Developmentally Situated Design (DSD): Making Theoretical Knowledge Accessible to Designers of Children’s Technology Tilde Bekker Department of Industrial Design Eindhoven University of Technology P.O. Box 513, Den Dolech 2, 5600 MB Eindhoven, The Netherlands m.m.bekker@tue.nl Alissa N. Antle School of Interactive Arts & Technology Simon Fraser University 250 -13450 102 Avenue, Surrey, B.C. V3T 0A3 Canada aantle@sfu.ca ABSTRACT There is a wealth of theoretical knowledge about the developmental abilities and skills of children. However, this knowledge is not readily accessible to designers of interactive products. In this paper, we present the requirements, design and evaluation of developmentally situated design (DSD) cards. DSD cards are a design tool that makes age specific information about children’s developing cognitive, physical, social, and emotional abilities readily accessible for designers. Initial requirements were elicited through interviews with design practitioners and students. The cards were evaluated through a design-in-use study in which design students used the cards to address three different design problems. Our analysis of observational notes and post-design interviews revealed how the cards’ characteristics enabled different kinds of uses including framing, orienting, inspiring, informing, integrating and constraining. We conclude with a discussion of possible refinements and an analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of our approach. Author Keywords Interaction design, design cards, design tools, design methods, child development, child-computer interaction. ACM Classification Keywords H5.m. Information interfaces and presentation (e.g., HCI): Miscellaneous; H.1.2 [User/Machine Systems]: Design. General Terms: Design INTRODUCTION This paper describes the development of a card-based design tool to support designers in taking into account children’s abilities and skills during various phases of the design process. It is assumed that designers need to apply knowledge about users in design approaches such as user- centred design [31] and participatory design [28]. They can do this in various ways. They can involve users as participants or they can use analytical methods or tools that contain knowledge about users. These two approaches are complementary. For example, in early design, users can be involved in a participatory design session and/or designers can apply design principles based on empirically generated knowledge, such as the principles for user interface design [29]. In the evaluation phase, a user interface design can be evaluated by having users interact with the interface using a think-aloud method [25] and/or it can be evaluated by having experts apply a usability inspection method such as cognitive walkthrough approach [20]. Many existing analytical tools and methods can be used fairly generically, but do not include specific knowledge about children. Designers must understand and consider children’s developmental abilities and limitations to ensure that products are appropriate for the intended age group [3, 6]. There are some design methods that facilitate the consideration children’s developmental abilities in the design process. For example, the Nielsen Norman Group have developed as set of design guidelines for websites for children [16]. SEEM is a usability inspection method that can be used to evaluate computer games for children [4]. However, few of these approaches are based on knowledge about children’s developmental stages, ages and abilities. Another issue is that existing methods are usually only usable in one phase of the design process (e.g. evaluation) rather than making information about child development available throughout the design process. An exception is Antle’s child- based personas [1]. In this paper we begin by describing how we established the need to bring developmentally specific knowledge about children into the design process. We did this by interviewing design practitioners and design students about their approaches when designing with children. We translated their needs into specific requirements for a design tool. A design tool can take many forms from a software application that specifies type and placement of interface elements (e.g. 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. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. CHI 2011, May 7–12, 2011, Vancouver, BC, Canada. Copyright 2011 ACM 978-1-4503-0267-8/11/05....$10.00. CHI 2011 • Session: Methods to Aid & Structure Design May 7–12, 2011 • Vancouver, BC, Canada 2531