Designing technology for young children: what we can learn from theories of cognitive development

The majority of guidelines and principles for design of technology are aimed at products for adults. The limited guidelines available for design of young children's technology do not focus sufficiently on age-related requirements or they offer high-level advice that is only useful in the planning stages of design. This paper reports on research aiming to develop a set of guidelines for the design of technology for children aged five to eight years. We believe that the existing knowledge base on child development provides an ample starting point for setting up a useful framework of such guidelines. This paper demonstrates how the knowledge contained in psychological theories of child development can be translated into guidelines for the design of technology.

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