Exploring design guidelines to teach young children about potential frightening topics through a digital interactive experience

Abstract

There is difficulty explaining to children why the world might be changing, whether it’s because of a pandemic, catastrophe, or other potentially frightening topics. Still, when children’s lives become affected, guardians and teachers might have no choice but to try and explain these sensitive topics in an emotionally considerate manner without many digital sources as support. Through an exploratory research approach, this project aimed to discover suitable ways to present potentially frightening topics to young children. During the process, the team designed "Pawdemic", an edu cational game about the COVID-19 pandemic that teaches social distancing rules to young children. This digital artefact helped assess and validate the frameworks and methodologies applied during the design process. Likewise, as remote learning became the norm due to the COVID-19 pandemic, this project was purposefully ex ecuted remotely to further investigate the remote participatory design’s feasibility. Lastly, the positive results and feedback of the game allowed the team to create four valuable groups of guidelines for future designers that seek to create similar experiences.