Open AccessChildren as designers of web portals
Author(s) -
Large Andrew,
Beheshti Jamshid,
Nesset Valerie,
Bowler Leanne
Publication year - 2003
Publication title -
proceedings of the american society for information science and technology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1550-8390
pISSN - 0044-7870
DOI - 10.1002/meet.1450400118
Subject(s) - usability , participatory design , computer science , engineering design process , design process , psychology , web design , process (computing) , knowledge management , world wide web , engineering , human–computer interaction , the internet , work in process , mechanical engineering , operations management , parallels , operating system
Abstract This paper describes and discusses the process undertaken by a design team comprising both elementary school students and researchers to design a web portal intended for use by children. The team of eight grade‐six students and three researchers met twice per week over 12 sessions to design a low‐tech prototype. The approach adopted by the team was based upon several design theories related to usability studies: contextual inquiry, participatory design and cooperative inquiry. The advantages of such an inter‐generational approach to portal design are presented as well as some of its problems.