Kids, computers and play

Occasionally my kids make their own technology, and it's always a fascinating experience for me. I'm surprised by the mix of naivete and sophistication in their understanding of computers, video games, cars, etc.. So this weekend when my five-year old daughter decided to make herself a laptop, I slipped on my recreational anthropologist cap.

The laptop was itself was pretty simple: a folded piece of construction paper with a screen drawn on one half and a keyboard on the other. A mouse was attached with a paper clip. She made two others that were basically the same (except one had a trackpad).

There were several interesting things about this design.

First, look at the screen. The "text" is just wavy lines. She's been using the computer for a couple of years, but only started to read six months ago. She visits Barbie.com or Nickjr.com, which aren't exactly text-heavy sites. I have two theories about this: 1) this is her idea of an adult's laptop, where the stuff on the screen is mostly boring (and not worth drawing); and 2) her mental picture of a laptop formed in her pre-reading phase.

And then the pointer is over-sized and dark (one of the other laptops had an even larger pointer). Her computer experience involves a lot of clicking, so the enlarged pointer reminded me of a GUI homunculus.

I thought the keyboard was notable because of the sequential orientation of letter keys as well as the punctuation keys (period, exclamation point, question mark and slash). The fact that my five-year old would include a slash among her punctuation keys seems to me an indication of the pervasiveness of Internet culture.

So anyway, after the laptop was made my kids started playing with it. This is one of the stories she made up (completley unprompted) about using her new computer:

"Noah needs a new brain so I'll go to [typing] www.newbrains.ca to get him one. First I'll have to take out the old brain [mimes grabbing brain from her brother's head] and throw it in the garbage [walks to garbage can, presses foot pedal, dumps brain]. Then I'll take the new brain [grabs brain from laptop screen] and put it in [inserts brain while making schlucking sound]."

I don't know how much they believe this, but while my kids were playing the Internet was a magical place where you could get things right from the screen. (After supper they conspired to steal my dessert cookie by visiting www.takedaddyscookieawayfromhim.com.)

The other thing I thought was interesting was the use of domain names, so I asked a couple of questions about it:

Me: where would you go if you wanted recipes?

Her: [typing] www.cooking.ca

Me: What would you find there?

Her: You know... cookies... pretty cupcakes... that kind of stuff

Me: Would you ever go to www.prettycupcakes.ca to find cupcakes?

Her: No... that'd be silly.

As it turns out, cooking.ca was a poor choice but cooking.com would have been a good one. That's the power of basic-level categories as domain names--five-year olds will guess them. The other observation I made was that she didn't know the difference between .com and .ca and would use them interchangeably.

While I find this kind of thing generally interesting (they're my kids, of course, so your mileage may vary), I did have one "key takeaway." It was this: I should make my clients draw their computers, business processes, website architectures and products to see if they reveal hidden beliefs about how things work. Maybe they'll inflate the significance of one vendor or section or feature, or minimize a critical requirement. Maybe the problems they're wrestling with are embedded in their view of the situation.

In The Fifth Discipline, Peter Senge talk about the difference between espoused theories and theories-in-use. The basic gist is that the strategies people say they use to respond to a given situation (espoused theories) are different than the strategies they actually employ (theories-in-use). This isn't new territory for anyone who's done usability evaluation. The problem is that theories-in-use are hard for people to articulate, but uncovering them is critical to changing behaviour. (More details on theories of action.)

I don't know if drawing pictures of their business systems would work as a way of revealing theories-in-use. Especially since clients tend to be suspicious of any playful, non-"serious," qualitative research (though maybe they're just suspicious of paying for it). But it sure seems like a good idea.