Designing cross-age interaction toys for older adults and children

Abstract

This paper describes the process of using a co-participatory design method to produce a toy prototype for children and adults. Based on suggestions from both groups, co-participatory design activities were organized around a single guiding principle: to construct an interesting and creative toy to help both generations interact with each other. Our findings support the usefulness and necessity of this design method and illustrate how designers could implement them in future work. Two industrial designers, six older adults (three male and three female, aged 65–75), and six children (3 male and 3 female, aged 6–10) were involved in the co-participatory design process, which was conducted via daily dialogue, scenario creation, and semi-structured interviews. This research described a co-participatory design process that included designers, children, and older adults. Data gathered from the process revealed that children had creative design ideas that considerably improved the interactive toy. This enabled the designer team to achieve a better empathic understanding of older and younger users, and to work on a project that was grounded in the interests of both target groups.