Designing interactive technology for the real kid

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Getting inside a child’s head is key to creating successful kid-oriented educational products and lessons based on interactive technology, says Alissa Antle of Simon Fraser University.

An assistant professor in the school of interactive arts and technology at SFU’s new Surrey campus, Antle designs interactive educational websites, technologies and environments for children, aged 8 to 12. Her work on industry products, such as Science Brainium and CBC4Kids.ca, has won her many awards.

Antle says technology-driven, interactive learning environments and products for children are most successful when designers grasp what kids truly need.

And that’s not easily understood, adds Antle. “If you ask kids what they like they say sugar and violent video games. It’s hard to get beyond the brain candy.”

Antle has succeeded by combining two types of research to create archetypal profiles of children. One approach draws on developmental psychology; the other uses older children to interview younger ones about their inner needs and desires.

Another trick up Antle’s sleeve is to get children to reveal their innermost thoughts to fictional characters that she creates based on developmental psychology.

Media and companies designing child-centred, interactive learning products and environments now rely on Antle’s child profiles as tools for helping them engage children successfully.

“The key,” sums up Antle, “is understanding the needs of children at varying levels of cognitive, emotional and social development, and finding ways to have children participate actively and intelligently in designing interactive technologies targeted to them.

At the SFU Surrey Open House (September 8 and 9), Antle will demonstrate some of her latest creations for kids — Lego robots and an interactive tent.

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Backgrounder

• In re-developing CBC4Kids.ca, Antle hired a 15-year-old to interview 10-and 11-year-old children on how they could be engaged better. Antle says the rich information obtained was used to redevelop the website’s mandate, brand identity, homepage and three distributed, online interactive activities. One of the questions a child interviewer might ask is: “How do you know when you belong somewhere?”

• Antle says adult interviews of children don’t produce rich information because of the huge power imbalance in an adult-child relationship. “If an adult asks a child whether he or she likes a product the child may feel pressured to say yes.”

• Using her background in liberal arts (developmental psychology) and applied science (computer engineering and design), Antle is always looking for better interactive pursuits to engage children in learning. She is also always looking for better ways to get children involved in designing those pursuits. Antle is currently developing mixed media, interactive environments that use sensors to get kids moving and trigger conceptual learning.

• “There’s a whole body of research that shows kids learn best by being active in the world,” says Antle. “I’m using computers to create interactive environments where kids can explore their world physically instead of just using a mouse and a keyboard.”

• Creating engaging, interactive learning environments doesn’t have to be costly, says Antle. “Sensors are cheap, only $2 each. A lot of work in the Third World on creating these environments uses sensors to help kids understand cause and effect.”

• Examples of online interactive learning products created by Antle: storytelling that gets kids to create online pages for a cartoon storybook and a movie-making tool for mentoring. It gets kids to make movies about a day in the life of a mentor by selecting images, sounds and interview segments created and posted on line by Antle.