Participatory Design with Preschool Children: A Smartphone Application Concept

This paper presents experiences of the design process of a mobile application concept addressed to children of 5-6 years old. The work was an attempt to approach an interaction design problem from a child-centered design perspective within the scope of a student project. The project was realized during an 8 weeks course run by the Gothenburg Working Group for Interaction Design and Children. Several methods aimed for the intended user group were employed and adapted for the project’s needs, such as “Mission from Mars” and peer tutoring. The process involved participation of young users in co-design and evaluation sessions, that both took place in the natural setting of a preschool. A concept for a Christmas calendar application was developed during the project. The application consists of simple click and play mini-games, that are revealed day-by-day as time progresses. The games aim to encourage children exploration and counting skills as well as they build continuous narrative around Christmas related characters. The project was aimed to apply child-centered methods and to learn from their realization in context of a concept development of an application addressed to children