Technology-mediated parent-child intimacy: designing for ecuadorian families separated by migration.

This study explores the role technology plays in supporting long-distance relationships of migrant parents and left-behind children in developing countries such as Ecuador, in order to inform the design of technology that better suits their affective needs and their context's constraints. We derived three design principles based on our fieldwork in Ecuador: shared experience, the empowerment of children to self-express and children's need to safely build a private communication channel with their parents. We report our research findings and propose a set of design concepts for future work.