A participatory design approach to information architecture design for children

Figures & data

Figure 1. The relationship between action and need (Sanders 1999).

Figure 2. A group of housewives participating in a workshop for a baby carriage.

Table 1. Comparison of the participatory design approach and conventional approaches.

	Conventional approaches	Participatory design approach
Children's role in the design process	Children participate as a tester, i.e. they do the tasks given by researchers and they provide data	Children participate as a design partner, i.e. they participate in the design process and create their own information architecture
Dependence on children's language skills	Conventional approaches, such as focus group interviews, questionnaires, and in-depth interviews, depend heavily on language skills to elicit needs	Participatory design targets the eliciting of a user's tacit needs, relying to a much lesser degree on conversation
Children's behaviour pattern	Tasks are conducted alone in a laboratory environment with unfamiliar people; such situations can inhibit the active participation and natural behaviour of children	Since children do the tasks in groups and in a familiar situation, they tend to overcome the inhibition of the testing situation and behave more naturally
Dealing with children's cognitive process	Current approaches focus on the discovery of design problems by using usability testing and log data analysis; such methods are problematic because they make no allowance for the cognitive abilities of children	The information architecture of children can be compared with that of adults, leading to the discovery of fundamental differences between the two.
Educational effect	There is no significant educational effect	Teamwork and the process of organising information contribute to the development of children's social skills and the acquisition of knowledge
Element of fun	There is no element of fun	The design of the toolkits is based on the developmental characteristics of children and awareness of the value children attach to the pleasure of play.

Table 2. Composition of the teams.

Team	Toolkit	Grade	Age	Gender	Size
1	Info Tree	3	9	F, M	2
2	Info Tree	4	10	M	3
3	Info Tree	5	11	M	3
4	Info Tree	5,6	11–12	F	3
5	Info Block	3	9	F, M	3
6	Info Block	4	10	F, M	4
7	Info Block	5	11	F	3
8	Info Block	5,6	11–12	M	3
9	Card sorting	5	11	M	2

Figure 3. Hierarchical information architecture drawn by a third-grade girl.

Figure 4. Linear information architecture drawn by a third-grade girl.

Figure 5. Experiment procedure.

Figure 6. An Info Block and its stack.

Figure 7. An example of prototype created by children with Info Blocks.

Figure 8. An example of information architecture created by children with Info Blocks.

Figure 9. The trunk and branches of Info Tree.

Figure 10. An example of prototype created by children with Info Tree.

Figure 11. An example of information architecture created by children with Info Tree.

Table 3. Relations between keywords in the children's information architecture.

Relation between keywords	Children's IA (%)	Adults' IA (Yahoo directory) (%)
Related	18	0
Inclusive	50	89
Illogical jump	24	11
Inversely inclusive	4	0
No relationship	1	0
Identical	3	0
	100	100

Table 4. Comparison between the information architecture of children and adults.

	IA created with Info Block	IA created with Info Tree	Yahoo Kids directory
No. of info units	55	68.1	45
Width
1st level hierarchy	7	9.4	6
2nd level hierarchy	25	28.3	24
3rd level hierarchy	38	28.8	7
4th level hierarchy	2	6.0	8
5th level hierarchy		2.0
Depth	3	3.6	4
Avg. breadth (no. of info units/depth)	20	19.6	11.3

Sanders , E. B.N. . Postdesign and participatory culture . Useful and critical: The position of research in design . September 9–11 1999 , Tuusula, Finland.

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