Design And Reflections Of Cooperative Board Game Based On Young Children’s Learning And Development

Board game is a common kind of games in kindergarten, and most of kindergartens in China are equipped with board game. However, there are several problems - the overall species of board game is not rich; some are not appropriate for young children; a lot of board games in kindergarten are handmade by teachers, etc. This situation indicates that board games in domestic toy market cannot meet the need of young children. It is related to two reasons, one is that domestic toy companies are weak at innovation; the other is that designers are not familiar with children. In order to make toys more playful and developmentally appropriate for children, we should design toys based on children’s learning and development characteristics. This study is going to design a board game based children, summarizing the law in the design process, which is inspirational for toy design practice.Iterative design has been applied in this study to develop a cooperative board game for young children. The design process of the board game could be divided into four sessions: collecting and analyzing information, generating ideas, cycling of iteration, stereotyping and making. In all the four sessions, children have been valued a lot because children are encouraged to participate in game design process, and children’s learning and development characteristics are considered seriously. The main method used in this study is observation and interview, and the interviewee included not only board game experts but also children who participated in the game tests. After three times of iteration, "School Bus is Coming" is eventually developed, and it has excellent performance at both playability and developmental appropriateness.Combining previous research conclusions and practical experience of this study, a general pattern has been conceived about how to design board game based on children. This design pattern is a three-dimensional system made from three aspects - design contents, design principles and design sessions. Every aspect is illustrated with designing cases in "School Bus is Coming" to define how to consider children in the whole process.Finally, this essay gives two main suggestions for domestic toy design practice, one is that designers should consider toy designing process from the angle of children, the other one is that collaboration between personnel in preschool education and in toy design should be strengthened.