Exploring Children’s Engagement in Monitoring Indoor Air Quality: Longitudinal Study

BACKGROUND: Indoor air pollution is harmful to everyone, but children are of particular concern, as they are more vulnerable to its adverse health effects from air pollutants. Although mobile technology is increasingly being designed to support monitoring and improving air quality indoors, little attention has been paid to its use by and for children. Previously, we created inAirKids, a child-friendly device to promote children’s engagement with monitoring indoor air quality through a participatory design process. The next step is to evaluate its usability in the real world. OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study is to investigate how inAirKids affects children’s understanding of and engagement with indoor air quality through a longitudinal field deployment study. METHODS: We deployed inAirKids in the homes of 9 children aged between 6 and 7 years, and investigated their use for up to 16 weeks by conducting semistructured, biweekly interviews. RESULTS: The results show that participants promptly engaged with inAirKids but quickly lost interest in it owing to the lack of engaging factors to sustain engagement. In addition, we identified 2 design considerations that can foster sustained engagement of children with monitoring indoor air quality: design interactivity for engaging in continuity and corporate hands-on activities as part of indoor air quality monitoring for experiential learning. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings shed light on the potential to promote the engagement of children in indoor air quality as well as considerations for designing a child-friendly digital device. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first longitudinal field deployment to investigate how to engage children in monitoring indoor air quality.