Sinem Aslan (Ph.D.)* is a senior research scientist at Intel Labs with a research focus on exploring the intersection between user research and AI to enable personalized experiences.
Lenitra M. Durham (Ph.D.)* is a Senior Software Research Engineer/Scientist at Intel Labs, architecting and prototyping solutions combining UX research with AI and validating the solutions in real-world environments.
Intel Labs excitedly presented its recent research, ‘Multi-Modal Conversational Artificial Intelligence in Early Childhood Education: Kid Space at Home’ at British Educational Training and Technology United Kingdom (Bett UK 2023) in March. The Kid Space research prototype combines various sensing technologies with a multi-modal AI system that can interact with children and understand individual progress to provide personalized learning experiences in a physical environment.
Figure 1. Multi-Modal Dialogue System
Previous ethnographic research with dozens of parents showed that the parents acknowledged the benefits of technology use for their young children’s learning, but they still worried about screen time, lack of physical activity, and lack of social interactions. We developed Kid Space to address these concerns and enable pedagogically appropriate technology use for children in early childhood education.
In a previous blog, we introduced our Kid Space research and discussed some of the user insights gained from early pilots. To summarize, the results from these pilots showed that after experiencing Kid Space with their children, parents reported significantly decreased concern about screen time, lack of physical activity, and lack of social interactions. The parents involved in the study both understood and acknowledged the value of Kid Space and its potential for the future of education. Importantly, the study data also showed that using Kid Space at home was an engaging experience for the children.
Figure 2. Kid Space at Home Research Prototype
We are excited to share the results of our first in-the-wild research study with the Kid Space home prototype video. Given its mission to “spark ideas and improve outcomes for teachers and learners” we felt that Bett UK 2023 was a perfect platform to reach the educational community on a global scale. The demo video helped highlight Intel’s vision for pedagogically appropriate metaverse usages in early childhood education by blending the digital and physical spaces to reduce screen time and bring back physical activity and social interaction. See the demo video below for the details.
AI has come a long way but there is still so much more to be discovered, and Intel is committed to advancing AI technology responsibly. Based on our initial research findings and our demo at Bett UK 2023, we believe Kid Space can be a both a valuable and responsible tool to support learning at home. We hope to use the insights gained from our studies and feedback from educational communities to improve future iterations of the Kid Space research prototype for the overall benefit of teachers and learners. Toward this end, we are currently working on optimizing our AI building blocks – the computer vision components, the multi-modal dialogue system, and the user interface application to run efficiently on a laptop for a system-in-a-box experience. To enable scalability, we are also developing an extensible research platform for teachers and developers to easily customize and utilize for teaching and learning.
*On behalf of the entire Kid Space research team.
Sinem Aslan earned her M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Instructional Systems Technology with a minor in Educational Inquiry Methodology from Indiana University. She currently works as a senior research scientist at Intel Corporation. Her research focuses on understanding how AI can better understand and model human behavior to enable personalized experiences. As a scholar, she authored several journal publications, given presentations at international conferences, and received a number of internationally-recognized awards for her research.