Toward Interactive Reading: Co-designing With Adolescents to Explore Opportunities for Overcoming Reading Challenges

Adolescence is a critical stage in developing life-long reading ability, but many adolescents struggle with reading due to inadequate vocabularies, lack of interest, and limited self-regulation. Amidst existing technology for reading support, few are specifically designed for this group. As the first step to bridge this gap, we conducted co-design sessions with 10 participants aged from 14 to 17 (with seven exhibiting attention deficiency or hyperactivity) to explore their challenges in reading and the support they need. We found that participants' design ideas were primarily centered around structured previews or visual elements with positive sentiment to sustain their motivation to read, multi-sensory stimuli to make reading interesting and engaging, and progress monitoring combined with high-intensity visuals to improve reading efficiency. Drawing from the findings, we discuss the needs behind participants' designs and future directions for supporting the development of adolescents' reading ability.