Children as participants in design and evaluation

Abstract

The HCI community has long advocated the use of user studies to test and evaluate interactive systems. There is much to be learned by watching users interact with systems, both as novices and as experienced users.
It is generally thought that an expert inspection of a system is a poor substitute for user testing. One main argument for having users test systems is that they will typically do things that experts might not predict will happen. The expert inspector “guesses” what might happen based on his or her knowledge of the product and the intended users. This guesswork requires quite a mature understanding of the context of the system—its users, its uses, and its use.