Kids Experience Design

I wouldn’t necessarily call myself a craftster but lately, as most of my friends are having babies, I’ve been knitting up a storm of baby hats and booties as gifts. I’m struck by how much the design thinking we apply everyday here at frog has percolated into my crafting life.

In choosing yarn for my projects, I debate whether my soon-be-mom friends will prefer a hat made out of a beautiful, but delicate, wool or a more practical hat made from wool that can be washed. My choice of yarn will result in a hat that can be worn and washed countless times or a hat that is more attractive than usable since it cannot be washed (something that parents find themselves doing often).

As designers, the choices we make have profound affects on the experience of using our products. This is particularly true when designing for kids. Kids are constantly changing and growing. I enjoy designing for them in both my professional and crafting life because each design provides an opportunity to influence that child’s growth and change. Designing for kids is also a big challenge. As adults, a bad experience with a product might frustrate or even anger us but when a child has a bad experience with a product, it usually leads to a temper tantrum (I must confess, I still do this myself sometimes). The larger concern, though, is that this bad experience might adversely impact future experiences for that child.   John Dewey, the philosopher, argues that  good or educative experiences open a child for further growth while bad or mis-educative experiences can actually arrest or stunt a child’s growth.

The challenging part of being a designer is that we do not and cannot design the experience. Experiences have no pre-ordained value. A rewarding experience for one person could be a horrific experience for another. Each experience is an interaction between the past experiences we bring and the present situation. The value of an experience can only be judged by the effect it has on mine or your present and future.  While we cannot design the experience itself, we can design the opportunity for the experience. We do this by understanding our audience and their past experiences and by adding our best intentions to the design.

In designing for kids, it should be our goal to design opportunities that will help to open them up to future growth experiences rather than shut them down. In my opinion, designs that do not dictate their use but allow kids to use it in the manner they sees fit provide the greatest opportunity for a growing experience.

The Bilibo is an example of an object that does not dictate a specific pattern of play. Kids can use the simple design for anything that they see fit. The openness of the Bilibo design encourages kids to imagine their own way of playing. The experience of playing with the toy is almost always rewarding because each use can be new and different.

As for my baby hat design, it doesn’t have the flexibility of the Bilibo. I like to think, though, that a hat doesn’t necessarily have to go on the head. If the baby feels the urge to just hold it and chew on it… I will consider my design successful.