Designing for Young Children: Learning, Practice, and Decisions

This paper presents a vignette of our development of a robot-based app sponsored by the corporation producing the robot. The discussion in this paper begins with the affordances of humanoid robots that enable transformative pedagogical approaches to address children’s needs. Next, we present our design case, where we develop a humanoid robot-based English-learning curriculum for young children to learn English as a second language. This case highlights a multifaceted app development process that involves synergistic, multidisciplinary teamwork and design enhancement through repeated observations of child/robot interactions. We present a few snapshots from the design case to illustrate the teamwork and design enhancement. From our observations in repeated user testing, the robot app seems to induce independent navigation, sustained attention and engagement, and rich learning experiences for children. The design challenges and the way we address them may be useful for others developing similar interventions for young children.