Maarten Van Mechelen

Delft University of Technology, Aarhus University

Papers

Total Citations

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About

Maarten Van Mechelen is a leading researcher at the intersection of child-computer interaction, design for children, and critical technology education. His work fundamentally explores how young people engage with emerging technologies—from the Internet of Toys to social robotics—and how to empower them as critical, reflective participants in a technologically saturated world. Van Mechelen’s major contributions include pioneering frameworks for studying children’s relationships with hybrid, internet-connected toys, as detailed in his highly cited work “When toys come to life” (14 citations). He is perhaps best known for his groundbreaking research on promoting children’s critical thinking through robot deception (12 citations), which challenges the field to move beyond mere usability toward fostering deeper ethical and analytical reasoning in young users. His notable achievements include developing novel design methodologies that place children’s agency and critical reflection at the center of technology design. With a citation impact that belies the recency of his work, Van Mechelen is shaping a new generation of research that asks not just what children can do with technology, but how they can thoughtfully question it.