Designing4Kids' Experience with Bodystorming

This week saw our team using bodystorming to present one of our concepts in Thursday's workshop. It was definitely an interesting experience (to say the least), but I think it helped us to consider a number of issues/problems with the design of some of our concepts.

We initially had three different concepts we were considering for the bodystorm: Grid It, Asobu Box, and Barnyard Bounce. Since we haven't gone through a specific concept selection process yet, we decided to quickly chart the concepts against a number of different factors to help us decide on an appropriate concept to present (e.g. How easily can we bodystorm it? What materials/props do we need to aid us?)

At the end of this however, we still remained a little undecided over which concept to choose. We decided to quickly bodystorm through all three, as we had props for both Barnyard Bounce and Asobu Box already made. Grid It just required some tape.

Props for Asobu Box 

Props for Asobu Box

Props for Barnyard Bounce

Although we started off intending to quickly bodystorm each concept just as a way to choose a concept to present, going through each in this way helped to flag a couple of additional issues we probably would have overlooked. Ultimately (and rather ironically), I think our indecision over which concept to brainstorm helped us to refine a greater range of ideas even more than we would have otherwise done. Some of the concepts were ones which we hadn't revisited in a while, and having to go back to them by acting them out tested how self-explanatory some of them were/were not.

Alongside this, I am currently reading a handbook called 'Universal Methods of Design' - a sort of reference book that summarises 100 commonly used research and design methods - and I came across a section on bodystorming. I thought it would be interesting to finish this post by using the information in this reference book to reflect on how we can further use the bodystorming activity to develop our concepts, and where it sits within the design process.

The section describes bodystorming as:

"...physical brainstorming [emphasis mine] - dynamic, experiential, and generative - situated in methods of informance...combining active role-play with simple prototypes."

The book situates bodystorming as part of "Stage 3" of the design process (Concept Generation and Early Prototype Iteration), and describes it as a 'generative' activity opposed to more exploratory or evaluative design activities. An interesting point the book raised in relation to this, is that unlike traditional role-playing activities which encourage empathy with the user by putting yourself in their shoes, bodystorming is more about encouraging active design ideation, concept generation and potentially testing of these ideas. The latter part of this definitely happened during our bodystorming process - we encountered a number of problems as we acted out each concept, which required us to alter the concept and re-bodystorm it, which led to another problem that required altering, and so on and so forth.

The section finishes by describing "well-executed" bodystorming as:

"[capturing] a realistic scenario of use through immersive acting in a simulated context, and the process is seamlessly empathic."

Building on all of these things, there are a couple of points our team can consider as we move forward into the refining, testing and evaluation stages of the design process.

•  Although we had to keep making changes to our concept and starting over every time we acted them out, this is part and parcel of generating ideas, and to an extent we should encourage going over some of our older ideas using a different lens/activity (i.e. not just discussing them, but acting them out etc).
• We need to continue to situate our designs (and redesigns) within a context of use, and then use activities like bodystorming to test out the feasibility of these scenarios.

Other outputs generated from the process:

• Discussed the possibility of organising a group outing to actually try out our concept on a trampoline, as a way to test out the safety of the product. This way we can answer back something concrete when anyone questions us on the safety of our Barnyard Bounce concept in the future.

Concept Selection

Concept selection is seen as filtering projects in a rational way based on the Project Design Specifications.

Initially we screened all the concepts developed to eliminate those that were not feasible or did not meet the all of the brief criteria and got 6 main concepts out of 21 ideas:

• Barnyard Bounce
• Balance It
• Hooping Around
• Pin the Pixels
• Asobu Box
• Grid it

In order to make concept selections, we will need a weighted method of analysis. This involves selecting criteria. It is essential that the criteria chosen are unambiguous, understood and accepted by all participants in the evaluation. Once the decision criteria are selected, several approaches can be used to evaluate concepts. We will be using a Decision Matrix. 

Decision Matrix (Weighted Pugh Method) 

- Qualitative & Quantitative

While the Pugh Method was originally purely qualitative, people have since added weighting to include a quantitative element. This method is simple and easy to use and understand and in terms of design, gives us a more visual approach to concept comparison when including product sketches.

The Pugh Matrix is also useful for the design process, as it can aid in improving a concept and refining designs. This is also considered in the method outlined below.

Method:

One concept is chosen as a “datum” (reference). An existing product is usually chosen as a first datum, but if all none exists or all concepts were developed internally, the first datum is usually the concept that the team is drawn to and intuitively chose as the ‘best’. 

Different alternative solutions are compared to the datum and then rated better (+) 

worse (-), or the same (S or 0) on each chosen criteria.

Converge Consulting Group (2011)

Dr Matthew Turner (2010) states that after the comparison, the following should be done:

1) Assess the individual concept scores. Certain concepts will exhibit exceptional strengths, while others will show weakness.

2) Look at the negatives of the strong concepts – 

What do you need to do to the design to improve it and reverse the negative?
Is it possible at all?
If so, in achieving the improvement and reversal, do you in fact reverse one or more of the existing positives?

If it is possible to introduce a modified concept into the matrix do so, do NOT just modify the one you have got and leave it there, as you may wish to go back to it later. This expands the matrix. 

3) Look at the weak concepts and attack their negatives to see whether they can be improved upon (relative to the datum concept – not to some elusive absolute). If they can be improved and other positives are not reversed in so doing, then introduce the revised concepts into the matrix. Eliminate the weak concepts.

4) Repeat the process until you have made a decision or changed a concept that meets the brief and criteria best.

References:

Turner, M 2010. Decision Tools (Lecture Notes). University of Alabama in Huntsville, [available online], accessed 08/04/2014 url:

http://matthewwturner.com/uah/IPT2010_spring/lectures_videos/06_Decision_Analysis.pdf 

Converge Consulting Group, 2011.Evaluative Decision Tools, [online], accessed 08/04/2014.  http://advmgmt.net/2011/06/09/evaluative-tools-techniques/  

Meeting 7 April 2014

Minutes

Design Thinking Group Meeting - 7 April 2014

All members present

Agenda:
1) Personas2) Individual Concept discussion3) Concept map4) Body storming

Desired Outcomes
Concept map 

20+ concepts

1) Personas

• Secondary Personas to be developed this week

• Final personas posted to blog by Mon 14/04

2) Individual concept discussion

• Each member presented the concepts they worked on during the week. 

• Concept cards to be posted on blog before Mon 14/04

3) Concept map
All concepts were placed on a concept map (to be posted by Fri 11/04)

4) Body Storming
We did a main sweep of all concepts to narrow down to most feasible concepts based on project brief.
Top 6 concepts were defined as

• Barnyard Bounce

• Balance It

• Hooping Around

• Pin the Pixels

• Grid It

• Asobu Box

Team meeting Thurs 9am to body storm top idea


To be done
Before Friday 11/04:
Concept map up on blog

Before Mon 14/04:
Concept cards and final personas on blog

Before Thurs 17/04:
Journal entry

Minutes 31/03/14

Minutes

Design Thinking Group Meeting - 31/03/2014

Meeting called to order at 5.30PM

Members Present:

Katie Moon

Bianca Pretorius

Hannah Biddell

Mahmood Khalfan Al-yarubi

Ann-Maree Chua

Srivastava Akanksha Hirokawa

Agenda:

1)    Calendar review

2)    User research & Personas

3)    Brainstorm concepts

a.     Free brainstorm

b.     Concept generation

c.     One concept

d.     Reflection

Desired Outcomes

1 – 2 concept cars for portfolio

Individual concepts to further develop

Evidence/documentation for planning and generation stages

List of parameters to refine concepts

1) Calendar review

• The following dates have been revised:
• Final personas due next Monday’s meeting (07/04)
• Each to come up with 1-2 new concepts (including concept card and scenario) before next Mondays meeting (07/04)
• Building and prototyping of final concept is now 12 April to 16 April
• Video and post-production is now 17 April.

2) User research & personas

• User research to be completed before Thursday’s workshop (03/04)
• Final personas to be developed further individually – aim to have predominantly finished persona ready by next Monday’s meeting (07/04)

3) Brainstorming

Brainstormed physical skills to be developed in children

Chose to focus on upper body development and building strength

Ideas included:

• Kids inside bouncing balls
• Shapes in a box (timed)
• Pressure wall (see Socially Aware Playground)
• Group hitting game
• Interactive obstacle course using a derivative of “Simon Says”
• Transparent object in a pool that moves and lights up sporadically (aim to catch it)

Idea focused on was the interactive playground/obstacle course with sensors in the floor

Some ideas for this playground were objects that light up and need to be moved to a pre-defined places in the obstacle course; paths that light up and children need to follow.

To be done

Before Friday 04/04:

Journal entry

            Critique

Before Monday 07/04:

            1 – 2 concept cards each

            Persona

            Concept map

Meeting adjourned at 7.30 PM

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.

Jack is a six year old boy with Hyperactive-Impulsive Type ADHD

First off, where I got information about the different types of ADHD:

http://www.helpguide.org/mental/adhd_add_signs_symptoms.htm

It lists, quite clearly, that ADHD can be separated broadly into two, according to the difference in symptoms: An inattentive type of ADHD and a hyperactive-impulsive type. The reason I chose to do my persona on the latter is because it seems more prevalent than the former. About 5.9 million kids in the world are diagnosed with ADHD, with possibly many more that suffer from it but are not diagnosed.

Jack is a six year old boy with Hyperactive-Impulsive Type ADHD.
The symptoms of ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) appeared early in age for Jack. When he first started out preschool at the age of 3, it was noticed that he was unable to sit still for even a short period of time. He would irrationally become angry and hit the other students. He also had trouble following the simplest instructions and was generally highly impatient.

(Kids with ADHD are apt to lash out (hit) other kids and objects. Aggression in children with ADHD is usually a response to demands and challenges that frustrate them. For example here, a singlemother is concerned about her son as he turns aggressive whenever she asks himto do something for her.)

At home, the situation was not very different. Jack’s mother would get exasperated because he never seemed to follow any of her instructions. He also moved around the house constantly, and would get into a number of accidents (far more than normal for a growing child). The reason for this seemed to be that he never thought of the consequences of an activity before pursuing it.

(The above comes from many sources; children suffering from ADHD hardly ever consider the reasons for their actions and never own up to their consequences. A concerned mother with a daughter suffering from ADHD clearly sites an example of this here.)

In public places, such as the supermarket, Jack never seemed to want to sit in the shopping cart. If his mother refused to get him something he wanted, he would start crying loudly and rolling around on the floor.

At age six now, there’s been slight improvement. The tantrums have decreased (although they are exhibited rarely). But other symptoms of the disorder have surfaced.
In school, Jack is not very social. He is considered ‘weird’ by the other kids because he keeps playing with his stationary, such as dropping his pencil, or using one of his pencils to flick another one off his desk; he always blurted out the answer to the teacher’s question before the teacher had completed saying the question to the class; has trouble with hand-eye coordination such as riding the bicycle or tying his shoelaces. He also has difficulty concentrating and moves from one task to the next without completing any of them.

(Some of these I picked up from real-life examples of children who have exhibited these habits before they were ultimately diagnosed with ADHD.

The picking up and flicking of the pencils, not paying attention in class, were something done by a child named Jacob at his school, which was subsequently something he was reprimanded for at the principal’s office.

The fact that ADHD children are not very social or very accepted by their peers is reiterated in many blogs and medical help sites. This is due to the fact that the other kids are a bit afraid of their unpredictable behaviour.  There are many ways for getting children to control their behaviour, briefly outlined here.

Poor hand-eye coordination, lack of developed motor skills is a definitive sign of ADHD. Walking, playing sports such as kicking balls will be very difficult for a child suffering from ADHD, as cited here.   )

If Jack gets into a mood, for example if something makes him very angry, it is almost impossible to calm him down.

(According to one of the mothers in ahealth forum, her child is nigh impossible to handle when something upsets him. He screams at her and often tells her that he hates her, and it takes a couple of hours for him to calm down from this hyperactive state. )

Jack’s parents took him to a paediatric neurologist last month, where he was diagnosed with ADHD. He is now on medication and is less hyper. He is also displaying higher level of concentration and not only does he seem to be planning his activities, he also follows them through.

(We see a number of examples of how medication has managed to ‘almost cure’ the symptoms of ADHD in children. It has made them less hyper and more able to control their behaviour, not to mention improving their power of concentration to the point that they do their own homework without assistance.

)

User Research - Developing Personas (Week 4)

In order to create a good set of personas we have gone about collecting a great deal of user research! Over the last week I have focused on finding information to understand the primary and secondary users of our product. For example, children are our primary users and parents/guardians are secondary users. However, because of the context in which most of our concepts have been used I have also taken into account caregivers and teachers as users who interact with our product. By evaluating this information against our design concepts we can be sure that we're on the right track!

The first article I came across was written from a research perspective, it actually detailed the process of interactive design in socially aware playgrounds. If I'm completely honest it reassured me that yes it is possible to create great games whilst taking into account all of the requirements of the brief!

Written by Alejandro Moreno, Robby Van Delden, Ronald Poppe and Dennis Reidsman, "Socially Aware Interactive Playgrounds" details the benefits of play in an interactive environment and how it can better develop physical skills and encourage cognitive development. One of the main topics that was raised was the importance of three main criteria that must be observed when designing the game experience for children:

1. Context-Awareness (Sense and interpret social interactions during play)
2. Adaption (Adapt the game mechanics and learn from sensed behaviour to create engaging and fun experiences)
3. Personalisation (Ensure the game is an experience for all players)

Our concept needs to be fun, immersive and engaging as children are vivacious, EVERYTHING becomes a game! "Socially Aware Interactive Playgrounds" also gave great examples of other interactive designs, the concept of Social Signal Processing (SSP) and touched on kinesics (study of body movements as a mode of communication) and proxemics (space in social settings, really interesting). I wrote too many notes but don't want to keep you here forever so let us move on!

Primary Users: Children

What They Do and Develop

I'm unsure of the validity of the next source as they may present a particular bias in terms of factual/relevant information. Despite this, Fischer-Price, a respected market leader in children's toys, provides plenty of non-fiction stories and examples. They have a complete run down of what particular things children do and start to develop at every age leading up until five years. 

3 years:

• Dress up and pretend to be someone else (social)
• Move (Physical)
• Compare/contrast themselves with others (cognitive)

4 years:

• Attention span increases (cognitive)
• Learn to swim, dance, ski, bounce on a trampoline (physical)
• Grasp that people have different feelings (emotional)

5 years:

• Solve and explain things (cognitive)
• Build friendships (social)
• Increase coordination/more complex actions (physical)
• Differentiate between pretend and real (cognitive)

They also like to add consumer comments such as "My 3 year old loves listening to music and playing his guitar. He loves all different kinds of music, Dad of 3 year old". For the most part that comment has to be bias but other than that they provide a bit of insight into the maze of children's products. It did appear to me that they are lacking in physical skill building products for ages 3-5.  So it appears our chosen target age group is well suited!

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Passion Topics

It seems apparent that by the age of five children have developed a passion topic of some sort as outlined by Leap Frog. Children start to exhibit quite an appetite to learn more about a particular subject, for e.g dinosaurs, the solar system etc. A first-hand example is can be recognised in my partner's niece, Poppy. She is at the ripe age of four and a half and is trying to find her passion by going through distinct phases, one minute she loves Peppa Pig, art and then gymnastics. By the age of five I suspect she will be well on her way to finding herself, what she likes (she definitely already knows some of what she doesn't like) and a burgeoning interest that teaches her new things!

After a little bit more digging I have come up with a list of themes that kids love!

• Animals, Fruit & Veg, Dinosaurs, Solar System, Characters i.e Disney, Insects, Gardens, Weather/Seasons, Cooking and Arts and Craft. There is obviously plenty more but these seem to be the ones that are most commonly referenced! There is a great blog with a list of activities for some of these themes at www.learningdevelopmentactivities.blogspot.com. 

I thought that a list like this might be helpful when working out what to theme to surround our product, especially when it comes to the concept of marketing ideas/packaging/colours!

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Colour Preferences in Children

The above thought of marketing/packaging and colours led me to research this concept even further. How do children respond to colour and what are their preferences? Chung and colleagues conducted a study to analyse the preference colour tone of pre-school children. "The results of this study revealed that boys preferred vivid colours for yellow, red and blue and bright light tones for yellow, green, and purple. On the other hand girls preferred light tones for yellow, green, and purple and pale tones for red and blue". Colours chosen in designing can affect perception and cognition and therefore can improve understanding and enhance learning process. Children are more likely to remember and recall information presented by using colours they respond positively (Cassidy & Zlotkowska).

A study by Marilyn A. Read encouraged that colour in the environment has significant and profound meaning for young children. However, when children were asked what their favourite colour was, the participants often stated more than one colour. One participant's response was "every colour in the whole world". The results of the study showed that children have a particular fondness for the colours red and purple and do not enjoy the colour grey. See below a graph that shows the most preferred colours by first choice:

Colour is clearly an important design aspect when creating a product or environment to learn skills with or in. We will have to take into consideration primary colours and the tones with which they're received. For the record, Poppy's favourite colour was purple (apparently a crowd favourite). 

Secondary Users: Parents/Guardians, Teachers and Caregivers

Physical Activity

As we have chosen an age group that is under constant supervision/care its is important that we understand our second user group of parents/guardians, teachers and caregivers. I came across a fantastic resource, released by the NSW Government that has been designed to make it as easy as possible to encourage physical activity experiences for preschoolers and what products/games to use.
"The Physical Activity Handbook" has grouped physical activity experiences into two headings:

1. I Move We Move Every Day - Activities that can be offered opportunistically throughout the day to support initiated, free, physically active play. This is a great section on what activities you can encourage to develop stability, locomotor and manipulative skills.

Stability - Balance
For e.g. "Big Wooden blocks can be used for stepping and balancing on or jumping off, as they are low to the ground".

Locomotor - Walking, Running, Jumping, Leaping & Hopping
For e.g. "Create paths for children to walk between. It can be wide or narrow, straight or zig zagged".

Manipulative Skills - Catching, Throwing Kicking, Striking
For e.g. "Have an assortment of balls readily accessible to children - placed either in ball bags or baskets. There are many different types of balls i.e. plastic, beach, sensory, wobble, foam or stress balls".

2. Learning How to Move - Fundamental movement skills learning experiences for preschoolers. This details planned, adult guided activities that help children explore and develop fundamental movement skills.
The fundamental movement skills learning experiences section dictates that each activity should include a skill specific warm up, game or two targeting one or more fundamental movements and a cool down.

Overall this was a very specific and detailed resource that sparked a few concept ideas for myself. I have come to understand that as with other skills, early childhood educators play a vital role as co-contributors to the development of physical and social skills.

The "provocations set up by educators to further challenge ongoing skill development provides scaffolding which is crucial to skill acquisition" Jannelle Gallagher (Authorised Supervisor)

Values

For parents the user age group in children seems to be primarily concerned with establishing values. Yes they do want their children to develop motor skill, but they like to also encourage values. I kept coming across lists within parenting blogs that give you sure-fire ways to get your kid let to understand values by their fifth birthday. A perfect example is from www.parents.com titled "5 Values You Should Teach Your Child by Age Five". Parents.com provides "high-quality content that informs, entertains, and joins you in celebrating the joys of parenthood".

The five values the article encourages your child to learn by the age of five is:

1. Honesty
2. Justice
3. Determination
4. Consideration
5. Love

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Based on this research I feel I have gained a deeper understanding of designing interactive and socially aware games for children, what skills they need and want to develop, design aspects to consider i.e colour, themes that children enjoy, how to encourage physical activity as a caregiver and the values you should instil as a parent. I honestly keep getting trapped in a web of information and feel that its posts like these that help you separate the interesting from poor content. Looking forward to the next step! 

- Katie