There is no single technique or a magic formulate in working with children to co-design technology.
A combination of techniques has been developed and used as an approach to gather data, generate ideas and developing prototypes.
3. 1. Understand current theory and practice on
working with children as design partners
2. Understand current theory and practice on
applying creativity techniques while designing
technology with children
3. Design and develop a low-fidelity prototype of an
iPad application
4. Create wireframes for the iPad application
5. Evaluate the wireframes of the iPad application
3
Objectives
4. Best practise working with children
as design partner
Nesset, V., and Large, A. 2004. Children in the information technology design process: A review
of theories and their applications. Library and Information Science Research, 26, 140–161.
Tester
Observation
Passive role
Brainstorming
Post – it notes
Prototypes at end
INFORMANT
Tester or
Design partner
Active part
in design
EQUALITY FROM THE BEGINNING
5. Cooperative Inquiry
“Cooperative Inquiry is a method of
partnering to design technology for children
with children”
Children are considered equal to adult
designers, and directly contribute to ideas for
the design of technology
6. Cooperative Inquiry
Druin, A. 2002. The Role of Children in the Design of New Technology.
Behaviour and Information Technology, 21(1), pp. 1-25.
Use technology
while adults observe
Test prototypes
Input on design sketches
and low-fidelity prototypes
Equal stakeholders as adults
in all design process
7. Cooperative Inquiry
• No single technique can give teams all the
answers they are looking for
• A combinational of techniques has been
developed and used
• These techniques do not give a magic formula
for working with children, but an approach to
gather data, generate ideas and developing
prototypes
9. Bag of stuff
• Divide in groups of 2 -3 children and 1 – 3 adults
• Sit down on the floor
• Use of large piece of paper to collaborate
• Once the prototype is created, each group present
own idea
• 1 adult take notes of ideas on a white board
• Write down most popular, surprising, and most
repeated ideas
• Group discuss which idea to take forward
10. Sticky notes
• Technique for critiquing existing technology
• All adults and children use the technology
• All write on sticky notes what they like, don’t like and
suggestions for changes
• Each like, dislike and suggestion are written on a
different sticky note
• They are all grouped in categories and sub-
categories
• Outcome is an informal frequency analysis which
shows possible trends
11. Layered elaboration
• They start with a base design on which
to elaborate or iterate
• They use sheets of clear acetate to
add new ideas without ‘destroying’ the
original design, or the work of others
• Between iterations they hold stand up
meetings in which design partners
quickly explain their ideas before the
design is passed on to another group
for further elaboration.
12. Mixing ideas The mixing ideas technique is a merging
individual idea into bigger, collaborative ideas.
13. GOALS FOR CO-DESIGN COOPERATION INQUIRY TECHNIQUES
1. Idea generation • Bag of stuff
• Sticky noting
• Layered elaboration
• Mixing ideas
2. Setting expectations • Wear informal clothes
• Adults at the same level as children
• No hand raising
• Use of first names
• There are not right or wrong answers
and ideas
3. Reflecting as a group • Group presenting
• Adults debriefing
Techniques and methods
15. Parking spot I spy Join the pictures
Cups game Find the right way Find all letters
Observe how children move objects Observe how children match objects Observe how children match objects
Children’s attention is Observe how children join objects Observe how children move letters
Games session
24. Techniques used
•To give them importance
• Purpose of the session
• What design is – What an application is
• “Inventors of technology”
•To generate design ideas
• Dressing up
• Mixing ideas
•To build a low-fidelity prototype
• Colour pens and paper
• Lego and Playmobil
• Stickers
• Carton board iPad
25. Lessons learned
•Have clear goals in mind
•Be organised and open minded
•Make the children feel important
•Let them lead – think yourself as a student
•Open-ended and conversational questions
•Keep it moving
•Be honest – tell children you need their help
•Thank and reward the children
28. “
It is not easy for an adult to step
into a child’s world, and likewise it
is not easy for a child to step into
an adult’s world.”
Prof Allison Druin
29. • To give them a voice in design
• To give them power
• To come up with more ideas that we never
would think about without them
• Adults are experts in their own field – children
are experts in being children!
Children are considered equal to adult designers, and directly contribute to ideas for the design of technology.
“Cooperative Inquiry is a method of partnering to design technology for children with children”
Cooperative Inquiry is a method of design partnering in which adults and children work together.
Cooperative Inquiry has been developed by Prof Allison Druin and her colleagues at the University of Maryland.
It is the result of work with children ages 7-11, who meet in a lab twice a week after school, and two weeks of full day sessions over the summer.
She has built an on-going partnership.
Children are considered equal to adult designers, and directly contribute to ideas for the design of technology.
Prof Druin (2002) believes children have four roles in the design of technology: user, tester, informant and design partners,
The different roles have been defined according to
how adults relate to children,
what stage in the design process that children use technology
what goals researchers may have for inquiry with children
In the role of user, children use technology while adults observe them, videotape them or test for skills.
In the role of tester, children test the prototypes before they are released to the market.
In the role of informant, children input on the design process. Adults observe children using existing technology and ask them for input on designing sketches and low-tech prototypes.
In the role of design partners, children are considered to be equal stakeholders in the design of new technologies throughout the entire experience.
Cooperative Inquiry offers a set of techniques that can be used by teams of children and adults together during the design process.
The BAG OF STUFF is a prototyping technique in which children and adults use big bags filled with art supplies such as glue, clay, string, socks, scissors, etc. to create low-tech prototypes of technology. The content of the bag of stuff is often tailored according to the project they’ll be working on. For example, when exploring technology involving music, the bag will include auditory supplies such as bells, and noisemakers.
They sit down on the floor and divide in small groups which helps the process of sharing ideas.
Each group usually includes two to three children and one to three adults working together.
They usually use large sheets of paper which allows numerous design partners to gather areound a table or floor space to collaborate and work together on one idea at the time.
After they’ve created their own prototype, each group present their idea to the whole team.
One adult takes notes on the BIG IDEAS on a white board during he presentations.
The note takers writes down the ideas that are surprising, most repeated among the groups or ideas that receive the most reaction from the whole team.
After the presentation, the teams discusses these ideas and decides which to pursue.
The use of bag of supplies support bringing the children into the design process.
It’s a technique for CRITIQUING an existing technology or prototype of a new one.
All adults and children use the technology. As they are working, all partners write on sticky notes what they like, don’t like about the current technology and suggested changes to the technology.
Each like, dislike and suggestion is written on a different sticky note.
All sticky notes are then put on a large wall space.
They are grouped in categories and subcategories.
The outcome is a kind of informal frequency analysis which shows possible trends that can inform directions for the next iteration.
They start with a base design on which to elaborate or iterate.
They use sheets of clear acetate which is laid over the original design, and are used to add new ideas without ‘destroying’ the original design, or the work of others.
Between iterations they hold stand up meetings in which design partners quickly explain their ideas before the design is passed on to another group for further elaboration.
At various time of the design process, they ask all partners to reflect on their experiences by writing or drawing in journal, videotaping activities, and having large group discussions.
The reflective experience is adapted for use with all ages as children who cannot write can draw or speak and an adult sill sit with the child and with the child’s perission, annotate the draw reflection in writing to provide clarification for later analysis.
Reflecting in this way helps all members, adults and children, to clarify ideas and continue the elaborative creative process.
“The mixing ideas technique is a merging individual idea into bigger, collaborative ideas”. In The Classroom of the Future project, the authors reported that for children aged 4-6 years it is difficult “to truly collaborate together on one another’s ideas…they find difficult to understand the concept of building upon each other’s ideas and…They have a difficult time “letting go” of their own personal idea to combine with another person’s to generate a completely new idea”. The authors used the analogy of baking cookies and mixing colours to explain the concept of mixing ideas.
Brainstorming
Pen
Paper
comicboarding, magicboarding and storyboarding as Participatory Design techniques to stimulate creativity and ideas. Comicboarding is described by the authors as “a participatory design method that uses specially created books to generate engaging, productive brainstorming sessions with children”.
Magicboarding is a technique in which the authors added a Wizard of Oz component to comicboarding. Storyboarding are images displayed in sequence to visualize an animation or organise a story.
The design session took place at a Primary School, in the reception class room.
Children finished school at 3.25pm and were given a snack and a drink before starting the session. The design session started around 4.15pm and lasted until 5pm.
All children and the researcher sat down at a red table, as they did during the games session. Again, this follows the Cooperative Inquiry’s technique of “adults should be at the same level of children”.
The design session took place at a Primary School, in the reception class room.
Children finished school at 3.25pm and were given a snack and a drink before starting the session. The design session started around 4.15pm and lasted until 5pm.
All children and the researcher sat down at a red table, as they did during the games session. Again, this follows the Cooperative Inquiry’s technique of “adults should be at the same level of children”.
The researcher put some colour pens in the centre of the table and an A3 white paper in front of each child.
The design session started with explaining to the children the purpose of the session.
The children were told that they were “inventors of technology” to help them understand that their ideas are very important
The children were also told that they were going to design and draw an iPad application.
They were explained the meaning of design (drawing what something will look like, for examples, the builders who build houses, first they draw the house on a piece of paper and then they copy and build the house) and the meaning of an application (a game).
They were also asked if they knew what an iPad is, and they were all familiar with what it is.
They were also told the reason why they were asked to dress up: to stimulate their ideas.
The following questions were asked to each child:
what do you think <character> had for breakfast this morning?
do you think <character> went to school today?
what do you think <character> did?
did <character> learn the letters? How did <character> learn the letters?
The reason these questions were asked was to give the children a starting point from which to find ideas for the design of the iPad application.
Cooperative Inquiry uses the Technology Immersion technique (described in Section 2.1.6.2) as a starting point for the brainstorming.
The researcher didn’t want to use this technique, mainly because the participants were quite young, and there was the possibility that they could have copied ideas from other applications.
I was more interested in the participants’ original ideas, in new, novel, fresh ideas and not copied from other games. The children were not told which costume to wear, but they chose it themselves.
“The mixing ideas technique is a merging individual idea into bigger, collaborative ideas”. In The Classroom of the Future project, the authors reported that for children aged 4-6 years it is difficult “to truly collaborate together on one another’s ideas…they find difficult to understand the concept of building upon each other’s ideas and…They have a difficult time “letting go” of their own personal idea to combine with another person’s to generate a completely new idea”. The authors used the analogy of baking cookies and mixing colours to explain the concept of mixing ideas.
The children kept drawing on their own piece of paper, and some of them started to be bored and impatient. At this point, it was time to change task. As Farber et al. (2002) reported from The Classroom of the Future project, it is difficult for children at this age to stay focused on the same task for a long period. Short and more frequent tasks were organised