Observing children from a grown-up’s perspective was very interesting. I could definitely see myself while I was a child by observing them. There was one thing that left me with a very deep impression and made me think a lot about my own project.

I remembered in the activity room there were a group of boys tried to build a train track but they failed. Then a girl came, trying to offer some help but was refused by the boys. Then she came back with a sketch of the train tracks she designed but the boys still not listened to her. sad:(

I was shocked by the way that the girl was communicating with other kids. As a designer, I cared a lot about how people communicate their ideas in an effective way. What the girl did was something we use often while doing the project: visualizing. After the girl found there was a problem with communicating with others using words, she went back and tried another way. It was also a process when something failed, we iterate and try again. I’m sure that the girl didn’t study design or go through any other problem-solving training, but she knew how to solve problems inherently. This example implies that problem-solving is something that is built in our system at the time when we were born. We humans by nature like to express our ideas and raise solutions to a problem. This also reflected one of the three children’s primary objectives: initiative, which means the desire to try our own ideas. This reminded me that adding some intentional hurdles or obstacles in our design may intrigue children to solve them in order to achieve a sense of achievement.  

Another thing that stood out to me from this example was inclusivity. It seemed that the train track building was very exclusive to boys because nearly all of the players were boys. I understand boys may be more drawn to this kind of activity, but the fact that the girl wanted to help them indicated that some girls were interested in it as well. The girls were just probably afraid to join them because they were not being recognized. So it reminds me to design something inclusive that children of different genders, races, and religious backgrounds can play with. I hope every child can have the same level of enjoyment while playing it without feeling being excluded.