Children as designers of web portals

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.