EDITOR Allison Druin allisond@umiacs.umd.edu

the company was able to understand children. How did they figure out what they liked and didn’t? I was curious about their brainstorming methods and design process. I didn’t get very far in finding out much from Ganz, and so I spent some time comparing the capabilities of Webkinz with the lessons learned with my team over the years. For the past three years, my team, with support from the National Science Foundation, developed an online community for children that encouraged their use of books and sharing stories [ 3, 4, 5]. In addition, I’ve spent time in my lab with children and Webkinz, watching the interaction patterns between children and between technology and children. Given these research experiences, I provide here a summary of what kids want, and what designers know.

Kids Want…
s 3TORIES Children want to listen to stories, read
them, experience them interactively, and to create
their own. Stories can frame an abstract concept;
stories can be a reason to collaborate; they can be
a reason to be social; stories can be what engages
reluctant learners; stories can enable creative
expression and communication; and all of these
findings are consistent with much of the storytell-
ing literature in the field [ 6, 7, 8].
s ! RELATIONSHIP WITH CHARACTERS IN MANY FORMS
Today’s children move seamlessly between tele-
vision, online environments, printed books, and
stuffed animals, all because they have formed a
relationship with Barney or Big Bird [ 9]. What has
been a recent development is more tightly coupling
these various forms, so that one can depend on
another for passwords, viral outreach, changes/
additions in content.
s 4O BE CREATORS NOT JUST CONSUMERS Before there
was Web 2.0, social networking, and IM, there was
Logo, Basic, and Small Talk. All of these program-
ming languages helped researchers to understand
how powerful it was to put tools in children’s
hands, not just interactive textbooks [ 10]. Seymour
Papert reminded researchers that constructivism
(by way of Piaget) suggested that children can learn
by constructing or creating their own paths to
knowledge, and that computer tools could support
children as builders, designers, and researchers [ 11].

s #ONTROL There are few times that children can control their world, without the rules of parents, teachers, or other adults. The reality of computer tools supporting children to exert more control

[ 3] Druin, A. “What Children Can Teach Us: Developing digital libraries for children.” Library Quarterly 75, no. 1 (2005): 20-41.

[ 4] Hou, W., A. Komlodi, J. Preece, A. Druin, and E. Golub. “A Pilot Study of Supporting Children’s Online Identity Representation in International Communities.” Working paper, HCII’2007, Beijing, China, 2007.

[ 5] Komlodi, A., W. Hou, J. Preece, A. Druin, E. Golub, J. Alburo, S. Liao, A. Elkiss, and P. Resnik. “Evaluating a Cross-cultural Children’s Online Book Community: Lessons learned for sociability, usability, and cultural exchange.” Interacting with Computers 19 no. 4 (2007): 494-511.

[ 6] Baker-Sennett, J., E. Matusov, and B. Rogoff. “Sociocultural Processes Of Creative Planning in Children’s Playcrafting.” In Context and Cognition: Ways of Learning and Knowing. Edited by P. Light and G. Butterworth. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1992.

[ 7] Nicolich, L. M. “Beyond Sensorimotor Intelligence: Assessment of symbolic maturity through analysis of pretend play.” Merrill-Palmer Quarterly 23 (1977): 89-99.

[ 8] Sheldon, A. and L. Rohleder “Sharing the Same World, Telling Different Stories: Gender Differences in Co-Constructed Pretend Narratives.” In Social Interaction, Social Context, and Language: Essays in Honor of Susan Ervin-Tripp. Edited by D. I. Slobin, J. Gerhardt, A. Kyratzis, and J. Guo, 613-631. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1996.

[ 9] Strommen, E. When the Interface is a Talking Dinosaur: Learning across media with Actimates Barney.” Proceedings of CHI ’98. ACM Press, 1998, 288-295.

[ 10] Solomon, C. Computer Environments for Children. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1986.

[ 11] Papert, S. Mindstorms: Children, computers and powerful ideas. New York: Basic Books, 1980.