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Considering context, content, management, and engagement in design activities with children

Published: 09 June 2010 Publication History

Abstract

In this paper we describe three different design activities carried out for the design of a music device for children. The studies involved researchers from different disciplines as well as children from different schools. We reflected on what happened during the design activities and we looked at the outputs produced by the children in order to understand the feasibility of the activities from two perspectives: whether they contributed to the design of the product and whether they suitably involved children in the process. In relation to the design of the product, information gathered during the activities was associated either to the context or to the content of the design. In relation to the design method, the study enabled us to identify aspects of both children's' engagement and researchers' management that affected the success of the activities. We used these factors to create what we consider a useful framework for meaningful design activities.

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Cited By

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  • (2024)Designing accessible digital musical instruments for special educational needs schools—A social-ecological design frameworkInternational Journal of Child-Computer Interaction10.1016/j.ijcci.2024.10066641:COnline publication date: 1-Sep-2024
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Michael G. Murphy

What are the issues that should be addressed when having children participate in design activities__?__ In this paper, Mazzone et al. report on the planning, executing, and analysis of specific design activities with children. The design objective was a musical device that would interest children. The children involved in this research attended schools in England and Finland. The authors' principal goal was to create "a useful framework for meaningful design activities" that involve children. An effective introduction presents an overview of key concepts from the literature and declares the main evaluation criteria of this research: "1) the capacity of the design methods employed to produce useful results for design, and 2) the suitability of the design methods to engage and involve children as active participants." The general context is given in the next section, followed by a careful presentation of three design activities for the children. A careful discussion follows, focusing on the general issues of context, content, management of the process, and engagement of the children. A large table is given that summarizes the findings based on the three design activities. The conclusion is a useful summary of lessons learned. The paper is written and organized quite well, and the presentation and results should be of interest to anyone considering participatory design with children, for applications of interest to children. The authors made progress toward their goal, but some key questions related to the application and measurement of evaluation criteria remain. Online Computing Reviews Service

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cover image ACM Other conferences
IDC '10: Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Interaction Design and Children
June 2010
389 pages
ISBN:9781605589510
DOI:10.1145/1810543
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Published: 09 June 2010

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Author Tags

  1. children
  2. design methods
  3. design requirements
  4. music interfaces
  5. participatory design

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Cited By

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  • (2024)Designing accessible digital musical instruments for special educational needs schools—A social-ecological design frameworkInternational Journal of Child-Computer Interaction10.1016/j.ijcci.2024.10066641:COnline publication date: 1-Sep-2024
  • (2024)Shared Boundary Interfaces: Can One Fit All? A Controlled Study on Virtual Reality vs Touch-Screen Interfaces on Persons with Neurodevelopmental DisordersUniversal Access in Human-Computer Interaction10.1007/978-3-031-60881-0_25(404-418)Online publication date: 1-Jun-2024
  • (2022)Going beyond short-term, ‘reduced’ PDInternational Journal of Child-Computer Interaction10.1016/j.ijcci.2022.10048433:COnline publication date: 1-Sep-2022
  • (2022)Smart-thing design by children at a distanceInternational Journal of Child-Computer Interaction10.1016/j.ijcci.2022.10048233:COnline publication date: 1-Sep-2022
  • (2022)Collaborative interactions in problem-solving activities: School children’s orientations while developing digital game designs using smart mobile technologyInternational Journal of Child-Computer Interaction10.1016/j.ijcci.2022.10045633(100456)Online publication date: Sep-2022
  • (2022)Child–Computer InteractionInternational Journal of Child-Computer Interaction10.1016/j.ijcci.2021.10039832:COnline publication date: 1-Jun-2022
  • (2022)On power and participationInternational Journal of Child-Computer Interaction10.1016/j.ijcci.2020.10024127:COnline publication date: 6-May-2022
  • (2022)Designing an Anti-Bullying Serious Game: Insights from Interviews with TeachersSerious Games10.1007/978-3-031-15325-9_9(102-121)Online publication date: 22-Sep-2022
  • (2021)Engaging Children in Remotely Ideating and Programming Smart ThingsProceedings of the 14th Biannual Conference of the Italian SIGCHI Chapter10.1145/3464385.3464728(1-5)Online publication date: 11-Jul-2021
  • (2021)Distributing participation in designInternational Journal of Child-Computer Interaction10.1016/j.ijcci.2021.10025528:COnline publication date: 1-Jun-2021
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