Designing Communication Technologies for Children with a Chronic Illness

Abstract

Children with a chronic illness who must frequent the hospital for various treatments and procedures are removed from familiar environments, such as their home or school, to stay close to the hospital. Their temporary removal from familiarity can cause feelings of isolation. Social connectedness with their friends and classmates may help alleviate their feelings of isolation and help make them feel more normal" like their healthy counterparts. However, current communication technologies are not designed specifically for chronically ill patients. By understanding how patients use current technologies to stay connected with their friends, I propose to develop and carry out a participatory design methodology to produce technologies that assist the chronically ill pediatric population."