Fun Toolkit, Research Proposal Example

Abstract

The paper presents the fun toolkit, a survey instrument that is dedicated to children. This tool is used, by researchers, to gather opinions about technology from the children. The paper will depict the toolkit software in relation to usability and fitness for the age of 7 to 10years.

Introduction of the Problem

The paper is about designing technology for children of 7 to 10 years of age. The research should identify the best mobile applications children of the said age bracket would enjoy. Therefore, should be able to give them choices of selecting what best suites them. This paper should be able to reduce the limitation of technology offered to children. The many available design theories have products tailor made for adults.  The researcher will seek to comprehend the approach of a child and think about the product, applications and techniques that are good for them.

Mobile Applications

Technology is rapidly changing, and mobile phone industry have become among the first company to offer technology to children using a mobile phone making easier and faster to access (Leichtenstern, André and Vogt 38). Companies like Apple unveiled ipad smart phone in 2010 with the intention of catching the attention if the population. The games provided to children through mobile phone can either be for creativity, educational, playing and also stories. One can select the game at the comfort of your phone. Companies like ipad, iphone and Android offer this application at a small fee or mostly for free. The applications are colorful and can also be three dimensional, which will attract the child allowing him/her to play more and more. This is a marketing strategy to ensure the success of the business (Leichtenstern, André and Vogt 38-39).

Methodology

Fun Toolkit

Fun toolkit was developed by Read and McFarlane and reported as V1, which was later improved in 2001 and 2006 respectively. The toolkit is used to pass opinion from the children, and the process is intended to be fast, fair and fun experience for them. Fun tool kit has four special tools that are used in collecting information from the children these are; Smileyometer, a Fun sorter, and Again-Again Table and a Funometer.

Smileyometer is a visual and analogue scale with a rating of 1 as awful and 5 as brilliant (Gavin, et al., 383). This tool can be used both before and after the children have interacted with technology.  The importance of using before is for one to be able to measure anticipation by the children and afterwards is to report on the acquired experience of using the tool. The tool is widely being used because it can easily measure satisfaction and can be used easily by children without assistance (Read 122).

The fun sorter is a tool that is used, by the children, to rate the game to a number.  This is used after using the game and would like to know the outcome. The child would rank based on different constructs, choosing what he/she saw to be best and what was worst rated (Gavin, et al., 383). This can be used to compare two games, by identifying the easy game to play.  Or the most enjoyable.

The Again-Again table is a table that is used to measure experience of each activity. The children are required to either select, yes, No, or maybe. The children will be given a table with the games they have played and ask questions like; would you consider buying this game if presented to you?( Gavin, et al., 388).

According to Read and MacFarlane, the Funometer “early work found that the Funometer and the Smileyometer were essentially similar and, so the Funometer has seldom been used since and is not discussed further here” (Read and MacFarlane 3).

In conclusion, a fun toolkit is good in conducting a research on what technology is good for your child, what he enjoys more and what knowledge has he /she gain from the technology.  The toolkit has however, failed to handle the issue of preference of the game in relation to diversity. This is a main concern in the present world. People of different culture, background, religion, and race would want to benefit from the tool, and this should be considered.

Works Cited

Leichtenstern, Karin, Elisabeth André, and Thurid Vogt. “Role assignment via physical mobile interaction techniques in mobile multi-user applications for children. “Ambient Intelligence (2007): 38-54. Print.

Read, Janet. “Validating the Fun Toolkit: an instrument for measuring children’s opinions of technology.” Cognition, Technology & Work 10.2 (2008): 119-128. Print.

Read, Janet and Stuart MacFarlane. “Using the fun toolkit and other survey methods to gather opinions in child computer interaction.” Proceedings of the 2006 conference on Interaction design and children. ACM, 2006. Print

Sim, Gavin, et al. “Evaluating Game Preference using the Fun Toolkit across Cultures.” BCS-HCI 12 Proceedings of the 26th Conference on People and Computers, 2012: 386-391. Print.