User Research - Formulating child personas (Week 4)

Child Personality Types 

When developing personas, it may be a good idea to look at the personality types to ensure that you are covering a balanced range of personas. While the Myers-Briggs test is often used for adult personalities, I wanted to find out if children could also fall under these categories.

The Meyers-Briggs Test Indicators have 4 categories:

Extraversion (E)	Introversion (I)
Sensing (S)	Intuition (N)
Thinking (T)	Feeling (F)
Judging (J)	Perceiving (P)

The combination of these categories allows for 16 different personality types. (For further explanation, go here.)

A kids teaching initiative, Kidzmet, state that in children under the age of 12 have not yet formed the full personalities described in MBTI. By the age of 4 or 5, only E/I and P/J  aspects are defined, and through kindergarten, they lean towards one of the remaining 4 aspects. Using a personality type as inspiration for your child persona can be a good approach to use. The Kidzmet MBTI types can be found here. 

Since I had already started my child persona, it was easy to see that Christopher, a 6-year old boy, fit in the “Introverted Thinking Child” type.

Another approach that may be good for developing a new persona from scratch is to consider the 9 Temperament Traits developed by Drs Birch, Chess and Thomas in their 1970 study, “The Origin of Personality.”  Each trait can scored on a three-point scale (medium, high and low):

1. Activity - the level of motor activity;
2. Rhythmicity (Regularity)- degree of regularity of functions such as eating, elimination and the cycle of sleeping and wakefulness;
3. Approach/Withdrawal - the response to a new object or person;
4. Adaptability – of behavior to changes in the environment;
5. Sensory Threshold - sensitivity to stimuli;
6. Intensity - energy level of responses;
7. Mood - "disposition", whether cheerful or given to crying, pleasant or cranky, friendly or unfriendly;
8. Distractability - the degree of distractibility from task;
9. Persistence – the attention span and persistence in an activity.

These traits form 3 broad categories that 65% of the children in their study could fall under, namely; The “easy” child (40%), the “slow to warm up” child (15%), and the “difficult” child (10%). The article can be found here.

The traits in themselves can be useful in considering child behaviour and responses to new experiences, games or toys.

Factors affecting development

Drs Chess and Thomas continued their research and conducted a cross-cultural comparison between a sample of white middle class families with high educational status and the other sample of Puerto Rican working class families. His findings showed that some of the temperamental differences can be cultural. For instance, Puerto Rican children had more problems with discipline and hyperactivity because they were more likely to be cooped up in small apartments and not allowed to play outside because of their parents’ were concern about safety in the community. On the other hand, learning difficulties were more common in middle class children, possibly due to parents’ concerns about achieving good grades. See results here.

A 2010 study on the Environmental Factors Affecting Preschoolers’ Motor Development found the following factors or conditions affect the child’s level of Motor Development (with boys being more susceptible to the factors than girls);

•  Socioeconomic status
• Mother (level of maternal education)
• Siblings
• Schooling (type of activities and existence of physical activity programs)
• Social-cultural context
• Intervention Movement Programs(I specifically want to expand on this last point for concept development.)

It is evident that the child’s family and lifestyle are very important shaping factors in building personas.

Christopher is from a middle class high education family so is well developed, although perhaps a bit behind in fine motor skills. This leads me to the possibility of identifying another persona that is less "ideal" (perhaps with a disability, be it physical or other.)

It has also been a general theory and belief that children’s personalities are shaped by the order of birth. According to the The Child Development Institute,  Christopher may feel left out as the middle brother of three, but will probably be adaptable to situations and can talk to older and younger kids. More on this here if you want to see how this applies to your persona. 

Social Development

We have been extremely focused on physical capabilities and needs, but what are the social capabilities of children aged 4-6? Looking at 4 different sites,  (The Child Study Centre, Children's Therapy & Family Resource Centre, PBS Parents, The Child Development Institute) common social development milestones between the ages of 4 and 6 appeared to be along the lines of the following:

• Become more social and start to form specific friendships
•  Enjoy cooperative play
• Enjoy imaginative play (act out stories – this helps them explore gender roles and social interactions based on what they see and know)
• Can follow games with basic rules
• Start to understand and apply fairness, and acknowledge others’ feelings.
• May start to help around the house (want to emulate parents, this also ties up with role play in imaginative games)
• Respond well to praise 

Experience Goals and Likes

In order to identify what children in kindergarten enjoy, I watched a number of YouTube videos (The videos can be found in the link below) The idea was to conduct a level of research based on what children enjoy, and what they learn and respond to at kindergarten. It was a lot to watch but I think I got a good from the 8 videos (some with up to 6 children).

When asked about their first day, children know that they learnt “something” don’t remember or cannot identify what they learned (vague answers like song, spell, count and gym came out, usually after coaxing). The kids all say they made friends but most don’t remember names. They seem to see their entire class as friends, but met one or two on the first day that they spoke to.

All the children interviewed looked forward to playing.

General observations were that they liked and remembered acknowledgement, they enjoy specific physical things, for example swinging or riding a bike, They can remember specific instructions “don’t kick”, and liked task-oriented activities like ‘finding a cat.’ They love to show rather than tell, and remember stories.

One group of older children were asked what they remember about kindergarten and they all said making friends and playing. Like research suggests, children learn by playing so while it seems that kindergarten was all fun, they did learn valuable skills they cannot articulate.

A list of likes: ride bike, swing, colour, make projects, slip and slide, art, football, play.

Child Persona Development Tools

Child Interaction Design expert, Alissa Antle, has done a large amount of research on child personas. In 2011, she and Bekker explored Developmentally Situated Design (DSD), with the goal of "Making Theoretical Knowledge Accessible to Designers of Children’s Technology." They produced a set of Design Cards that consider information about cognitive, social, emotional and physical development of children explained in simple terms, with a focus on their current learning experiences and a level of flexibility to adapt to different design spaces. There paper can be found here, but more importantly, the DSD cards have been made available as a pdf here.

The cards are a fantastic tool for exploring basic child personas and can be used as a basis for a persona.

Conclusion

I feel like I can further develop Christopher's persona and realise that I was on the right track but have identified areas where I can, and should, develop him further.

I am also interested in creating a second special case persona. I am open to exploring the possibility of a child with disabilities - I think this could lead to a more creative level of design.