“Child-centred design refers to designing products for children by incorporating children’s perspectives, needs, and rights at the heart of the design process. Designers must be keenly aware of the physical, cognitive, social, and emotional development of the children they are designing for.” (Routledge, 2019)
A child-centric approach intends to involve children in various design stages, understanding their unique needs and preferences, which can be far different from those of adults. Children come with diverse constraints and concerns as the target audience, such as accessibility, form, size, function, learning potential, and safety. This process is an empathetic approach to finding design solutions at different levels, such as designing a pedagogy, course, product, learning softwares, or a space. A child’s development and emotional state can be examined through the results of certain cognitive processes such as perceiving, observing, learning, thinking, or an output-based activity. Such an understanding through a participatory action-based analysis can help one identify concerns and challenges and, hence, design a better future for children.
Aspects that foster a child’s development while designing a product can be (a)well-being and emotional responses: something that is engaging, enjoyable, and creates a positive response from the child; (b)educational: a solution that is challenging for diverse cognitive responses, generates curiosity and creativity, (c)social growth: integrates cultural values, boosts confidence and helps with social anxieties, and (d)safety & rights: a space where children feel heard and safe. (e)affordability, accessibility, and inclusivity.
A participatory approach or a method can be beneficial for creating a collaborative space between children, where they can express their thoughts in a safe environment and for designers to engage with them to recognize concerns. It can be done through various activities that initiate design thinking in children through different physical and mental activities such as sports, theatre, and objective-based arts and crafts activities. One way to initiate the task in this service design process is to make the situation friendly and trusting. Deciding on activities that can give a boost start is to start with physical activities such as dancing to music, playing indoor sports, body movements, or such exercises. Encouraging the kids into little role-playings such as superheroes, batman, or Superman, and asking them what they would do to save the world often leads to the identification of smaller problems that designers often tend to bypass, with a larger view in front.
The IDC (Interaction Design & Children Conference) conducted a Research and design challenge with young people from across the world to imagine and submit their ideas about “How can smart machines foster compassion (kindness, equality, sustainability and beyond) in our communities?” A few of the examples mentioned in the images below cover themes as wide as environment conservation, language translation, family dispute-solver, gunpowder detectors, making holograms – an identical you figure, and helping people.
Children’s minds can be understood when heard to them very closely. This can be done using various one-to-one approaches such as giving an object, a drawing, or a photo, what they think of it, and how they feel about it, asking a child to make a collage of given images, asking the child to pick up their favourite of provided objects and asking them why? Hence, reading between the lines and asking the right questions to the child. Interviewing formally cannot be a popular approach with younger kids since it induces a certain seriousness; however, making it interactive may help one guide the path. These few methods become a part of a larger methodology for identifying and tackling problems.
Examples of products as child-centric research-oriented design:
- LEGO: Over time, Lego has adapted to changes and catered to age groups from children to grown-up adults with its recent version of serious play. It provides infinite possibilities for building, creating, and imagining through a set of blocks. Its block shapes and forms are designed to be simple and versatile, opening the possibilities for making houses, animals, plants, and people. This process enhances children’s thinking and logical ability, problem-solving, self-expressiveness, and social and emotional development.
- Scratch: Scratch is an interactive programming language and online community that allows children to develop their own stories, animations, and games. It fosters children’s creativity in various experiments while teaching them the basics of coding and computing. These subtle syntaxes or rules for building enable children to think mathematically, improving their logical thinking skills.
3. Duolingo: It is a language learning application that makes learning languages gamified, giving access to a vibrant community of teachers and learners from across the world. It has various exercises at different levels, daily challenges, and rewards, making the learning process fun and motivating for a new day. It also has an algorithmic capability to adapt to the user’s level and pace, hence providing a personalised solution.
References:
Child development and product design: Creating child centric products: A guide for designers (no date) FasterCapital. Available at: https://fastercapital.com/content/Child-Development-and-Product-Design–Creating-Child-Centric-Products–A-Guide-for-Designers.html#Examples-of-Successful-Child-Centric-Products (Accessed: 25 April 2024).
Boon, B. et al. (2016) ‘Design Strategies for Promoting Young Children’s Physical Activity A Playscapes Perspective’, Proceedings of the The 15th International Conference on Interaction Design and Children [Preprint]. doi:10.1145/2930674.2930713.
Research and design challenge – IDC 2024 (2024) IDC 2024 – ACM Interaction Design and Children (IDC) Conference Delft 2024. Available at: https://idc.acm.org/2024/research-and-design-challenge/ (Accessed: 25 April 2024).
Feder, K. (2020). Exploring a Child-Centred Design Approach: From tools and methods to approach and mindset.
