The Joan Ganz Cooney Center is an independent research and innovation lab within Sesame Workshop that advances positive futures for kids in the digital world, working with academic, industry, and NGO partners to develop a shared understanding of children’s well-being in digital play; build awareness of and interest in designing for children’s well-being in digital play environments; and encourage the adoption of our framework and research findings.
Oct 2023: The Joan Ganz Cooney Center at the Sesame Workshop joined the Inspired Internet Pledge as a Signatory.
Jan 2024: With support from Pinterest and Foundry10, invited 10 professionals who design kids tech to join us for the inaugural Well-Being by Design Fellowship. The organizations that the fellows represent range from small startups to large, well-established companies; all of them share a passion for creating great digital experiences for young people.
- Met regularly as a learning community, workshopping ideas informed by well-being and child development frameworks and applying them to the fellows’ digital products for kids.
- Invited industry experts and young people to share their expertise and feedback with our fellows.
- Learned how companies like Scratch and LEGO are applying frameworks such as RITEC and Playful by Design, considered how to measure wellbeing and make the business case for designing for positive outcomes, and explored how to include children and families in the design process to create inclusive and accessible products.
- Celebrated the conclusion of the fellowship in April 2024. Each fellow shared the highlights of their experience and discussed how they have been inspired to incorporate these frameworks into their products as well as the role that the fellowship has played in their professional development journey.
Jan 2024: Published Understanding Well-Being in Digital Spaces, which breaks down some of the components of wellbeing from the RITEC framework for developers.
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Description
Responsible Innovation in Technology for Children (RITEC)
We are working with academic, industry, and NGO partners to develop a shared understanding of children’s well-being in digital play; build awareness of and interest in designing for children’s well-being in digital play environments; and encourage the adoption of our framework and research findings.
Measurement
- Community growth – number of partners (industry representatives, NGOs, researchers, etc.) that sign on
- Engagement in our events, accessing and contributing to our resources
- Additions to the Design Well, Play Well website, particularly examples of promising and successful practices, and other efforts aligned with our focus
Alignment
- Tune for emotional well-being
- Share lessons collaboratively across the tech industry
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Description
Well-being by Design fellowship
Our goal is to promote “well-being by design” as an aspirational and accessible goal for industry by supporting designers to workshop well-being-informed ideas in their work on digital products for kids. The Cooney Center will support fellows through workshops, consultations with industry experts and youth, and collaborative learning and sharing as they make progress on their designs. We will also engage further with the larger community of designers who applied to the fellowship and create opportunities for them to learn.
Measurement
We will document and share publicly the fellows’ work in case studies that specify how they have implemented design features to support well-being in their technology and media products for kids.
Alignment
- Tune for emotional well-being
- Share lessons collaboratively across the tech industry