Building a BRIDGE between children and users: a socio-cultural approach to child–computer interaction

The field of child–computer interaction has received growing attention as a result of the penetration of IT into children’s everyday lives. Consequently, the involvement of children in the design of children’s technology has been widely discussed. So far, literature on children’s involvement in design has mainly treated design with children as a distinct design discipline regarding children as “cognitive incomplete” in comparison with adult users. With a point of departure in the framework of socio-cultural activity theory, this paper provides a new perspective on design with children, based on understanding children as participants in meaningful communities of practices. Thus, we argue that children could and should be involved in design on the same terms as adult users; children are treated as experts in their everyday lives and we cannot design future IT for children without involving these experts. The paper introduces the BRIDGE method including a palette of design techniques as a practice-based method for designing with children based on this perspective.