{ Designing for
Children. A Process - Oriented Approach
}
CONSTRAINTS, SO WE DO NOT CONSTRAINT
THE CHILD
• Movement
A good design needs to offer children
an invitation to move within safe and tolerable limits, and every child will
move to a different drummer. This is very important while designing spaces for
children. If too restricted, children become frustrated and fidgety, or they
try to gain access to prohibited components of the environment.
• Comfort
A feeling of comfort is important to
children's use and exploration. There needs to be moderate and varied levels of
stimulation for all the senses. Behavior is optimized at a comfort zone of
stimulation, neither too little nor too much. An overload of sensory
stimulation and noise will exacerbate children's feelings of discomfort and
result in undesired behaviors.
• Competence
Children need to feel successful in
negotiating. Yet the world at large forces them to constantly confront
intimidating and frustrating experiences. Successful children's toys and
environments are designed to make children competent inhabitants and users.
• Control
Children need the ability to exercise
control over the environment and acquire increased levels of autonomy. Children
must have experiences that allow them to experiment and make decisions.
Through deliberate design, one can
keep children from inappropriate usage ways by eliminating affordances for
undesired behavior. It is required that children be challenged and not become
bored.
• Variety
The theory of multiple intelligences
challenges the traditional notion that intelligence is a single, fixed commodity.
Rather, it says we all possess eight distinct and somewhat autonomous
intelligences to differing degrees — linguistic, logical-mathematical, musical,
spatial, bodily kinaesthetic, intrapersonal, interpersonal and naturalist. We
tend to be most interested in activities that match our stronger intelligences.
There are also distinct differences between the interests of girls and boys.
Therefore, the variety of activities must appeal to the broadest range of
multiple intelligences and to both genders.
• Choice of Materials
Durability and maintenance are
important considerations in designing for anyone. But, children will give
things more wear and tear than adults do and will definitely get things dirtier
faster. Materials need to be durable and easy to clean and maintain. Using
materials and finishes that can be sanitized is important, especially when it
has to do with infants and toddlers.
• Child Development:
As a designer for children one has to
have a thorough understanding of a child’s growth pattern, both physical and
psychological. This helps in decision making when it comes to choosing of the
concept and age appropriation and material selection etc., For example, it is
important for a designer to know that toddler between the ages of 2 and 3 might
have ‘oral fixation’ and hence it is inappropriate to use anything that might
be toxic in nature. At the same time, a child who is 5 years old might have a
toddler sibling who would wish to play with the 5 year old’s toys.
• Safety
The concepts such as anthropometrics
and ergonomics, (sometimes referred to as human factors engineering) which
means designing things to match children's physical sizes and abilities also
play a very vital role in a responsible design. This includes characteristics
such as height, grip, reach, field of vision, etc., so that tasks can be
performed with a minimum of stress and maximum of efficiency and safety. It
doesn't do any good to design equipment that doesn't fit a child's
anthropometrics and skills and isn't ergonomically correct. Either he will not
be able to use the equipment or he will feel incompetent trying to, and neither
outcome will make him desire to return. And poorly designed equipment,
furniture and environments that don't match children's anthropometrics can actually
be dangerous.
TESTING
Finally, one of the best ways to help
build a successful experience for children is through watching children
navigate and interact with your product. Not all companies will have the budget
for an extensive and elaborate testing, but almost all will have the ability to
do at least a minimal amount of testing — even if it’s with just one child.
This will allow us to see the product through a child’s eyes and make any
necessary modifications, the same as would be done in any usability tests.
CONCLUSION
Designing for children is no simple
task, since most adult designers have a completely different perception of the
product than the users they are designing for. If you put children in an
environment not properly designed for them, Children are going to use the
environment in ways that their biology tells them to, so it's the
responsibility of adults to design children's environments carefully to produce
the desired behaviours. Positive outcomes for children's behaviour in a leisure
or education setting will be produced only when it has been design with a
thorough knowledge of child development, play, anthropometrics, ergonomics,
environmental factors, way finding, environmental psychology and universal
design.
Categories:
design,
serious stuff