A mission of IDC 2008 at Northwestern is to foment conversations between designers of children's electronic media and the academics who test how children might respond to them.
One example spotlighted this morning was the Fisher-Price "Play Is Learning Council" that, for two years, brought childhood experts and media researchers together with designers to ensure that new toys fit a child's needs and stage of development.
"We would show them toys and they were not shy about tearing them apart," said Kathleen Alfano, director of child research at Fisher-Price.
Seemingly brilliant designs don't always hold up when tested with real kids. Scott Traylor, founder of the research company 360Kid, showed how tricky it can be to create a stylus-type application for young children who don't yet have perfect motor control in their hands. And Erik Strommen, founder of the tech-toy consultancy Playful Efforts, amused the audience with stories of how young kids couldn't resist pressing the TV-screen belly of an interactive Tinky Winky prototype when asked to wake it up.
Thursday, June 12, 2008
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