Reading

Working in the reading of the text: "The role of children in the design of new technology" by Alisson Druin, (text)mentioned in the last research. Work in progress.

Co-designing with Children

Today was read the article "Co-designing with Children", by  Catalina Naranjo-Bock for the site UX Matters (site), which deals with methods for research and development of new products developed in partnership with children. According to the article "Children are naturals for co-designing. In the right context with the right tools, kids have no problem unleashing their wildest dreams and ideas to create previously unimagined product concepts". She presents the "Alison Druin’s roles for children in designing new technologies" that shows us that at different stages in a product development cycle, co-designing with children may include some combination of all of these roles.

In the text, Bock suggest different readings and supplementary texts and also suggests steps for co-design with children, it would be:

1. Developing self-awareness

2.On site research 

3. Generative research

4. Conception of the product.

Plus she talks about research methods online and talks about the stimuli given to children during the sessions: "All the co-design sessions require the use of stimuli or a toolkit that facilitates discussion and spurs creative thinking...the creation of these toolkits requires secondary research into psychological and developmental guidelines...if you are conducting user research sessions at frequent intervals throughout a product development cycle, you'll be able to refine your toolkit."

Concerning to the children's age ranges the author comments that for children between 3 and 6 years "conducting co-design session with this age group is challenging Especially because of the children's developmental stage. For children of this age, more than any other, it is important to invite parents or teachers to the sessions, because they can help you to fully understand what the children are saying, doing, or making and can provide greater context. She finishes with some final important thoughts:

You should have clear objectives and research questions.

Follow a moderator guide and research protocol—although this can be more flexible in this case than for more traditional research methods.

Clearly explain your research project to all participants and their caregivers, as well as what you’ll do with the data that you obtain.

Analyze the results of your research as rigorously as you would for any other research project. In this case, the data is very visual and tangible, and this helps you to illustrate your results when presenting them to stakeholders. You can apply synthesis methods of analysis like affinity diagramming or parallel clustering using your initial research questions.

Listen carefully to what children are saying. Generally, children will come to the sessions with a high degree of enthusiasm and have the expectation that they will be heard, as well as preconceptions about how you’ll use their ideas. It is important to communicate clearly that you will not use all of their ideas and that most ideas get transformed radically during the design process. Throughout the co-design process, it is also important to make sure children are feeling comfortable with the way you’re asking them to share their ideas.

"Discovering emotions, values, ideas, 

dreams, desires and ideal situations is a

 crucial part of the user research during the 

early stages of the design process"

Reading

Today was read and analyzed two academic texts resulting in internet search based on children as designers.

The first "Children as designers of an educational multimedia software", by Yasmin B. Kafa, Cynthia Carter Ching and Sue Marshall from the University of California, (text) proposes that when children participate in the creation process they tend to learn more easily and "personal expression of one's ideas in an important feature of learning through software."  The text is not specifically geared toward the theme but this brings important information regarding the way of learning the children and as part of the process of creation can be beneficial to their education.

The second text is "Designing tangibles for children - what designers need to know " by Alissa N. Antle, from Simon Fraser University in Canada, (text) talks about how children make relations between the virtual world and the real. Basically for a better understanding of what happens in an "abstract plan" the child would have to make comparisons with tangible examples. This is a  natural learning process of the child that when applied in studies and research facilitates the understanding of the subject in question on the part of children. According to the text "... an embodied perspective on cognition cognition views the bodly grounded in experience ... for example often do children learn to count using their fingers." and " ... often do children to develop understandings of abstract concepts based on existing understanding of body based and spatial concepts" and so it would be very important "... to support children visualize relationships between 3D geometric forms and their 2D representations. For example the Tetris game, 2D, in digital media and 3D

geometric blocks placed on the table ".

As a continuation of the research will be important to search for more texts that focus more specifically in design with children, what will be the next step of this readings stage.

A overvalued codesign

"When I was sixteen I was the ecstatic recipient of a model remote-control car for Christmas. It was the Bigwig model from the popular car kit manufacturer Tamiya and required me to build the car myself from the box of springs, sprockets, wires, servos and other bits that would finally form the model car. The model took me over two months to build (and rebuild after driving a partially built prototype into my parent’s radiator) but was finally ready. My pride in the car was immense and I proudly presented it to my parents, my friends and my relatives; my pride far outweighed what I would have felt if I’d instead received a pre-built, professionally-built version of the same model. The question is was my car actually a better end product or was it just my perception of its value that was different?"  (PM Davies, design-thinkers)

In the blog design-thinkers, <http://www.design-thinkers.co.uk>, PM Davies told us about the experience of Dan Ariely, behavioural economist at Duke University, to test until the end user tends to overvalue products that have participated in its creation as codesigner. A group of participants were asked to build an origami object from instructions and then asked to bid an amount they were willing to pay for their creation. On average, the creators of the objects said they’d be willing to pay 23 cents. However, when people outside of the experiment were asked to similarly bid on the paper creations the average bid was 5 cents.  In an extension to the study origami experts were asked to create the same models and again external people were asked to bid how much they would pay for the creation. In this case the average bid rose to 27 cents. Then from his research he concludes that  "people involved in the process of creation had a substantial bias when evaluating   their own work".   Finally PM Davies tells us that "bringing people into the process will make them more favourable to the proposal, but it doesn't mean actually make the proposal better.So as a persuasion  technique co-design is a valid tool, but it may not produce a better outcome."

Based on this study, if by one hand for the general market codesign may prove to be not so interesting because in some cases do not produce products with such quality as one composed entirely by a specialist; when it comes to the specific groups codesign can be a great tool for attraction,  causing the participants involved and be captivated in a much more efficient the process of creation and the end result.
Since the goal of this project is make that the kids are more involved and participating in the creative process co-design fits as an ideal tool to achieve the success of the new proposal.

Co-design

Co-design is the process where the designer encourage and guide users to develop solutions for themselves.
Is a term, short for collaborative design, that means a community centred methodology that designers use to develop a partnership with a product or service’s end users, in order to make their solution more effective. ( From the Design Council, Design Glossary)
The co-design has its roots in the Kant's book Critique of Pure Reason, that says "to ask a question, you need to have some information or knowledge."

According PM Davies, co-design is the process of involving people in the design process with the aim of creating a better product or solution.

The videos above can give a session of co-design posted by Joel Snowden and an animation made ​​by thinkpublic telling the story of the co-design.

Characters' Creation Tools: Resume

The use of a program or application in the creation of characters can make this task much more attractive to the children. Besides they are dealing with a platform like a tablet, the options would be far more diverse making the character more and more unique and more easily to be identified with the child who created it. The various features to choose from would make the process much more fun and the child discover new attributes, characteristics and forms.

The research shows creation of characters such that even with simple lines and a language beginner can obtain good results (as in dopelme.com), whereas variety of attributes and characteristics (such as faceyourmanga.com) makes the end result more like the wealthy and desired, and that mixing characteristics of humans with animals or imaginary beings / magical (as in site buildyourwildself.com) can arouse more interest and creativity of children and reveal unexpected results and only ones.

All sites surveyed reveal the same form of creation and the hierarchy of creation, in which the character is divided into parts and each part is presented a variety of options in which the child can select and test until achieving a satisfactory end result. Each sample has a different focus and serve as a model in some way to the final design to be developed.

Character's Creation Tools 3 : New York Zoo

The tool of the New York Zoo: Build your wild self-<http://www.buildyourwildself.com/>, is divided into 4 main parts and is able to add highlight body parts of animals to a human character initially. All options are shown while boxes and sections are divided by different colors.

The first part consists only in choosing the sex between male and female.

The second part of this on attributes (even humans) such as hair, eyes, mouth and clothes.

The third part begins the creation of the wild character. Horns, ears, wings and tails can be entered as well as different types of eyes and mouths, presents a final unusual creations. It certainly makes the children release their imagination and have fun making new trials.

Finally, the fourth step is to select the background between different climates and regions of the world such as forests, deserts and caves.

The tool for creation of characters from the New York Zoological is well designed, has traces and simulates artistic drawings in pencil and crayons, in a smooth and delicate.