Combining Developmental Theories and Interaction Design Techniques to Inform the Design of Children’s Software

This paper describes a novel approach to developing design guidelines for educational software for children. This approach involves the application of theoretical research from the field of developmental psychology and practical techniques from human-computer interaction to guide the design process. The aim of the study was to determine the extent to which Interaction Design techniques support theories from developmental psychology in informing the design of new software systems for children. It was also intended to provide researchers and practitioners with a comparison to these two methods. The study involved a thorough review of literature on childhood development and learning as well as a user study which integrated observations of and interviews with children. The study has shown the effectiveness of each of the data gathering approaches in the development of design guidelines based on the unique needs of children. These two methods have proven to be complimentary on a number of levels, with the literature review providing important high-level, all-purpose data and the user study adding specific contextually rich detail. A combination approach which includes both methods, each with their specific strengths, was found to be successful as a first step in the design of software for children.