How Children Design: Observational Study of Children's Design Process

Lo Kwok Yin Angelina (2020)

 

Educators and parents have met obstacles and challenges in nurturing creativity in children after almost two decades of education reform. The obstacles do not only lie in the discrepancy between education policy and practice but an overemphasis of product over process during which children create and design, in which the process refers to children’s understanding and identification of problems, ideation, materials exploration, and externalisation of ideas in the act of design and make. Through observing children's behaviour in such design process, this research depicts the typical characteristics of children design in an adult-non-directed condition. The study provides a deeper understanding of children’s design process that could be applied for future teaching strategies in children’s creative learning. Moreover, it opens up the potential for future observations and longitudinal studies of children’s design process in other socio-cultural contexts, and amongst the genders and age levels. Thesis Title Author's Name Year Details Enhancing the Travel Experiences of People with Visual Impairments through Application Design Huang Lusha 2020 View When current iOS applications or “apps” have met the basic requirements of visually impaired users, the discussion should be extended to address the higher-order needs such as self-esteem and self-actualisation. Beyond just focusing on the booking and navigation between different tourist sites, this study demonstrates how gamification assists in designing mobile applications that can enhance the tourism experiences of people with visual impairments. The study introduces a “research through design” project that incorporates app experiments, multisensory observations and interviews that are derived from sensory ethnography methodology. This research examines the perspective of applying gamification techniques to travel for people with visual impairments, which provides insights for government entities, social enterprises, and organisations which serve people with visual impairments. Ultimately, the results represent a further step towards developing advanced design research about people with visual impairments by proposing appropriate empathic insights and solutions regarding user experience design (UX), specifically in travel experience design. 

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