. Web Ranger is a program that is for learners what it does is that it equips them with digital literacy. For now, unfortunately, it runs at specific schools or certain schools as an extra mural. How one goes about becoming a Web Ranger is going to their school almost like information desk and receiving a handout where it is a questionnaire based on matters around the cyber realm. You fill it out, submit it, MMA people will go through it, select 10 Web Rangers ranging from grade 8 to grade 12. Those 10 Web Rangers then participate to ‑‑ at workshops on selected Saturdays. During those sets, they're equipped with digital literacy as well as given time to discuss with each other so other, for example, you have the sunshine high school discussing with the sunflower high school on what they learned. Perhaps they didn't understand something. So you have the different Web Rangers discussing together.
Now, Web Rangers doesn't just equip the learners with digital literacy and then leave them. They are given challenges that challenges them, of course, to see not only have they gained much from the experience but also gives them a platform to voice out their person opinions on matters that affect the cyber world.
The learners, there were three workshops. After the workshops have to create a video on what they learned. That video is posted on YouTube informing other people that watch it about cyber ills, for example, how to avoid them, how to deal with them and what to do if you are caught up in a sticky situation.
So I believe ‑‑ I strongly believe that Web Rangers is very important. Some adults say children cannot be part of big decision‑making because they don't have the know. If Web Rangers was part of every school's curriculum throughout the entire world, there wouldn't be a reason why children couldn't be part of the big decision‑making processes. That is my view. Thank you, everybody.
>> Good day to one and all. As Joy has already explained about Web Rangers and what it is about, I will talk about my experience as a Web Ranger and the impact that Web Rangers had on me and other children. Before I was introduced to Web Rangers, I knew nothing and lived like everybody in the digital world.
Being part of Web Rangers made me realize a lot about the digital world. In Web Rangers we talk about cyber cyberbullying, online grooming, catch fishing and how to present ourselves if you are in those situations. And if you are in the situations, how to resolve it. Most of all I like managing the digital footprint which is the mark you leave behind on the Internet or online. That is along with your portion online and being part of the future.
Being part of Web Rangers makes me think before being online. For instance, when I post something, I need to think about it. Is it helpful? Is it harmful? Why am I posting it? Is it necessary? These steps will end up helping you make good decisions at the end. In general Web Rangers has let children know what they put themselves into and made children confident and free in the digital world, which is a great thing and all things for the Web Rangers for the well informing and educational information. Web Rangers changed children's lives and made children be open minded and think in every situation. This made them be aware of their rights. In everything, reputation is one of the things that matters.
In short, Web Rangers informs and guides us on how to take care of our reputation. With that information as we grow and own our own businesses we will be able to take care of our own company's good will. Thank you, Chair.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you very much to you three. We continue with Felix.
>> FELIX: Thank you, Daniela. Thank you for having me here. My name is Felix. I'm from an international and nonprofit organization called designing for children's rights, in short, D4CR. We will talk about what we do. But before I go there ‑‑ sorry, I forgot ‑‑ before I go there, I would like to highlight why we think what we do is important.
Right now, I want you to think about I child that may be born today, maybe right at this moment. In what world will this child grow up? What will it experience in the next 10 years? This child could be Emma. If she is born today, she would be 11 years old in 2030. She will live in a world that is more connected than ever. She will experience technology on a much different level as a child than we did. For example, virtual reality or artificial intelligence will be old hypes by then. There will be new technologies that we can't think about right now. But Emma will also be empowered by this new technology, more so than any child before her.
So just look at the children of today and you see what I mean. So there is for example, Malala, Emma Gonzales, they used the Internet, more specifically used social media in particular and enabled the advocacy and activism to spread globally. Malala started her journey when she was listen and started a blog on the Taliban rule. We have Chad on the bottom left that had a new way of detecting a particular type of cancer by teaching himself with scientific papers he found online. So technology for the children born today, they offer great opportunity. But at the same time, not everything is perfect or works that well.
If you consider one‑third of all Internet users globally right now are children and teenagers, however they find very little consideration when we design for the Internet.
We must consider that children as a group are more vulnerable and less resilient to things like dark patterns, misinformation or data abuse. We also know that they connect to strangers over the Internet. We know they hurt themselves by cyberbullying. And we still know very little about the long‑term effects of excessive smartphone use, for example.
How can we protect children?
We know there is already great guidance out there. For example, I think the best example is the U.N.'s Convention on the Rights of the Child. You know it is the most spread human rights Treaty in the world, signed by almost all countries, ratified. In short, it ensures children with four types of rights. I don't have to tell you that. I will tell you it anyway. Survival rights, rights to development, protection rights, and right to participation.
And all of these rights are equally important when we talk about technology and how we design technology. But I would like to highlight the right to participation in particular. Because it touches on two key topics when we create such new technologies.
So the first one is that perspective matters. So the right to participation including children in it a process at the chance of adding another view, another perspective we didn't know before. The second is responsibility. Who is responsible of giving children the right to actually participation when we create new technologies?
We can think about the parents but it is hard for them because usually they're not the ones that create the new technology. Government, I don't know, CEOs, businesses, usually children, they don't have the money. So a CEO is not necessarily listening to them. I would like you to shift the focus on designers.
I would like to quote from a book called tragic design. It says designers are the gatekeepers to technology. They have a critical role to play in the way technology will impact people's lives. That is because designers create a product that embed the new technologies. They design the products that we use and ultimately children use as well. Designers gatekeepers and mediators.
A good designer doesn't just design, but usually they involve the user's perspectives in the design process. And a good designer usually not just invest involves the user's perspective but the users themselves in their design processes. So how can we make sure that ‑‑ first of all, what you see here is by the pioneer Allison Druin. She's a pioneer in involving children in the design process. She opened up ways to use children as users, tester, informant, design partners, which involves different complexities in working with children.
I don't want to talk about how to involve them, but actually why it is important and what we can do. So we saw designers are gatekeepers. They're mediators. How do we know all designers know about their responsibilities? How do we make sure designers write tools and know about children's rights and ethical design? This is where we come into play and we think there is something we can work with.
We are a group of designers, mediators, gatekeepers. The picture you see here is us at the beginning of this year coming together from all around the globe in Denmark. Where we worked for three days on what we think will shape and help shape it in a more ethical way and a way to invent children's rights in the process.
So what we do and what we did in that three‑day workshop and we did one of the workshops last year as well, is giving designers the right tools when they design, not just for children, anyone, but consider the children's perspective in the processes. We call that the children's design guide. You can find it on childrensdesignguide.org. It is a way of integrating children's rights and ethics into the design process.
What we want to achieve with this mission is to create a new normal. So we want designers and companies to think about children's best interest, and then put them first. And when we talk about that, we want designers to think about the well‑being of children. Think about the children's unpack their biggest potential. So help design for world and help design for a generation that is better than us, that is more critical and has the right tools to be more responsible than us.
Let me give examples of what the design guide is made out of. The 10 key principles, the first everyone can use, the right of noun discrimination and diversity. There are three examples of companies that make good use of the principle. The first is Toca‑Boca, part of the community. In the games today, they're creating digital games for children and take care that every child can design a character that represents who they are or who they want to be. No matter of sexuality, race, religion. We have a second example of "Sesame Street," quite old, started in the '60s. They one good example and perspective of how to involve multiracial characters, also one of the first TV series to include a character it with autism. Another example, Lego is part of the D4CR. It is relatively new. They just released instructions for blind people using Braille and voice instructions to build Legos top one of the principles helped me understand commercial activities it had which is about the right of information. What we see there right now is a lot of big tech companies are changing their mind‑set what advertising and informing children while the user protect means. We have Apple restricting how developers can embed advertisements in their apps and collect data that is related to the advertisement and limit what information is collected from children.
And YouTube is working on advertisement on videos that may be watched by children. We have lingo dude that has changed their business process. At first, they had different apps, cross advertising between each other, creating an uncomfortable position for families. They changed their business model and are now a platform that is ad‑free doesn't do targeted advertisement to children.
This is us. We are an open source design guide. We are a growing community. We working together with UNICEF through the whole process to bring that guide to life. It is based on UNICEF's principles. We have lots of big companies that are designing the design guides, but also implementing them in the work. We are open source. Open everybody that wants to join us can join the discussion. We are growing.
We started as a team of 70 designers, experts in children's rights. Now what we did is we spread globally and built local chapters. One here in Berlin. We just had a second meet‑up two weeks ago. We had our first chapter in Tel Aviv. We had our first meet up in London, we had one in Helsinki. Other chapters going up all around the globe. We are growing becoming more and more people and we want to start this conversation, start this movement and we really happy for everybody who joined and helps us spread the word. So feel free to come to me, join us or just have a look at the design guide and spread the word. Thank you.
(Applause)
>> MODERATOR: Thank you, Felix. And we continue with Daniela.
>> DANIELA BEYERLE: Thanks. First of all I would like to thank Deutsches Kinderhilfswerk for letting us support them with the two workshops they ran here at the IGF. It was a really great opportunity and more than that, it was really joyful couple of organizations. We're grateful for that.
My name is Daniela. I'm one of the designers that benefits from the brilliant work that designing for children's rights is doing. We're a consultancy for design thinking and social innovation. We work for the private sector and social and public sector.
And the base for all our projects and the work we're doing is the human‑centered design approach. So basically this is our innovation process and it has six steps. If you want it in a nutshell, there are three main phases you go through. The first phase is immerse yourself in the user's life to deeply understand the effort life, the needs, the desires and aspirations. Then you go to the ideation phase. You identify opportunity areas and create innovative solutions and design prototypes. The last phase, bring solutions to life and implement them. It is a highly cocreative approach and where ideally in every step you involve as Felix said, the users with you in this. You involve them every step of the process.
In our opinion, one of the most important steps of this process is the qualitative user research. This is a diagram that shows the three levels of knowledge. As I said before immerse yourself and find out about the needs, desires, dreams about users. You won't find out about these by just talking to them and interviewing them. If you interview them you will get the explicit knowledge, which is basically what they already have in their mind and what they have thought about several times already. This is what they're going to voice to you.
In order to dive deep or as deep as possible, you have to observe what they're doing. They could mean something else. To do it doesn't mean you are doing it in your effort life. You want to know what the aspirations are. What we do is work with them, we use generative tools within our interviews, within our qualitative research in order to get to this intent, deep knowledge they have, but never voiced before, never thought about before. So today, I brought you a few examples of our work where we involved children within the process. And this is one project we made on behalf of behalf of Aktion Mensch. This is one of the largest organizations here in Germany. What we did is involve the kids in the research, because they are actually the experts.
We visited them at home, we visited kids with and without disabilities. We talked to them. But as I said before, we not only talked to them. We worked with them. We brought along tools that enabled them to work with us on eye level, as Phakamile said before. And ask them to voice dreams, aspirations, and fears. Usually when you work with young kids, they're not that vocal about their feelings. If you work with them in a creative way, they find a way to voice it. And we as designers find a way to translate these insights.
We also visited schools. And it is really difficult to reach children from educationally disadvantaged areas. So we went to the schools. Because actually that is the place you can really engage with them. Because they have to go to school. So we also brought tools with us and worked with the kids at the school. But we also tried several empathy methods in order to see which kind of tasks and tools will help them to empathize with their friends with disables.
And this is another project. When you involve kids in the research phase, you not only involving the kids but you involving their most important stakeholders and this is their parents. Especially when you are working with kids in young age. So this is an example from University of Cologne. They asked us to support them during a founding phase of a new school and inclusive university praxis school. We not only work with the kids but also invited all the parents to join us on the cocreation workshop. So these are the parents from the first pupils of this new school. We worked with them for a whole day. And also again, we brought our tools with us.
For us, it was really crucial to support this founding team of the new school by not only having the university's perspective and the curriculas, but also involving the children's perspective and especially the parent's perspective.
As we saw on this slide that Felix showed, you not only can involve the children in the research phase as experts, they can be designers themselves. This is a project we did on behalf of the Astrid Lindgren School, this and City of Cologne. They asked us to help them redesign a public square in cologne. The problem was the square was used because of the junkies. The junkies not the problems themselves, because they didn't harm anybody. But unfortunately, you could find a lot of used needles at this square. This is not idea, especially with an elementary school around the corner. We went to the school, worked with one particular class of the school for a week and the first step we did was asked the children to name the project. And give their team a name. I'm not sure if the parents would agree but they call themselves angels. So they're the 18 Angels for the Alpener Square. And we asked them to come up with a logo. And they came up with angel wings, and we painted it on the shirts. This give them an identity, and took ownership and were responsible for the outcomes. They were particularly proud of the shirts. They wore them the whole week. We didn't expect that, but they did. There was a research phase, we went to the square with the kids. They took pictures, interviewed people using this square and so on. Then we used different materials and helped them to design co ‑‑ collages for the square and how they imagine the square to be. And in the end, we ran a big party on the square, invited politicians, showcased the work of the children, the prototypes and the documentary we made during the week working with the kids. The kids raised 20,000 euros from the local politicians to redesign this square. It is more of a neighborhood hub than a dirty, scary square. What is now at this square is they don't like ‑‑ didn't put a fence around the square, which you would imagine, but they built a huge bench around the square where everybody can find a safe and dry place. It is more of a neighborhood hub now.
What studies show is that once children are involved in a design process ‑‑ and you can see that this is the work of children ‑‑ the chances that these things will be destroyed are less than if you see that it is a professional designer and adult. This is what you can see at the square now.
And the last initiative I brought for you is on behalf of the International Youth Service of the Federal Republic of Germany. They asked us to help them design youth‑centered counseling services. They already do offer a lot of counseling services when it comes to international exchange programs. But what they discovered is they're not really used and accepted by the youth. So they asked ask to help them recreate youth services. We did involve the youth in every step of the project. Here you can see another collaboration, a co‑creation workshop together with the youth. What you can see here, other than the prototypes you saw before with the elementary kids, these are more of high level and high quality prototypes that can really be a base for the new services of the youth service of the federal Republic of Germany.
So that's it about my work. Thanks a lot. And now, it is your turn.
So what we thought beforehand is that this should be a workshop. And we took workshop quite literally, which means you should work. You should participate. It should be an interactive format. And we brought with us some tools. And my colleagues will spread them. I would like to ask you to join us here in this really comfortable setting. (Chuckling)
So I mean, it is an intimate group. We could all join here in the U. Once you all have the tool sets, I am going to explain a bit more what we want to do with you. Yes, please.
>> MODERATOR: While we're waiting, can you ask questions.
>> AUDIENCE: Thank you so much for the presentation, very exciting really. I would like to find out, the research that's been done, how is that ‑‑ how does that feedback to the various companies, the tech companies, for example.
Do you actually have communications there? The second question I have is around the parent teacher ‑‑ I mean parent‑child workshop that you led sounded very interesting.
In a previous workshop that I attended, it was quite apparent that parents were not as clued up as the students. Or as the children. Like what type of nuances did you pull out there? Were there any clashes in how the parents viewed safety, for example, as compared to children? How did you work around that?
The question for Felix about the chapters. Like how can other countries set up chapters like your organization? Thank you?
>> MODERATOR: I'm sorry. I didn't get the last part of the question concerning the workshop with kids and parents?
>> AUDIENCE: Yeah. I was trying to understand how did that work out? So what were the findings from the parents' perspectives versus the findings from the children. Right? From the workshop we attended it was apparent were not as clued up as the children. Parents are still trying to figure out what is tech. So I'm trying to understand what were the differences.
In places where there were differences, how did you collate that information?
>> In this case, this was a workshop just with the parents. It was a day just for the parents. I think that was crucial. Then they were also able to voice their concerns. They wouldn't do that when the kids around. They want to be brave. Don't want to concern the kids themselves. I think that was a crucial part for the workshop. It was only the parents. To be honest, there weren't so many differences between the concerns the kids had and the parents had, but the parents as I said before, they didn't voice them to the kids. So the kids didn't know that the parents had the same concerns as they had.
I think that was also a learning for the school that they don't have to separate them, actually. Because they have the same concerns. The same concerns already. So I think what they then ‑‑ they created something like ‑‑ I don't know how you translate it. It is like an open hour where kids and their parents can come together and talk about the everyday ongoings in the school and things they want to improve. But then the children and parents are together with the student ‑‑ yeah, with the students from the university, with the teachers, and the head of the school. Does that answer your question?
>> AUDIENCE: (Off microphone)
>> It is the users, but also the stakeholders are part of every process. What we love to do is take our clients, if you may, so with us to the research. So they join us on the interviews with the kids. They join in the workshops. They join when we talk with the parents. So like the translation into the company isn't that hard any more because they were part of the whole process. Obviously not everyone. A specific team. We find it useful to show videos. To show photos, not only show a PowerPoint presentation on the slide with numbers, but rather show clips of the research and videos. They're a nice way to translate and transports the insights into the companies.
>> FELIX: To the question of how to set up a new chapter. The chapters are new, we don't have a process yet. We're working on a handbook currently so others can build up chapters as well. If you are interested in building a chapter, it would also be nice, first of all, to have a group of people, at least two or three people, I think, but also be part or ‑‑ if you took part in another event, another D4CR event to have a connection and so you know the advocacy that you take on.
But if you are interested in opening a chapter, or anyone else interested, please come and talk to me. I can make the right connections and tell you how we did it, how we started our chapter here in Berlin. Also, we may host ‑‑ so we host different local events. But we may also host another bigger event, where we invite all interested to join us. So if you follow us on LinkedIn, I guess or Twitter, you will get to know when the events happen.
Then feel free to join. Some of the events are limited in space, so you need to have to apply. Yeah. That is the way on how to learn about it. If you would really like to build up a chapter, talk to me, I will give you advice on how we did it. Thank you.
>> MODERATOR: Yeah. Sorry.
>> Oh, you are leaving because you are working now? Got you. Yeah, yeah, that's okay. Just leave. (Chuckling)
As I said before, it is a workshop. And we thought we would be talking a lot about participation and involvement and collaboration and gaining different perspectives, so we thought we would ‑‑ we might present you some tools, how to use this in your everyday life.
What we want to ask you is to design a digital service or product that motivates children to brush their teeth. This is your task for now. And what we did is we ran a little research beforehand. One of the results of the children might be a persona, which you find in your tool set. You will find a description of what a persona is on the tool set. And we design this persona already for you. Usually you do this yourself. But we prepared this for you already.
And what we would like you to ask is to, based on this persona, come up with opportunity areas for this specific design challenge.
The next page, you see a template for opportunity areas. So it also explains why opportunity areas are quite important in the design process. We have this nice example of Pippy Long Stockings who is a really brave child, but still is sad because she misses her dad. Usually the solution would be her dad has to stay at home so she won't be sad any more.
If you are working in opportunity areas you create how might we questions in order to get solutions.
One of the first how might we questions in this example is: How might we make it possible for Pippy Long Stockings to have regular contact with her dad so she doesn't feel alone. How about we give her the feeling of not feeling alone with a father‑like figure. Or how might we enable pipe to visit her father. When you create the how might we questions, you open up the opportunity areas for ideas rather than jumping to the first solution by answering the problem.
So what we want you to do is come up with a few how might we questions based on the persona we give you. Then, based on these, how might we questions, we want you to come with ideas. And initially one idea concept for digital product or service for children to innovate children to brush their teeth. I guess it is more fun if you join someone. Team up with your neighbors maybe, work collaboratively on these tools.
My colleagues are happy to join you. Jump in, give you some ideas. I will give you some inclinations of the tools or answer questions. But we really would love to see you working in this workshop. So go ahead.
(Chuckling)
(Activity)
>> MODERATOR: So how are you doing? Are there any brilliant ideas yet? Or do you need more time? I see lively discussion. That is a good sign.
>> Seems to work.
>> Are there any ideas you want to share? I know, I already talked to him. He's a really good student. Please.
>> AUDIENCE: So our idea was to create an app to target the frustration of finishing what he started. A completion sort of thing that has Spiderman and perhaps Lego, Spiderman to target both of his interests there.
And then perhaps the app is set on a timer to do it right after dinner so it doesn't interrupt his playtime and dissociates from dinner, and then it is time to wind down. If we can figure out for a way for the toothpaste to taste like pancakes, then added bonus.
>> (Off microphone)
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>> JOY: So I found a flaw in mine. But I will still present it. I noticed that he loves being on his skateboard.
So what you do is you buy him a simple and plain skateboard, every time he brushes his teeth. We tell him you will design this skateboard. Customize it. Every time you brush your teeth you get one element to design it. For example, if you want to color it in with Sharpies, there are 12 colors. So after brushing his teeth, he only gets one after two weeks. He has to do it for two weeks. So it is like a two‑week period. If he needs stickers, after two weeks of receiving 12 colors, you will then get the stickers. If you want ribbons, after two weeks, then ribbon. The flaw I found is that once he's done designing his skateboard, how are you going to keep him interested? So yeah. (Chuckling)
>> (Off microphone)
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Could we have the slides again? I'm sorry. I don't want to see myself. Okay. So we would be really happy to hear your feedback and afterwards, there are still going to be time for a QA session. And we brought with us a structure for the feedback. If you want to give us feedback, if you could phrase it like, I liked, I learned, I wish with the three points, then we can go to the QA session. Thank you.
Okay. There is no feedback, is there any questions? Oh, feedback.
>> AUDIENCE: So I liked the fact that I got the opportunity to present Web Rangers. I learned that speaking to a crowd of people is actually fun, and adults will actually listen to you. And I wished I could be part, like do this job every single day. So yeah.
>> MODERATOR: Okay. Thank you very much. If there is no other wish to feedback, this session or lesson, we would like to open the space for some questions you might have on this presentations or something else? Yeah. Thank you.
>> AUDIENCE: Can I make my own opinion to the issue instead of the question? Because I have some thoughts to speak out, maybe? Yeah, so hello, everyone. I'm from Hong Kong. And I focus ambassador, if you would like to know more about I focus, feel free to talk to me or my partner after this session, I'm afraid there won't be any other time.
So anyway, so, regarding today's topic about children's participation to the issue, in my opinion, there is one very key point that is called fairness. So fair is a very important concept in the whole issue. So let me explain this with three‑layer structure, perhaps.
So the first layer is they have to get a chance to actually get in touch with technology. So me, myself, anyone here sitting in the room are actually the lucky ones. We have the chance to get in touch or use ‑‑ we have cell phones, we have iPads, all the technologies, we have projectors, everything. We're the lucky ones. Not everyone is as lucky as we are. So ‑‑ maybe from Hong Kong, in my home city, we're lucky. But in countries like ‑‑ I'm not sure, maybe Africa, some African countries, they're not as lucky as we are. So the first step is to allow them to get in touch with technology first. Because if they don't have the chance they can't do any contribution to the whole thing. So probably, this is something that we have to do first before actually allowing them to have chance to speak out. So second layer is a chance to express their own opinion. Because to it myself as an example, if I have any questions or opinions to the Internet, if I'm not invited to hear, I don't have a source or a way to speak out. Because I don't know how to speak out, right? If it I tell my parents what can they do? They can do nothing. I don't have a media to tell others what I want to say or what my view. I can't participate in the whole issue.
So the chance to speak out is actually very important as well. So if you have a chance to get in touch into technology, you need the chance to speak out. Because if you don't, you simply can't let others know what you think and they can't do anything about it.
So after having chance to speak out, the third layer would be the awareness of students because actually, many students or children are not really well aware of the Internet issue. For instance, even though if they have surveys or interviews to do they might not take it serious because they are not sure their voice is important. Especially primary children or smaller children, they don't know that their voice means a lot to us or everyone here. So they have to be ‑‑ they have to be aware that their voice are important. And will be contributed to society. So, yeah. This is the third layer.
And they have to know what they'll be doing. You give them an interview and they don't know what their opinions will become. Maybe it is for nothing. They don't know about it. They have to know why they're doing this and what will be the consequence of saying out all the voices. If they know that there voice will be accepted or listened by all of us here or participating in the IGF, they would be more motivated to speak out their own voice.
So getting back to the making ‑‑ concept is important, because you need the equal chance to use technology and speak out, so their voice can be raised out. I think these three layers are more what we have to do in order to raise children's participation to the whole issue. Thank you.
>> MODERATOR: I just heard there's an online question from an online participant.
>> MODERATOR: Ruben is saying thank you. We would like to know the panel's position regarding the UNICEF state of the 2017 children in a digital world that Government and private sector have not kept up with the game‑changing piece of digital technologies, exposing children to new risk and harms.
The UNICEF report also examine how the Internet increase children vulnerable to risk and harms, including violence by misusing private information and accessing harmful content. The UNICEF report presents current data and analysis about children online usage, the impact of digital technology on their well‑being, digital addiction. And the possible effect of screening time on brain development. Thank you.
>> MODERATOR: The first part, the more specific part, he would like to know the panel position regarding UNICEF state of the world children 2017 children in digital world, the Government and private sector have not kept up with the game changes piece of politics exposing children to new risks and harms.
>> So I personally have not reviewed the document that is in question. I think we are knowing that more needs to be done around protecting children online. Efforts like these, along as what we talked about earlier, the Web Rangers program in particular are geared toward ensuring young people are safe online, but more than that, they become critical citizens to understand the balance between online and offline and understand spending half your day on the cell phone on WhatsApp is not the most productive use of your time. That understand the positive use of the Internet. Just like the young people you mentioned in your presentation. I think we all understand the importance of having those discussions at a global level like this to bring awareness and also reinforce documents, like the document by UNICEF and understanding our collective responsibility in ensuring that young people are safe online.
>> Can I add to that? And also maybe to your point regarding fairness.
I think we don't necessarily have to wait for Governmental or public processes to work and embed children's rights when we create products. I think specifically, I mean, I think it took 30 years to debate for them to include children's rights in the federal law in some Germany. It still hasn't happened. They're still debating. I think these are long processes. I think there is other people that have a quicker way of reacting.
I mentioned designers, there is companies, people that build products, there is the economy. They are in a responsibility as well. And we can start there because the processes work much quicker. If there is any way of helping them getting the right tools, creating the awareness that children have rights, too. Which I think is very often not there. That they don't have access to certain technologies. That we may have to give them access not just to the technologies but to the way of how we create products, how we create technologies, so children can also feel themselves hurt. So that we hear them. I think these are all aspects where we don't have to wait for the public sector, for Government to implement them at all.
>> AUDIENCE: I have a question following up to what he said about access. So I'm pretty aware and knowledgeable about Web Rangers and the advocacy work around online safety. Right? But my interest is do you guys know of any groups in Africa who do work around children's participation in product design specifically? Web Rangers is slightly different in power design. It is more about online safety, how to be responsible online, but not really the product end. Are there any examples that you can share with us?
>> So I don't know any, not yet. That's why we always happy for people who want to joins. (Chuckling)
>> MODERATOR: Are there any other questions or comments? Okay.
>> AUDIENCE: Hi, yes I'm Dalton from the Canadian protection authority, one of the things we grapple with now is how to enhance children's rights and protections under privacy law. And then as you mentioned, sort of in the Bona Bana project, in the work you have done in enhancing the role of consent for children and having a responsible adult being that intermediary. I'm wondering throughout all the work you have done or through the experiences that you have had working with youth and young people, are there sort of policy or responses that have come to mind or specific challenges that you think you might not know the solution to, but you think from a privacy perspective need to be dealt with differently than a regime for it, like writ large for all people. Is there anything specific to children that should be changed for them to experience privacy a bit better? Given, you know, their inability to provide meaningful consent because of their age?
>> I can't think of any right now that is related directly to privacy. I know the GDPR is a big thing in Europe is a right to be forgotten. We don't have that in Africa. That is a huge thing. You guys don't necessarily maybe understand the impact it has because you have it.
And that, for us, that for us would be one of the biggest ones, I think, because we have situations where young people want to be forgotten. But because we don't have that in terms of legislation, we don't have that bigger body that is able to support that.
When you, for example, we have ‑‑ two years ago, I think we had the biggest ‑‑ I don't want to say, biggest scandal. Not necessarily scandal. A young person who had images of herself exposed in WhatsApp spread like a virus within minutes. Even today when you type in her name, those images ‑‑ when the images might not be there, but the story behind that incident is still there. This is two years now, she's going to be applying for university. She's going to live her life. And it was a mistake that happened once.
That is still haunting her to this day. So that might not be directly to privacy, but yeah.
>> AUDIENCE: I do have a comment, but not really an answer. I worked on a couple of projects together with children regarding privacy and also products on the Internet. I found that children and teens have a different view on privacy or any kind of data protection. And they don't necessarily share our view of it being a huge topic or huge danger. But they see it as something like at least what I heard, yeah, of course I don't share information online. I mean, it is the Internet.
So there is something that tells me that we have to consider this perspective, and whenever we talk about privacy, not just talk in our terms about it. But involve children's perspective, and hear how they perceive privacy as well.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you very much. Thank you very much to all of you for your attention today and your participation and your feedback.
I'm really happy that you joined our session, and hope you liked it, too. So I want to say thank you, and good‑bye.
(Applause)
(Concluded)