Abstract

Bonded Des gn
from the topics menu, is constructed, if students are to easily select the correct topic.
In fact, the indexing for the two portals was undertaken by the designers alone after
the intergenerational team’s design work had been completed, rather than in the
spirit of bonded design, where children themselves would also have been involved.
In the same way that the portals’ interfaces benefited from the child users expertise,
so, in all probability, would the indexing. The students also approved of portals
that are developed for specific subject fields rather than the universe of knowledge,
and in almost all cases, said that when seeking information on Canadian history,
they would prefer to use History Trek or KidSearch Canada in preference, say, to
Google, MSN, or Yahoo.
For those who have not worked closely with children, it may be hard to accept that
a design team can function with members who are so young. In particular, eyebrows
might be raised at the prospect of including students from grade three who are only
eight- or nine-years’ old. Yet it is possible to accomplish this, and with children
who were not especially chosen for their roles but were volunteers from a public
(that is, state) school. The children were able to contribute their ideas (as were the
adults), and the completed low-tech prototypes reflected the teams’ thinking as a
whole, rather than being imposed by the adults. Of course, the children could not
have achieved this alone, but nor could the adults. If the children drew upon the
adults’ familiarity with information retrieval in a Web environment, the adults drew
just as heavily upon the children’s familiarity with childhood.
Bonded design is a method that involves users intimately in the design process. It
does not simply ask users to test and respond to prototypes presented by professional
designers (although it does turn to users for evaluations of the completed
prototypes), but rather it incorporates members of the target user community into
the decision making that lies behind the completion of these prototypes. In this
way, users do not simply react to designs that are presented to them, but they help
to create these designs. Such an approach provides an opportunity to accelerate the
design process; instead of designing and testing over multiple iterations, as would
be the approach in participatory design, bonded design over a limited number of
design sessions can arrive at a low-tech prototype that has “bonded” the designers’
professional expertise with the users’ expertise in being users to get the best
out of both constituencies. As such, it is particularly appropriate when designing
technologies for children. In order for designers to create for children, it is essential
that children themselves be consulted, and bonded design is an ideal way to achieve
this. Children really are able to cooperate with adult designers through discussion,
drawing, (or other forms of “hands-on” design activities), and brainstorming, to
reach a consensus on a design that satisfies the demands of the latter while meeting
the special desires of the former. At the same time, bonded design, in its emphasis
on bonding together two disparate groups within one design team, is a method that
could also be applied in other intergenerational contexts (senior citizens come immediately
to mind) or with other specialized user communities (such as members
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