AI Friends: A Design Framework for AI-Powered Creative Programming for Youth

TL;DR

This study explores how AI can support family-based creative coding by developing an AI Friend platform, revealing that AI prompts enhance idea generation and parental guidance aids complex tasks, fostering children's agency.

Contribution

We designed and tested a Wizard of Oz platform with families, demonstrating AI's role in boosting creative self-efficacy and collaborative coding in a family setting.

Findings

AI prompts improved game idea generation

Parents guided children in complex tasks when AI assistance failed

Children were more motivated to code for novel ideas

Abstract

What role can AI play in supporting and constraining creative coding by families? To investigate these questions, we built a Wizard of Oz platform to help families engage in creative coding in partnership with a researcher-operated AI Friend. We designed a 3 week series of programming activities with ten children, 7 to 12 years old, and nine parents. Using a creative self efficacy lens, we observe that families found it easier to generate game ideas when prompted with questions by AI Friend; parents played a unique role in guiding children in more complex programming tasks when the AI Friend failed to help, and children were more encouraged to write code for novel ideas using the AI friend help. These findings suggest that AI supported platforms should highlight unique family AI interactions focused on children's agency and creative self-efficacy.