Designing for Kids: A Response to UsTwo

Hannah Green
Jul 25, 2017 · 3 min read

As a newly graduated designer from the Glasgow School of Art’s Product Design course, I’ve always looked up to and admired the work of UsTwo. Whilst their experience and expertise far outweighs student work, I’d like to challenge them on a part of their most recent article Designing for Kids: Getting the Most Out of UX Testing. I want to focus on their second point ‘Take Digital Away’. In my final project I ran co-design workshops with young people aged 10–15 at various youth clubs around Glasgow and the insight that derived from these workshops was the reverse of UsTwo’s advice. My recommendation for co-design, UX testing and research with young people is to actually to embrace all things digital and lose the classic pens and paper approach.

“We asked the children to design things they wanted using all sorts of creative materials, from Play-Doh, stickers, glue, colouring, pens, paints, fabrics and coloured paper. We were rewarded with a rich tapestry of ideas and characters that helped us see the designs through the eyes of children.”

In contrast, I’d like to share my experience of designing with young people. Far from ‘a rich tapestry of ideas and characters’ I was faced with blank sheets of paper, multiple unicorns sh*tting glitter and a small mutiny. Having been told to put their smartphones away for the afternoon, their perspective was that this was punishment.

During the workshops I tried to encourage, motivate and develop their ideas with them. Anything that differed from ‘I don’t know’ was a massive success. This group weren’t used to being asked what they wanted and they weren’t in a position to see why their involvement mattered. However, there was one key thing that I’d missed.

One of the most disruptive and rebellious boys walked off half way through the session. Assuming he’d given up on the co-design activities, I let him go. When he came back, he’d found the youth club’s GoPro and had started to walk around the room, looking for the best place to mount it. After realising the space was too dark, he took his smartphone and few others’ and used the pots of pens to stand them upright. He turned all the torches on and effectively light the shot.

And that’s when it hit me. The low-tech, analogue, pens and paper approach wasn’t right for this group of young people. By using a medium that they struggled with, their involvement was low. Many of the young people in the workshop had literacy and handwritten skills far below their age, yet they could express themselves in ways that previously were the reserve of creative professionals.

Therefore, as designers I believe we need to think outside what we would consider the most open way for young people to express themselves and recognise the mediums that they use on a daily basis. Not all young people start on the same footing in life and taking the time to get to know what is right for a specific group is important. Those that I worked with from lower socio-economic backgrounds struggled with creative confidence and only expressed themselves through activities that approached a topic indirectly and verbally. I believe that by embracing digital and constructing co-design activities that worked with their strengths rather than against them, I would have seen far better involvement and results.

It may be more challenging, time consuming and expensive to engage with those who require a different approach than the traditional co-design activities but for design to be truly inclusive, I believe it is worth it.

I have tried to summarise what I learnt from working with these young people a manifesto Design for the In-Between which proposes design directions and research recommendations to aid other designers.

If you’d like to find out more, question or challenge the experience I’ve shared, please don’t hesitate to get in touch hannahsegreen[at]gmail.com

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