2.2 Methodological Challenges
We usually use participatory design (PD) methods in designing with and for children.
As mentioned above, the teacher told us that the children in this special class did not
work or communicate well together. That was also what we saw during the initial
session with the children. Thus, the usual teamwork involving two to four children
was replaced by working with one child at a time. Furthermore, each child presented a
unique design challenge. One could see that our overall goal of designing one app for
the whole group was going to be much more challenging than our previous work [27].
In order to find out if the iPad could be used as a learning tool for the class, we
organized two workshops aimed at gaining insight in how the iPad and game based
learning function as motivators for learning mathematics or improving language
skills, see Fig. 1. The workshops were divided into ca 30 minutes sessions. Each
session involved one child, one of the authors, the teacher and a graduate student. In
other situations when designing with children, we match the number of adults with
the number of children so that the children do not feel even less power due to the
sheer number of adults present. In this situation, the boys were very comfortable withtheir teacher, and we have done our best to establish good contact during the initial
visit. Still, the sessions involved three adults and a single child. In an attempt to
compensate a bit for this fact, the sessions were made as playful as possible.
Children’s eagerness to work with the iPad and curiosity as to what kind of games
they get to play was helpful as well. We were interested in the amount of time a child
could concentrate on a game without interruptions. We were also interested in having
the children complete at least one cycle of the game, even if it required extra time and
assistance.