Engaging Children in Cultural Heritage Through Book Craft: An Interaction Design Approach

From a trans-disciplinary perspective, this paper presents a child-centered cultural heritage interpretation project that incorporates interaction design techniques into the development of a physical lapbook. We engaged 74 primary school students aged 9–10 from Suzhou, China in the co-design process. This involved understanding users and their needs, framing information architecture, designing interactive elements, testing and refinements, and implementing the final design. The process resulted in the collaborative creation of a lapbook introducing Suzhou food heritages. Observation and questionnaire survey were carried out to evaluate participants’ engagement and heritage comprehension. The finding showed the project has positively impacted users' knowledge acquisition, comprehension, willingness to share, and overall satisfaction. Interaction design techniques also effectively transferred into crafting the physical storybook. The project demonstrates the value of a co-design process and interaction design principles for engaging audience in heritage interpretations and developing non-digital media such as books.