Participating Elementary School Children in UI Design Process of Learning Environment: Case KidNet

User interfaces are a significant part of websites, but even when websites are targeted at children, the UIs are designed by adults. Adults do not remember what it is like to be a child, yet children have usually been excluded from the design process, even when they are an important user group. The main goal of this study was to find a way to include 6th graders in the design process so that they could express what kind of UI elements they like. This study was conducted by organizing short design sessions where children got to choose their favorite UI elements from different design alternatives and use them to build a low-tech prototype of a UI. We found that the results produced with this method were sensible and revealed valuable information about children’s UI preferences.