Design for children and older people – Educating the Next Generation of Designers

Abstract

This special issue of the IxD&A journal focuses on design for children and older people, both in teaching and in design practice. The aim is to expand the results from the DEVICE project (DEVICE - DEsign for Vulnerable generatIons – Children and Elderly) and from the workshops “Show me yours, and I’ll show you mine – Teaching design for children and the elderly” held at the The 2nd International Conference for Design Education Researchers in Oslo 2013 and “Curriculum or not – Show us how you teach Interaction Design & Children!” held at the IDC - Interaction Design & Children 2014 conference in Aarhus. This goal is achieved by discussing issues related to the involvement of children and older people in Interaction Design, aiming also at a better understanding of the underlying concerns and potentials in this realm. This special issue thus represents an attempt to collect and share the contributions of educators, researchers, designers and practitioners regarding teaching designers Interaction Design for children and older people. In addition, it tries to foster the sharing of best practices and methods, and to encourage a discussion in the relevant academic and professional communities. Despite the fact that a growing interest is targeting the needs of children and older people in design processes, only little research and debate have been devoted to developing teaching modules for design methods and practices aiming at covering these particular tasks. Our main concern is thus focused onto the risk that a gap between the accumulation of knowledge in the field and the transfer of this knowledge to new generations of designers could emerge and grow at a greater pace compared to the efforts put in place to fill it in.