Hi, I am Luiza and I will be presenting our paper called Play-based Design on behalf of
my co-authors: Kyle, Liam, Megan, Samantha, Kerry, Flannery and Juan Pablo.
Play-based Design is a new participatory design method we developed over the course of my
PhD and it is meant to give a voice for 3- to 4-year-old children during the technology
design process.
One of the motivations for this project is the growing number of apps targeted at preschool
children, which indicate they are a big user group of technology.
While starting to work with this age group, we knew there were many design methods for
participatory design involving older children, but we found few experiences that attempted
to work solely with children younger than 5.
In the paper supplemental documents, you can find a comprehensive and detailed survey of
the literature looking into design methods that involved children under the age of 5.
We used Allison Druin’s guidelines of the level of children’s involvement in the design
users, testers or informants, to classify the papers.
There is a big developmental difference between children under the age of 5 and their older
peers, which emphasized the need of finding an appropriate method for working with this
age group. One clear example of these differences is sketching, which does not produce viable
design requirements from young preschoolers because they are still developing their fine
motor skills.
The method is based on make-believe play in the Tools of the Mind style, which involves
groups of children in planning play, negotiating roles, and using generic physical props to
stand for imaginary objects.
It has 2 technology components. The first is StoryCarnival, which has stories designed
with four characters that explore different situations and have to collaborate with each
other and a play planner for children to take turns choosing which character they want to
play as.
After children watch the story and choose their role, they move on to play with their
peers and 2 adult facilitators: one interacts with the children while the other controls
the voice agent speech. During play, children get to use physical props as tools to imagine
and design with.
We started supporting this activity during the development of StoryCarnival and the Voice
Agent over 39 design sessions with two groups
of 3-4 year-old children. Through make-belive play, we were able to
gather many design requirements by observing children, by listening to their suggestions
or actions during play, and also through a combination of both observation and their
suggestions or actions.
Based on both of these studies, we found great potential in make-believe play as an activity
that can give a voice for 3-4 year-old children during the design process.
In particular, make-believe play supported by StoryCarnival and voice agents provided
a setup that could be used to enable 3-4-year-old children to contribute design ideas for a
wide variety of technologies.
In order to get evidence of the efficacy of Play-based Design for getting design ideas
from 3-4 year-old children, we conducted play-based design sessions with two separate groups of
children.
We had 12 sessions with 7 kids aged 4 and 7 sessions with 6 kids aged 3, focusing on
getting design ideas for smart home technologies.
We chose this particular type of technology because these are usually experienced across
physical spaces, may have social components which are a good fit for play-based design,
and currently there are not many child-oriented applications of smart home technologies.
We designed different stories for each age group to adjust complexity. The story for
4 year-olds provided examples of two smart home-like items in a spaceship: a lamp that
displayed weather information and a chair that could tell characters what was happening
outside. The story ended with a cue for play showing there were more rooms to explore in
the spaceship.
For 3-year-old children, the story was inspired by fairytales and explored the idea of imagining
magic items to inspire smart home concepts.
We also adapted the prompts with each age group. The 4-year-olds were prompted to explore
ideas for different rooms in the spaceship, which represented typical rooms in a home.
And we also prompted them to explore ideas for 3 objects.
With the 3 year-olds, we experimented with smart home style activities, such as conducting
a treasure hunt by having them search for an item help or singing songs along with the
voice agent.
We coded videos of the design sessions to identify design ideas contributed by children,
periods of time when individual children were off-task meaning they were distracted from
play, adult participation in play such as when adult made suggestions or played make-believe,
and children’s physical and verbal engagement with voice agents such as holding or asking
a question to the agents.
We gathered a total of 32 ideas from both groups of children, 19 ideas from 4 year-olds
and 13 ideas from 3 year-olds. All design ideas except for one originated from children’s
suggestions or actions. An example of an idea developed by 4-year-old
children was a lamp that would follow its user as they walk around a house with a source
of light that went with them. One of the more interesting ideas from 3 ¬year-old children
included a setup to support play by enabling children to control light, temperature, and
wind. For example, children wanted lights to dim when it was night-time in their pretend
play.
Many ideas included a variety of tools that would be automated to make food and clean
up afterwards. We also noticed that some objects or settings did not spark children’s creativity,
such as a bookcase or the bedroom.
Overall, the combination of story, characters, prompting, and task-oriented activities worked
nicely to promote creativity with a complex design theme.
In terms of age differences, we conducted fewer sessions with 3 year-old children, but
the average length of sessions was similar between the age groups.
One of the main surprises for this finding was that 3-year-old children appeared to be
more en-gaged in design sessions than 4-year-old children.
When looking into time children spent off-task, we noticed that 4 year-olds had more variability
throughout sessions and they spent more time off-task than younger children. The mean time
off-task for 4-year-olds was 8.1% of session time, while it was 4.2% for 3-year-olds.
Adult facilitators were more engaged with the 3 year-old group, with a mean of 23% of
session time versus 13% of session time for 4-year-old children, and the 4-year-old group
was more physically engaged with the voice agents.
Both groups of children were mostly engaged in play and they had plenty of physical and
verbal interactions with the voice agents, as seen in previous explorations. Children
listened and cared for the voice agent, which helped to keep engagement. At the same time,
we observed that both groups of children needed adult guidance with a complicated theme, so
it was important to have one adult facilitating the session and another controlling the voice
agent.
We also observed differences in engagement between 3yo and 4yo children, where 3 year-olds
were more activity oriented and enjoyed repetition and 4 year-olds enjoyed building more structures
with the props.
Other researchers interested in implementing Play-based Design should consider these differences
and also some of the limitations of the method.
For example, Play-based Design may not work for developing screen-based technologies intended
for single-user activities due to its social characteristics.
It can also be time consuming because ideally four to five children can participate in the
activity at the same time.
There is also the recommendation of using the technical components, such as StoryCarnival
and the voice agents, to help run the sessions. These will be made open source soon. However,
they might not be necessary with the right combination of alternative stories and experienced
adult facilitators to guide children during the sessions.
For future work, we plan to investigate the impact of using the technical components and
possible alternatives for implementing the method.
We also intend to apply the method to more design experiences, for longer periods, with
more groups of children, exploring a variety of design goals.
Finally, another idea is to adapt Play-based Design for other populations, such as older
children and children diagnosed with autism, and maybe families.
Thank you for watching this presentation! And a huge thanks for everyone who contributed
to this work throughout the years, in particular the children and the preschool that we partnered
with. For any questions, feel free to contact me or Dr. Juan Pablo Hourcade in the following
email addresses. This work was funded by Capes and the National Science Foundation.