Exploring the child's mind – contextmapping research with children
Mathieu A. Gielen · Digital Creativity · 2008
User involvement in design processes is applied in progressingly earlier phases. With contextmapping techniques, design researchers involve users even in the very first stage of identifying the everyday context of product use and assessing users' needs, prior to defining product types or desirable product characteristics. When applying contextmapping techniques with children, these techniques need adaptation to their understanding and skills. Lessons can be learned from related forms of children's involvement in co-design processes. A few examples from sessions with children are given in this paper and experiences are combined into a tentative set of guidelines. It is suggested that the application of these techniques with children comes with some specific challenges and asks for further development, preferably in cooperation with the field of pedagogy, ethnography and child psychology. It is also suggested that results from these studies, when aggregated and made public, can provide designers of children's products with a source of inspiration and empathy for their future users.