Adults are from earth; Children are from the moon. Part - 3

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{ Designing for Children.  A Process - Oriented Approach } 


Read the Part -1 and Part - 2 


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.

Adults are from earth; Children are from the moon. Part - 2

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{ Designing for Children.  A Process - Oriented Approach } 


Read the Part - 1



RESEARCH

            When it comes to design I personally believe one has to do the ethnography oneself, as much as possible. The points that you notice when you are physically present in front of the sample are so important. There are some things that one can jot down on paper, some expressions could be caught on camera but it takes a human presence to note the ten million things that are happening around the target at the same fraction of a second.
When one personally interacts with the target and designs for him/ her it is easier to transcend into their shoes than to view it from couple of another set of eyes! Information, how much ever carefully documented, lapses when channeled more than once.


CHOOSING THE TARGET

            While it may be easier to group adults into 25 to 60 years of age or even larger sets; with children, the sets must be much smaller and has a lot or exceptions in each category.

Hence, one has to choose and design by cognitive ability. Mental schemas, image perspective, attention spans, perceptions are all important things to be considered before designing. While one may be designing for the Preoperational period of a child, it is important to keep in mind that some of the mental skills from the earlier stages may not have developed.

Not just age, but the geographic location from which the target is chosen, their medium of instruction, education boards, peers at school, parent’s education, race, if the child is multi lingual or mono lingual etc., plays a very vital role in sampling the target.

Once our target sample of audience is identified, we must spent time interacting with the kids to better understand their background, abilities in terms of education, cognition and knowledge. This paves a way to an ice breaking session with them so that they get more comfortable around us. We should also interact with their caregivers and other players in their ecosystem who have knowledge based on their day-to-day interactions. Following this, a participatory design session with the children is to be conducted and images on our topic of choice could be asked to be drawn, painted or even made by the children. We can then use design language that the kids provide us for our final design direction.

The various problems that arise for designers around this are the language constraints (not all children are fluent in English) and the pre monitions the children have when we ask them to draw or make something. Like, say a child is trained to draw a certain set of things at school and when we ask him / her to draw her favourite “toy” for example he/ she might draw what they have been trained by their drawing teacher.

One solution that we tried at a school was “dream conceptualization”. We asked the children to close their eyes and dream of playing with “the most beautiful toy in the world” and asked them to draw the same. This helped a bit but there are always hindrances when it comes to the drawing skills of the children.


Key Points to remember while Designing for Children,

BRIGHT, VIVID COLORS

            Bright colours will easily capture and hold a child’s attention for long periods of time. Although colour choice is a primary factor in designing anything, this is especially true when designing for children since colors make a big impression on children’s young minds. Colour choices and combinations that would likely be rejected or laughed at when designing a typical product, may be welcomed by children.
So, when designing products aimed at kids, use bright, vivid colours that will visually stimulate in an unforgettable way


A HAPPY MOOD

            Kids will remember and return to a toy if their experience is a happy one. Elements can be incorporated into the design to ensure that a cheerful, positive mood is presented to the children.


STORY TELLING

            Images are powerful communication mediums with children. Images don’t just communicate to them a set of instructions but children tend to perceive them as a story. For this reason, one could employ images as part of an effective story telling methodology. Here, children could themselves become the story tellers when adults are not around. They interpret the images in their own ways and create amazing stories to themselves and some of them might even narrate it to their parents.



HAIL MINIMALISM:

            One must be minimalistic in ones’ design: This applies to not just children but anyone per say. But, the simplest things can be very confusing to the child. For example, a line around the space to draw an image can constrict a child to draw within the borders and give him a feeling that he is “not supposed” to use the white space around. Children don’t want to do intense reading or research; they want to play and be entertained. Children might need “illustrative” straight forward designs at certain point and the same time some of the larger than life abstractions do the trick.


INCORPORATE ELEMENTS FROM NATURE

            Children are stimulated by recognizable elements that they can relate to. Because children’s experiences in life are limited, some of the things they are most familiar with are found in nature. Natural elements such as trees, water, snow, and animals could be used. In many cases, these elements are overemphasized through size or simplicity of design.


Read the Part - 3

Adults are from earth; Children are from the moon. Part -1

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  { Designing for Children.  A Process - Oriented Approach } 


Every child born in this world is a gift of god. There is a saying in Tamil, "kuzhandiyum deivamum gunathal ondru" that means children have an attitude similar to god. They have their own imaginary world bereft of hatred, bias and dogmas.

            Hence, designing for children is not something very easy as you cannot thrust upon them your ideologies. They're pretty black and white about what they like and don't like. It is better to leave it to their choice and solicit their opinions on what toys they would prefer to play with. An important aspect for children's use of objects is that they are more interested in the process of using than achieving an end result like adults do.


THE LEARNERS

            A newborn baby enters the world with enormous inherent capabilities! Within four years she will have developed into a person who will run, jump, ask questions all day long, play princesses or superman and twist you round her little finger!
A baby comes into the world with a powerful urge to learn, to explore, to relate, to participate in and contribute to the buzz of activity going on around her. It is incredibly interesting to see how easy and natural it is for them to interact with technology, and at the same time, remember the many challenges we had to face when we started using computers or technology in general. Young children may have little knowledge or experience, but they have truly amazing talents as learners. Their abilities to self-improve are endless!


“One thing about designing for children - You can convince an adult about your design and make them buy it. But a child, if he doesn't like the toy he'll throw it right away!!”

          -Kanaka Ananth, Toy designer, Faculty at D J Academy of design.
           
            They're pretty black and white about what they like and don't like. One of the ways to increase the shelf life of a toy in the kid’s wardrobe is by making the toy as versatile as possible. A toy that can transform into another toy and involves a certain kind of complexity tends to have a longer time of attention than the toys that do the same monotonous actions or repeat the same lines over and over again.
This is one reason why board games like monopoly, life, snake &ladder etc., are still in great popularity over the dancing doll. Toys like train where the child gets to design its track, add multiple landmarks and construct a whole city, grow with the child. The toy matches itself with the mental maturity of the child’s brain and hence never lets the child get bored of it. The children who played with such toys remember it even when they are adults.


BOREDOM

            Children become bored when there's a mismatch between what they have the ability to do and what they are expected or want to do. They enjoy themselves when their skills match the task at hand. If they're challenged beyond their capability, they become anxious and often claim boredom as a defence. If not challenged enough, they're bored. In either case, a bored child will find ways to be challenged by climbing, running or other behaviours that match their abilities.
Children prefer and are most drawn to play with high degrees of challenge, diversity, novelty and complexity. The type, quality and diversity of children's play equipment directly affect the type, quality and diversity of their play. Since children's developmental tasks and skill levels change constantly as they age, the point where boredom sets in is a moving target.

Children's physical (fine and gross motor), intellectual and social skills are constantly advancing. This means that children's environments must offer what is known as “graduated challenges”. This not only helps when a child moves on from a certain competency level but also facilitates adaptation to the same age children with different levels of skills.
The ability children possess to interact with, explore, control and to transform their toys is very important to them. Toys that include loose parts that children can manipulate, move and construct with are immensely more engaging than static equipment.
There's the issue of children's attention spans, which can be much shorter than that of adults. So something that at first interests a child can 10 minutes later become boring. To overcome this challenge, the products must offer a wide variety of options to explore. Too little a variety limits children's play options and leads to increased levels of boredom and aggression.



“Just because you were a child once doesn't give you the eligibility to design for them.”

            -Anita Sen, Children's book illustrator, Graphic Designer at Foley Designs.

            Some people might just have a knack with children and their ways. But to design for them, involves a great deal more than having a knack of being friendly with them. To be able to design for children, one should be able to get into their shoes and look at things from their point of view and at the same time be able to have their thoughts up high to match the needs of their growth pattern at that certain milestone of the child’s life.



“Children's illustration is a different field itself because of the responsibility involved. You just might be designing someone's first ever memory”

            -Shiva Nallaperumal, Student - Graphic design, D J Academy of design.

            Not just children’s illustration but the whole area of children’s design for the matter plays a very sensitive role in design industry. I personally think that children’s design should be included in every design school’s design program alongside Inclusive design and sustainability. It is nothing but another variant of “responsible design”.

 Read the Part - 2  and Part - 3.