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Ch. Frauenberger:
"Designing Interactive Technologies with Children";
Keynote Lecture: UX Day Graz, Graz (invited); 2014-11-15.

Designing technology for children is unlike working with any other user group. It is not just that they have different profiles or preferences, but their whole life works in ways that we adult designers only vaguely remember from a time long gone. The experiences we intend to design are therefore, more often then not, just wild guesses of what could make sense in the lifeworlds of children. The only way around this, is to involve children in design processes and such collaborations are rewarding on multiple levels. There is on the one hand the opportunity for us to understand what children want and how we can go about realising the experiences with technologies that are relevant for them. On the other hand, this is also a chance for us designers to reconnect to a creative potential, to a way of thinking and learning about our environment that can unlock design spaces which have been closed down by growing up.

In this keynote I will be discussing the ways in which we can design interactive technologies with children and how this reflects back onto our own design practices. Attendants will get an idea about:
* What it means to let children into your design process (it gets messy),
* how to get something out of such processes (it really is messy),
* and how to open up for becoming a little more like a child when designing technology (wonderfully messy...)

interaction design, children

Project Head Christopher Frauenberger:
OutsideTheBox