Purposeful prototyping with children to generate design ideas

Abstract

Prototyping to generate ideas, as part of the design process offers various learning oppor-tunities to sharpen young novice designers’ design and making skills. This study situates itself within the landscape of Makerspaces and co-design with children as emerging oppor-tunities of learning and skill building for children. From experiences of co-design with children it is often observed that children engage with outcome and object-focused model making or plain crafting with no intent of iterative prototyping for ideation. This paper describes the case of design prototyping sessions conducted with children aged 8-11 years old as a classroom activity. The sessions were investigated and analysed to reveal enablers and limitations to purposeful prototyping with children. Defining and contextualising the design problem with the children, the variety of prototyping materials for flexible build-ing, interpretation and expression, and mid-prototyping discussions were all found sup-portive to children’s purposeful prototyping.