It is generally agreed that, in order to create effective and relevant educational technologies, developers need to involve those who are intended to use these resources - namely teachers and children.

This is widely accepted by most developers, and today learner involvement in design is increasingly seen as a common sense approach to avoiding the pitfalls of designing resources that learners and teachers can neither stand nor understand.

But, in order for the outcome to be viable from both an educational and a commercial perspective, developers need to do more than involve users simply to inform the interface design or to map the product onto the curriculum. They need to move beyond this if they are to develop tools that not only look good and engage children but, critically, also improve learning.

The challenge here is to involve children in the conceptual stages of the design process in order to identify the real cognitive and social challenges in learning from their perspective, and then to develop, through iterative stages, resources that allow them to improve their learning in these areas. This is not user testing - it goes much further than that. This approach of 'children as co-designers' also relies on involving teachers to evaluate how tools will be used in context, thereby leading to effective learning environments.

Crucially, this offers an opportunity for children to shape their own and their peers' learning experiences, and for teachers to identify challenges that meet their students' needs. However, in practice, this approach of learner-centred design is persistently under-used for many reasons including tight schedules and budgets, meaning that developers often miss the chance to create a product that is exactly what its audience wants and needs.

In addition, we should not forget that children have a right to be involved in and inform things that matter to them. This includes their own learning. Involving children in co-designing the tools that will be used in education is one key way of respecting this right. At the same time, we need to recognise that involvement in the design process is also an educational right in terms of understanding where technology comes from. If children are only involved in 'using' technology and not 'shaping' it, we are effectively teaching them how to read but not how to write.


What techniques are available for involving users?

The approach most suitable to any given technology will be dependent upon a number of factors. However the following table provides a brief summary of two approaches currently in use.

Approach	How does it work	Common techniques
informant design	where users are seen as experts or 'native informants', informing designers of key issues related to their experience	- observation - user panels - user focus groups - user trials - low-tech prototypes
children as co-designers	users working as a core part of a design team to identify ways of improving the environments in which they learn or work through the development of digital resources	users integrated as equal partners of the design and development team

Viewed at a basic level, techniques such as these can provide valuable, almost instant feedback to identify features that require revision as well as those that are well received. By getting learners involved in the development of a new technology, developers are able to refine their product to best meet the needs of their audiences by, for example, developing the best method of displaying information, trialling the layout of the interface and testing the possibility of students working in a virtual and real environment.

More importantly, though, these trials ensure that new tools are developed that not only engage children but improve their learning. Users are involved in co-designing effective new learning environments which ensures that developers produce tools that are not only commercially but also educationally successful. There's no denying that this approach is a scheduling and budgetary challenge for developers but there's little doubt that increased investment of time and resources at this stage will pay off in terms of customer response and take-up.


Links

Futurelab handbook - 'Designing educational technologies with users': www.futurelab.org.uk/research/handbooks.htm