Ideas and consideration from market research and persona questionnaires

Product 1 in our market research is a magnetic drawing board. From this tool children can learn to write and draw. Due to improvements in technology this product is becoming less popular. However the pen that is used can be a feature that is incorporated into our design for the product.

Product 2 is the abacus. This abacus helps the students with their mathematical skills. Although the product is a little out of date, we will follow its core aims to improve a child's mathematical skills. It is also colourful which makes it more appealing to children, we will use this idea in our product.

Product 3 is a PDA. Although the PDA is more adult oriented it still has features that can be taken into consideration. One such feature is its easy to use menu's. Our product will need to have easy to use menus so that the children can easily locate the games. The PDA also has stylus pen in order to write or select things. This can be used in our design.


product 4 is the PSP. It is shaped in a certain way so that it is easy to hold. It is also a good size and weight so that it can be held by children. The keypad provides a useful navigation through menus which children are used to. Although the aims of the PSP are different, these features will be included in our design as they improve usability. Children are used to holding products like this and also are used to this navigation. Therefore having these features breeds familiarity with the user, so they can spend more time playing the educational games rather then figuring out how to use it.

From persona questionnaires we identified identified that mathematic is an important area to concentrate on in our product. The product must be fun so that the children are willing to play all the time and do not get frustrated or bored with it so they throw it away. It must also be more challenging for intelligent children. The parents that have bought educational devices are
satisfied with the product. Therefore this product needs to be of a high standard in order to compete with others and have features that others may not necessarily have. Hence this product needs to be innovative.

other considerations:

After considering the use of speech recognition we have decided not to use this. This is because with current technology speech recognition is not accurate or reliable. Also some young children may not be able to pronounce words properly.

Larger font sizes will be used in the product as most designers follow the rule of thumb that the younger the child, the larger the font should be.

Kids tend to focus on the fun aspects of the software rather than the educational agenda. Therefore it will be our aim to combine the two. This will make it a more effective way of learning.

Humor and good character development are important ingredients when designing the games and what games will be on the product

To keep the kids entertained the mentality of not preaching, not lecturing and talking down which will help keep the kids entertained and help them learn the most workable, way this way the kids will not lose interest

Kids are good at figuring things out, we need to be clear when we explain things to kids not including additional material using a few words as possible and making sure to use spoken words to explain things better.