Play Platforms for Children’s Creativity - Creativity in the Digital Age - page 218

12.3.3 Follow-Up

After the initial design explorations, the team wanted to gather more detailed infor-
mation about how children would use tangible cards to create a story. Therefore in
the following iterations the researchers used a paper prototype that consisted of an
A4 cardboard to simulate an electronic platform and a set of picture cards with
drawings representing characters, places and actions. In two following sessions,
with the duration of one hour each, the team tested the prototype with four groups
of three children each. The sessions took place in the preschool's painting room
with the children and one researcher (Fig. 12.2 ).
The children sat in groups of three around a table, where the picture cards were
scattered, each child was given a cardboard, and the researcher proposed them to
create and tell a story using the cards. All the children used the “platform”, creating
a total of 30 stories. The content of the cards was in general very clear to them.
Some of the children took the cards they liked and began to place them on the “plat-
form”; others took time to refl ect about what they wanted to tell and looked for very
specifi c cards. Most children began to place the cards on the “platform” aligning
them horizontally, some on the top, others on the bottom of the “platform”. Three of
the children used the “platform” like a drawing, placing the sun, the clouds and a
fl ying bird on the top and the characters on the bottom (Fig. 12.2 middle row right).

Fig. 12.2 Children interacting with the second paper prototype