Product
Microbits, a programming tool for kids made by Microsoft. A long-standing academic co-design team (KidsTeam UW) partnered with Microsoft to co-design a technology. By partnering with the university, the company was able to participate in co-design with children without the overhead of setting up and maintaining their own youth co-design team.
Age and Demographic Target
Children ages 7 – 11
Team and Partners
University of Washington KidsTeam, led by Dr. Jason Yip
Product development stage
Iterating, evaluating
Background
This was a brief co-design partnership between Microsoft and the University of Washington KidsTeam.
Design Question(s)
The co-design took place early in the release of Microbits. Microsoft wanted to know how children would react to both the Microbits hardware and coding platform.
Process
Microsoft brought Microbits, a small programmable computer, to KidsTeam. KidsTeam used Sticky Notes to offer likes, dislikes, and design ideas for Microbits. Through this session, the co-designers were able to improve the music feature interface. One of the kids told the designers to integrate a piano keyboard to help kids know the differences between musical notes, which led to integrating music and sounds into the programming for kids.
Final Product
Microbits integrated the ideas from co-design and has kept this design for the past 10 years. The design ideas are still evident in Microsoft Microbits today.
Project photos
