Flannery standing in front of a black background and smiling. She has short curly hair and is wearing glasses and a light purple and brown dress.

E-mail: flannery-currin@uiowa.edu

The University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA 52242-1419, USA

Advisor:

Research

StoryCarnival

StoryCarnival aims to provide low-tech supports (stories and an adult-operated voice agent) for children's face-to-face social play. The stories introduce characters with complementary skills working together to partially resolve a problem, and it is up to the players to decide what might happen next. We have found that the structured activities and voice agent can help integrate shy children in play and overall encourage a trend toward more collaborative, social play. StoryCarnival is now publicly available at storycarnival.org.

  • 2024

    Juan Pablo Hourcade and Flannery Hope Currin. 2024. The 4Cs for Young Children's Technology: Create, Connect, Communicate, and Control. In Proceedings of the XXIII International Conference on Human Computer Interaction (Interaccion '23). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 28, 1–7.
    2023

    Flannery Hope Currin, Kyle Diederich, Luiza Superti Pantoja, Hannah Cargo, Noelle Franzone, Josephine Geiger-Lee, and Juan Pablo Hourcade. 2023. Designing Stories to Inspire Preschoolers' Creative, Collaborative Roleplay. In Proceedings of the 2023 ACM Conference on Information Technology for Social Good (GoodIT '23), Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 40–47.

    Flannery Hope Currin and Juan Pablo Hourcade. 2023. StoryCarnival: Inspiring Play with Stories and an Enhanced Puppet. In Human-Computer Interaction – INTERACT 2023, Springer Nature Switzerland, Cham, 305–309.

    Juan Pablo Hourcade, Ewelina Bakala, Anaclara Gerosa, and Flannery Hope Currin. 2023. Stories and Voice Agents to Inspire Preschool Children's Social Play: An Experience with StoryCarnival: Inspiring Preschool Children's Social Play. In Proceedings of the 22nd Annual ACM Interaction Design and Children Conference (IDC '23). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 543–547.

    Kyle Diederich, Flannery Hope Currin, Kaitlyn Blasi, Allyson Dale Schmidt, Holly David, Kerry Peterman, and Juan Pablo Hourcade. 2023. Changing the dynamics of preschool children's social play with technology: evaluation of technology-based supports for tools of the mind style play. Behaviour & Information Technology 0, 0 (June 2023), 1–26.
    2022

    Flannery Hope Currin. 2022. Supporting Shy & Neurodivergent Children in Social Play. In Extended Abstracts of the 2022 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA '22). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 61, 1–6.
    2021

    Flannery Hope Currin, Kyle Diederich, Kaitlyn Blasi, Allyson Dale Schmidt, Holly David, Kerry Peterman, and Juan Pablo Hourcade. 2021. Supporting Shy Preschool Children in Joining Social Play. In Proceedings of the 20th Annual ACM Interaction Design and Children Conference (IDC '21). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 396–407.
    2020

    Luiza Superti Pantoja, Kyle Diederich, Liam Crawford, Megan Corbett, Samantha Klemm, Kerry Peterman, Flannery Currin, and Juan Pablo Hourcade. 2020. Play-Based Design: Giving 3- to 4-Year-Old Children a Voice in the Design Process. In Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '20). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 1–14.

Ethics of Emerging Technologies for Children

Studies of ethics of emerging technologies are always challenging because they require anticipating future changes in technologies and the way people use them. Emerging technologies can always have unanticipated impacts on people in general, and children in particular who may not be the initial target audience for new technologies. This project aims to develop participatory approaches to involving children and adult stakeholders (e.g., parents, teachers, healthcare professionals, etc.) in anticipatory ethics studies.

  • 2023

    Juan Pablo Hourcade, Meryl Alper, Alissa N. Antle, Gökçe Elif Baykal, Elizabeth Bonsignore, Tamara Clegg, Flannery Hope Currin, Christian Dindler, Eva Eriksson, Jerry Alan Fails, Franca Garzotto, Michail Giannakos, Carina S. Gonzalez, Ole Sejer Iversen, Monica Landoni, Nuria Medina Medina, Chris Quintana, Janet Read, Maria Roussou, Elisa Rubegni, Summer Schmuecker, Suleman Shahid, Cristina Maria Sylla, Greg Walsh, Svetlana Yarosh, and Jason Yip. 2023. Developing Participatory Methods to Consider the Ethics of Emerging Technologies for Children. In Extended Abstracts of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA '23). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 511, 1–3.

Iowa Leadership Education in Neurodevelopmental Disabilities (ILEND)

In 2021-2022, I was a trainee in the Iowa LEND program. I attended twice-weekly seminars and worked with graduate students in other disciplines, self-advocates, and family members on two research projects: one focused on provision of augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) services in Iowa schools and another focused on the intersections of disability, mental health, and incarceration.

Communication between Family and Respite Caregivers of Older Adults

As an REU student at IU Bloomington, I worked on a project interviewing family and respite caregivers of older adults about their communication needs and preferences for coordinating short-term care.

  • 2020

    Aehong Min, Flannery Currin, Gustavo Razo, Kay Connelly, and Patrick C. Shih. 2020. Can I Take a Break? Facilitating In-Home Respite Care for Family Caregivers of Older Adults. In Proceedings of the American Medical Informatics Association Annual Symposium.
    2019

    Aehong Min, Flannery Currin, and Gustavo Razo. 2019. Give Me a Break: Design for Communication Among Family Caregivers and Respite Caregivers. In Extended Abstracts of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, ACM, Glasgow, Scotland, UK, SDC05.