Making Sense of Play: Transforming Actions into Words

4.1. Choosing Where to Start

The original intention with my research was to explore young children’s play practices with tablets. I chose a qualitative approach and direct observations to more efficiently map these practices and chose a method that would better accommodate my choices regarding which approaches to employ. I chose grounded theory (Charmaz, 2014; Creswell, 2013; Glaser & Strauss, 1999; Thornberg, 2012) as it does not require an initial review of a set field, but instead suggests that the empirical data should inform the questions leading to theories that are relevant to the research.

A grounded theory emphasis on comparative methods leads ethnographers 1) to compare data with data systematically from the beginning of the research, not after all the data is collected, 2) to compare data with emerging categories, and 3) to demonstrate relations between concepts and categories. (Charmaz, 2014, p. 41)

Consequently, the study was initiated by setting up a pilot study. In this first phase, the observations focused on children engaging in unstructured free play with tablets, and the results of this study informed the rest of the data collection. The purpose of the pilot study was then to help define the scope of the research and to avoid misconceptions of how young children currently use tablet devices.

The first round of coding and data analysis, plus an initial literature review, followed the pilot study. Subsequently, the actual data were collected in Denmark and in Japan. The data collection involved three institutions (one in Denmark and two in Japan) located in metropolitan areas of both countries. The pilot study goal had been to frame the field and define specific observation categories. It had been based on unstructured free play, meaning children could engage with the device and the apps according to their own choices. This method was then reproduced as the first phase of the study. In this first phase, which focused on unstructured play, children were invited individually to a room at the institution, where, together with a table and chairs, there was a camera set-up and the devices were placed on the table.

The main study also included a second phase that focused on structured play with a pre-defined activity. In this phase, children were together in one of the classrooms but divided into groups, where they could engage with the devices or draw with colour pencils and crayons in different areas of the room. In this second phase, some of the activities occurred in parallel, with some children playing on tablets, while others drew. This dual set-up meant that the observation was ‘divided’, as I had to go back and forth at specific times. As the rooms were not that large, this set-up was not overly problematic, but obviously meant that a few points might have been missed. When this second phase took place in Japan, two student assistants were present and helped both with the language as well as with the recording, as we could have two cameras available instead of one, which proved to be helpful during the analysis. A total of 84 children were observed, 41 in Denmark and 43 in Japan.

This chapter initially presents considerations taken regarding the study set-up, followed by a description of the study design.

4.2. Deciding on the What and How

Before investigating the practices of young children playing on tablets in two countries, a couple of methodological challenges needed to be addressed prior to the observations. With the purpose of limiting too much discrepancy among devices and environments that could compromise the data analysis, it was important to limit the number of variables.

Devices: Devices customised for the observations, together with knowing which applications were installed, promoted some consistency. The devices used for the research would also present the children with an unfamiliar layout and possibly unknown applications. Trying unknown apps on someone else’s device would possibly put the children in an ‘out of their comfort zone’, which may help assess some of children’s digital literacy skills.

Location: Although many studies involving children reinforce the importance of the home environment (Chaudron, 2015; Ogan, Karakuş, & Engin Kurşun, 2012), and by being at home one could see how the devices are placed and used within an everyday routine context, unique physical and family settings (siblings, parental layouts, etc.) could interfere with the observations. Therefore, I opted for doing the observations at educational institutions, where the environment could be more neutral and controlled. Lastly, the choice of being with the children while they played on the devices was also relevant, as any unseen or unexpected mode of use could be further investigated. It also gave the opportunity to see and hear children’s own ways of playing and describing their play while I took ethnographical notes.

Camera set-up: As this study is concerned with children’s digital play, the decision to focus on children’s hands and their use of the device was deliberate and aided the observations and the data collection in important ways. The camera focused on the context in and around the hands to learn how the hand performs and embodies engagements with digital devices (Pink, Horst, et al., 2015; Pink, Sinanan, Hjorth, & Horst, 2016). Digital ethnography scholars have invited researchers to rethink ways of capturing data related to the digital domain, considering the tactile aspect performed by the hand when interacting with digital technologies.

Visualisations on the touch screen are not just seen but they are part of both what the hand incrementally learns and knows, part of how the hand knows and are inextricable from our sensory perception of the wider environments we are in. (Pink et al., 2015, p. 5).

Institutions: A couple of children’s preschools were contacted. The employees of one of them were very keen on participating as they already owned tablet devices and were considering how to involve them in their daily activities with the children in the preschool. The pilot study took place in Spring 2014, followed by the coding and analysis of the data. For the pilot study, 19 children were observed individually at their care institution. A room with a table and chairs was set up with a camera above the children that focused down on the tablet play instead of children’s faces or full torsos. Two devices were available, and the children were invited to use both. The observations lasted around 20 minutes each, with a few children using even less of that time and some trying to extend it. All the video material captured during the sessions was watched several times and fully transcribed. The transcription work was shared with a Japanese translator. I did all the Danish transcription, while the Japanese translator did all the Japanese transcription to make sure no important details were lost.

The observations took place in the Spring semester of 2014 and 2015 in three preschool institutions: one Danish preschool (børnehave), which already uses interactive devices in their daily activities, and two Japanese preschools (hoikuen), which have no type of interactive device available for the pupils or teachers. Upon the institutions’ agreement to collaborate, a letter was sent to all parents of children age four and older who attended the institutions, requesting permission for the child to take part in the study and observations, besides also inquiring if the child was acquainted with tablets or similar devices. All the children belonged to middle-class families and lived in metropolitan centres of their respective countries, more specifically in the regions of Copenhagen, Tokyo and Fukuoka. In total, over 100 parents answered, with five sets of parents refusing to let their children participate, as they did not want their children to use tablets during preschool hours. The children, who were also asked if they would like to take part in the study both before and on the day of the visit, replied positively on both occasions. Only one child in Denmark, whose parents had also agreed with him taking part in the study, had never used such devices before.

The institution’s pedagogues collaborated by providing a room where the observations could take place, and by facilitating contact with the children who took part in the research. Neither parents nor pedagogues were present during the sessions. The devices of choice were an iPad Mini and a Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 (both released in 2014) with the latest running software installed. For the purpose of the research, a total of 60 apps were chosen and downloaded based on the age category, their descriptions and popularity ranking on the Android and Apple store (Google Play and App store). The types of apps varied from the puzzle, game, entertainment, educational and family categories, which were highly rated (four to five stars), however with download rates lower than 500,000 downloads at the time of the download (February 2014). Apps with download rates of lower than 500,000 were selected as a way to try to witness a child’s first encounter with unknown apps and assess ways in which the children deal with these encounters. This decision aimed to assess how children choose the apps, together with observing how they discover what to do and how to play with them. If the children were very experienced with using similar devices, encountering unknown applications would show how or if they apply previous knowledge from known applications to foreign ones.

4.3. Looking at Hands to Discover Play

For the first part of the study, the children, who attended the preschool and had been previously contacted, were called one by one to a room located outside their own group room in the building. The rooms were set up with a video camera overlooking the tablets from a top-down perspective, not focusing on the children’s faces, but on their hands as they used the devices (See Figure 4.1 and others later in this chapter) following tactile digital ethnography principles (Pink, Sinanan, et al., 2016). There was no Internet access in the location. Both devices had mainly children’s applications installed; however, as none of them were initially visible on the first active screen, the children were required to look for them. The children were asked a few questions regarding how they felt about the devices, if they owned one, frequency of use, what they did on it and modes of use (if alone, with siblings, parents or friends). They were then invited to engage with the devices, one at a time. The devices were turned off and without a password, so the children had to turn them on to use them and then they had to find and choose the applications they wanted to use. Each child had a total of 20 minutes to use both devices. After around 10 minutes and according to what they were doing, they were asked if they would like to change devices. After the pilot study had been completed, a series of informal talks with the institution’s pedagogues and some of the parents took place. Although talking to pedagogues and parents had not been initially planned, it seemed a valuable addition to better contextualise the children’s environment. These informal conversations and interviews also helped me to understand how tablets are perceived by the adults surrounding the subjects.

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Figure 4.1.

Child Encountering a Locked Item.

The pilot study proved valuable and presented a rich set of data, which was key for framing the scope of the research. The initial coding of the data took place after all the pilot transcriptions were complete and read through multiple times. With the initial coding process complete, the relationship among the initial codes was identified, which generated the focused codes, providing the final data for the theoretical coding (Charmaz, 2014). Main themes emerging from the theoretical codes served as guidelines for planning and structuring the second round of observations. They also informed a number of relevant topics that led to deepen my investigation process and helped me elaborate further on the subsequent analysis. Following the grounded theory approach, early writing is encouraged, as it demands more than reporting. Instead, it initiates the analytic process to be pursued via rewrites throughout the study (Charmaz, 2014). These topics are presented later in this chapter in the data coding and analysis section.

After coding the pilot study data, I divided the first round of theoretical codes into topic sections. These sections informed the first draft of the taxonomy of tablet play (Fróes, 2015), which is further discussed in Chapter 5. The informed considerations were used as guides towards the second round of data collection and not as fixed points to be tested. The considerations, which are presented in the following, merely helped to funnel the observations towards more framed experiences (Table 4.1).

Based on the initial framework of these considerations, which could be perceived as rough hypotheses, I set out to explore how play was performed in groups. The activities, which are described later in this paragraph, were chosen to help further develop the aspects of problem-solving, vocabulary and digital involvement in groups, plus reveal how peer learning and collaboration were manifested in digital play practices.

While in the first phase of data collection, the children were left to choose whether they preferred to interact/play on the tablet, in the second phase they were asked to use a specific app and to draw on paper. The method for collecting data on the second phase was designed to explore some of the considerations and initial theoretical propositions raised after the pilot study.

Children were asked to use the device in groups, and two activities were planned to take place. The first activity was to see a short demonstration in order to learn how to use an app (‘Book Creator for iPad – Create ebooks and Pdfs, Publish to iBooks on the App Store on iTunes’, n.d.) and then create a ‘book’ using the same app. Book Creator is an app that allows for drawing, writing, picture taking, and video and sound recording. This app was chosen for two reasons. It would both allow the assessment of how children remember using the functions and symbols of an application for a pre-chosen activity, and it would allow for observing how children combine different modes of play and interaction (drawing, picture taking, recording) in one tablet activity. The second activity required them to draw on a piece of paper ‘playing on a tablet’. Drawing on paper ‘playing on a tablet’ was intended to reveal how children represent and explain their own tablet narratives and experiences.

During four mornings, I was present during the activities carried out by the group’s pedagogues. Each group has three pedagogues and one assistant pedagogue (normally a pedagogue student doing part of his/her educational training). Some activities involve the whole group of children, and for other activities, the children were divided into smaller groups. For example, on the days I was present, one group of children was playing board games, other children were playing with beads, making decorations, another group was playing with animal toys and yet another group was playing dressing up and role-playing. The tablet activity was added as one of the possible offers, and, just like the other activities, whoever wanted to join the tablet activity was welcome. On the first two mornings of the visit, two groups of children were presented and introduced to Book Creator separately. They were asked to draw or tell a story using the app. These functions were shown to the children as soon as the groups were formed. Due to space constraints and the limitation of having only two devices, the groups had four or six children at a time and, as a group, children had a total of 30 minutes to use the devices. While one or two had the device, the others could follow by watching and making suggestions. There were a couple of intentions with this activity, first to explore how the multimodal possibility of the app, allowing for video, sound recording, drawing, etc., would be explored (if explored) by the children; second, if and how play would emerge during a pre-defined task.

On the other two mornings and still in groups (this time not necessarily the same group formation, but the same children as in the first two visits) children could use the tablet as they wished for 10–15 minutes and then had to draw on paper after playing with tablets. This time the idea was to gather how tablet play and digital play narratives emerged in an analogue format. Also, considering the initial findings from the pilot study, I was interested in observing which types of icons or symbols from tablets would emerge in paper drawings.

The individual observations took place (first phase) at one preschool, while the Book Creator activity and drawing on paper (second phase) were carried out at another preschool. Both Japanese preschools had similar profiles to those of the Danish ones (as defined in a previous chapter). These preschools focus on motor skills, social thriving, etc. rather than focusing on school-oriented learning, such as learning the alphabet. This aspect was carefully chosen, as I did not want to skew the data analysis by adding such a disruptive variable (children who have learned the alphabet and can read might still act the same with the devices, however, it would be difficult to compare their actions if the reading variable was added).

4.4. Coding Experiences

In grounded theory, the data collected is organised through a coding process, which is the core thread linking the data collection and developing a theory to explain the data (Charmaz, 2014, p. 113). The data collection analysis guides both the literature review and fuels early writings that are revised throughout the process. These revised writings form the final set of theories that contribute to the field by expanding current theories and asking questions for future studies in related fields.

One of the key characteristics in grounded theory (Charmaz, 2014), together with the order of the study phases, is its coding process. The structure for this analysis leads towards a rich but condensed overview of large amounts of qualitative data. The coding process is divided into three areas: initial, focused and theoretical coding (Charmaz, 2014), all described in the following:

Initial coding refers to coding data as actions, staying close to the action and choosing words that reflect it. As this initial coding is based on recorded observations, one incident is compared with another to identify similarities and discrepancies, e.g., uses force when touching the screen; tries to interact with locked items; and interacts with arrow symbols to both play and navigate within an app.

Focused coding refers to weaving the initial codes into a more explicit phenomenon to ‘determine the adequacy and conceptual strength of your initial codes’ (Charmaz, 2014, p. 140), e.g., acquiring touch knowledge through interacting with the device; some images require decoding (lock symbol = not available), and children create their own game narrative by using arrow symbols to continue playing instead of following the game order.

Theoretical coding ‘simply means applying a variety of analytic schemes to the data to enhance their abstraction’ (Glaser, 2005 in Charmaz, 2014). Theoretical codes also help to make the analysis coherent and comprehensible (Charmaz, 2014, p. 151), e.g., hand knowledge; semiotic, vocabulary; and play experience.

I used this coding structure for the initial analytical process of the pilot study data. Following the initial coding, I identified focused codes as tentative categories so as to further develop and explore these codes in the next round of iterations.

All the video material captured during the observation sessions was watched several times and fully transcribed – both what was said and the actual play (how children interacted with the devices). The initial coding took place after all the transcriptions were completed and reviewed multiple times. With the initial coding process completed, the relationship among the initial codes was identified, then the focused codes were generated, which provided the final data for the theoretical coding.

As much as an analysis process is set to be a structured and organised activity, making sense of the data, together with clustering and creating the categories and codes, tends to be a rather abstract and unstructured process. Although some of the actions observed appeared to be easily linked to one another, an additional set of clusters could appear depending on the discipline analysing the data. Due to my cross-disciplinary background, I could identify a range of values in the dataset, since some data aspects could cater for interaction design, play, digital literacy and phenomenology fields. However, depending on how I clustered them, they would gain a distinct focus. This clustering process was a huge challenge, and the way I dealt with it was to follow a disciplined structure, while allowing the data to overlap into more than one set of codes.

The data analysis process started with transcribing every single video by describing the actions that were occurring together with things children said during the session. Sometimes questions and my own comments emerged during this transcription process and were written down in the transcription next to the paragraph that provoked the thinking, e.g., ‘He has clearly played with tablets before as he asks for the password, however when encountering a blank area, instead of swiping sideways to find other apps, he just taps the applications visible in the lower bar.’

As points emerged, I captured screenshots from the videos and added them to the transcription to illustrate the description. After each transcription, I listed all the apps that had been used. At the end of each transcription, I would write the main actions, together with the utterances of the children, into a file. The collection of these passages formed the first set of codes.

After many hours of attentive video transcription, it is not uncommon to miss seeing repetitive actions that could feed into valuable questions. Consequently, I tried to carry out just three hours of transcription at a time to avoid this problem as much as possible. By having a couple of hours’ break in between, I was able to return to the data refreshed and aware of the material I was transcribing.

Throughout the process, I realised I also needed to code or define the hands’ movements, as they informed some of the communication and intentions during the play. Besides, as the hands do most of the interacting actions while children play with tablets, I also needed to define these actions in order to have some consistency in the analysis. This focus on the hands led to a typology of hand interactions, presented in the following section.

4.5. The Context of the Hands

During the transcription period, another aspect of the data emerged: the role of hands in communicating as the centrepiece or the magic wand that brings the screen alive. As when describing what children were doing on the interface, I needed a clear description of the actions they were performing. These ways of interacting with the device informed an initial typology of hands’ actions. This typology can be of use to both those observing children’s screen interaction and readers in the following chapters when sections of the data transcription are presented. A small glossary follows the hand typology as it provides as an additional aid during subsequent chapters.

The observed variety of actions aligned with differences in hand movements and intentions led me to classify the touch inputs observed into a preliminary hand typology, which I summarise in the following ¹ :

• Hovering (Image 4.1):

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    Action: moving the hands or just one finger above the interface.

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    Suggested intention: still in doubt and exploring the possibilities, making a choice, deciding what to do.

• Tapping (Image 4.2):

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    Action: fast touch with one finger (or by chance with an arm or another hand).

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    Suggested intention: to play, the child had made a choice regarding an app, or a symbol and decided to interact with it.

• Swiping (Image 4.3):

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    Action: while touching, moving one finger across a small area of the screen.

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    Suggested intention: to enter the device, to browse on the device, to flick through pages in a book, to go forward inside an app.

• Dragging (holding; Image 4.4):

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    Action: tap and, without letting go of the contact interface, move the finger/hand across the screen.

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    Suggested intention: to move a character or icon around the interface, to move apps across the screens/areas of the device.

• Continuous tapping (Image 4.5):

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    Action: a series of short consecutively taps.

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    Suggested intention: to try to get an icon to respond (even in cases when it is not necessarily interactive), insistence.

• Force tapping (Image 4.6):

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    Action: tapping with pressure (can be related to using force when drawing on paper).

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    Suggested intention: to try to force an icon to respond, persistence.

• Long tapping (Image 4.7):

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    Action: tapping for a bit longer than a short tap (observed when either trying to choose something for the second time or trying a non-interactive symbol).

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    Suggested intention: Also persistence, as if the device had not obeyed.

• Tilting (Image 4.8):

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    Action: moving the device sideways, vertically or horizontally.

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    Suggested intention: to control icons or characters within an app, e.g., to pour liquids, to drive, to make things fall, etc.

• Divergent dragging (Image 4.9):

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    Action: moving two fingers in opposite directions.

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    Suggested intention: to see things ‘closer’, zoom in.

• Convergent dragging (Image 4.10):

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    Action: moving two fingers towards each other.

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    Suggested intention: to bring it back to its original size, zoom out. To try holding an object.

• Simultaneous holding (Image 4.11):

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    Action: tapping and holding simultaneously with two fingers (on related picture index and thumb are used to try to rotate an object on the interface).

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    Suggested intention: to move the orientation of the space in the case of 3D environments.

• Reach (Image 4.12):

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    Action: pointing closely as in tapping or ‘touching’ an icon.

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    Suggested intention: showing something, sometimes using words that indicate physical distance despite device proximity.

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Image 4.1.

Hand Typology, Hovering - Moving the Hands or Just One Finger above the Interface.

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Image 4.2.

Hand Typology, Tapping - Fast Touch with One Finger (or By Chance with an Arm or Another Hand).

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Image 4.3.

Hand Typology, Swiping - While Touching, Moving One Finger across a Small Area of the Screen.

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Image 4.4.

Hand Typology, Dragging - Tap and, Without Letting Go of the Contact Interface, Move the Finger/Hand across the Screen.

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Image 4.5.

Hand Typology, Continuous Tapping - A Series of Short Consecutively Taps.

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Image 4.6.

Hand Typology, Force Tapping - Tapping with Pressure to Try to Force an Icon to Respond.

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Image 4.7.

Hand Typology, Long Tapping - Tapping for a Bit Longer than a Short Tap (Observed When Either Trying to Choose Something for the Second Time or Trying a Non-interactive Symbol).

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Image 4.8.

Hand Typology, Tilting - Moving the Device Sideways, Vertically or Horizontally.

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Image 4.9.

Hand Typology, Divergent Dragging - Moving Two Fingers in Opposite Directions to Zoom In.

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Image 4.10.

Hand Typology, Convergent Dragging - Moving Two Fingers towards Each Other to Zoom Out or Move an Object.

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Image 4.11.

Hand Typology, Simultaneous Holding - Index and Thumb Are Used to Try to Rotate an Object on the Interface.

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Image 4.12.

Hand Typology, Reach - Pointing Closely as in Tapping or ‘Touching’ an Icon.

Some of these terms, such as tapping and swiping, already belong to an everyday vocabulary when referring to touchscreen interfaces. However, even though some of them are associated with digital devices, they are not necessarily defined beyond their precise physical actions. ² The typology proposed here defines some of the actions a bit further, and matches them to intentions of use. For example, while playing a game where one needs to drag a boat across the screen to save a drowning sailor, the dragging action was accompanied by the child saying ‘you have to take him there’. The actions identified in the analysis and classified in the typology helped frame the hand language vocabulary, which seems to have been learned through interacting with tablet devices.

4.5.1. A Slice of Data

The following examples of the transcription and coding illustrate how I followed this coding process. These examples, one from Denmark and the other from Japan, are followed by a compacted version of the whole coding table.

First phase, Subject J:

He looks continuously at the screen while trying to see where to tap. He then tries the star on the right top corner followed by the lock symbol in the centre of the screen. When tapping on the lock, it loads the next stages of the game that are not yet available (what signs and symbols are part of tablet semiotic vocabulary?).

He keeps tapping on the locked images for some time. As he does not appear to grasp what should happen, I have to instruct him to tap on ‘x’ to close that window and also have to instruct him to choose the area that is ‘open’ and say that he can choose that (icons/symbols informing a narrative?).

Initial codes: trying to interact with non-interactive icons (locked images, stars); hand position in relation to activity, changes fingers, uses pressure on tap and repeats tapping on an icon when the device does not respond (Figure 4.1 and Figure 4.2).

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Figure 4.2.

Force-tapping on Locked Images.

First phase, Subject H:

He watches the video holding his hand above the device, waiting for interaction and even taps on the screen while the animation is still going (Figure 4.3). (Hand position indicating intention/expectation?)

As the truck starts to drive, he holds the device with both hands to control the truck through its physical position, brings the device down when the ‘action’ stops. Tries to interact (swipe) with the loading bar (signs and narratives) (Figure 4.4).

Initial codes: hand position in relation to the device (ready to act), taps on non-interactive icons, taps repeatedly on icons in order to get a response. He tries swiping on the loading bar (similar to the opening bar on the device’s main screen).

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Figure 4.3.

Tapping on Character (Trying to Interact) while Animation Is Running.

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Figure 4.4.

Trying to Interact with the Loading Bar.

4.6. Chapter Overview

Coding the data provided me with a clearer overview of all the observations, while allowing me to see the data in patterns. As I finished the first big round of the theoretical coding after both phases, it became clear that the code group was too vast to work with individually. Besides, many of the codes intersected. Furthermore, it also became evident that when the codes intersected, they gained distinct ‘weights’, helping shape more of a contribution to the field. Therefore, by following these intersections, they were further grouped into clusters that shaped the five categories leading to the taxonomy.

With the taxonomy at hand, I identified a number of key points that other scholars had written about extensively. Throughout this process, a number of questions were raised, from ways in which children interact and engage with the device to ways in which children communicate and learn with and about digital devices through play.

In the following chapter, the theoretical codes are further presented, analysed and discussed from within the taxonomy and intertwined with the relevant theories. The further analysis and discussion guide my theoretical contribution that follows.