The purpose of user research is to collect data about the characteristics, needs, capabilities, and preferences of the target user population. The following list are topics on which user research considers and that are relevant to risk communication design:
• The critical differences between people (e.g., people may have disabilities, different levels of experience, or dissimilar cultural backgrounds)
• The tasks performed by users and the different environments in which they perform them
The choice of a technique depends on many factors, including the product characteristics (e.g.., originality, criticality of safety features, and complexity). Expert and novice practitioners with and without experience designing for children reviewed the second version of the framework to assess its incorporation of essential issues related to designing risk communications and its perceived usefulness for inexperienced practitioners. Overall, they perceived the framework as reflecting a more structured approach to considering the different aspects of the design process. The participants viewed it as a dynamic and flexible tool that researchers could adapt to a range of design situations. However, they suggested that it could be simplified or presented in a more visual format for designers. The individual interviews tended to stress the need to move away from outdated, complicated, difficult-to-navigate, and conventional representations when designing for children. The participants frequently cited their desire to bring human information to life by presenting user insights as full stories, offering improved visual materials, and moving beyond the use of data alone to understand the needs and abilities of young children. Thus, the task of developing design tools extends far beyond those tools themselves. The interviewees also mentioned the role of existing business models and processes. Furthermore, user considerations have a significant influence on how tools are incorporated into the design process and employed in practice. Using, sharing, and managing knowledge are all complex tasks, and tools may provide an advantage by offering a means of navigating complex standards and a concise overview of relevant information. The challenge is to provide information in an easily accessible, updatable, and maintainable format aligned with current standards and best practices. The review also identified challenges linked to integrating the environment, children’s behaviour, and person-fit considerations into existing design paradigms, and warning theory offers an approach
161 to more closely integrating these elements into the design process. Both warning theory and professional design must undergo a paradigm shift in terms of how teams consider the environment, behavioural interactions, development stages, and communication over the design lifecycle. The ‘receiver’ is the person whom the message is targeted at, in this case children within a certain age-group. ‘Receiver moderators’ are moderating variables that may affect children’s processing stages as information is delivered to the receiver, the child. The processing of a warning continues through several stages as previously defined in the C-HIP model presented in Section 2.5.1. Receiver moderators that may interact with evaluation are listed in Table 5.5.
Table 5.5 Moderators
Table 5.6 Receiver analysis
Receiver Analysis: Capabilities and Limitations Cognitive
Physical Emotional Other considerations
Other factors to consider when developing risk communications include but are not limited to the following:
• The number of children encountering the product, construction, or service • The age of the children encountering the product, construction, or service
(age-related changes) • Accessibility
Moderators Age factors
Interactions with caregivers, peers, and responsible adults Environmental factors
Gender Cultural factors
162 • The risk of injury in case of an accident
• The costs and benefits of injury prevention
• The need for adult researchers to understand children’s unique environments
5.9.4 Conclusions
• What types of information do designers need to support safe design for young children (5–11 years)?
• Is the framework (proposed in Chapter 4) useful? What is needed, and what form will the risk management framework need to take to be usable?
The fundamental purposes of the empirical study were to identify any problem areas concerning the uptake of tools and the proposed model and to shed light on where further research is needed. Both older adults and children are considered vulnerable groups (WHO, 2002), and so adapting the model for older adults to children’s needs was a logical first step. The model was then further validated by designers. The relevant stakeholders provided feedback on the adapted McLaughlin and Mayhorn (2012) model, which was modified to cover the unique needs of young children. Their feedback was taken into consideration, and the model was further developed. Hence the risk management framework in Figure 5.3 was developed by the researcher to include more detail on methodological stages from previous research literature, with the model structure mapped onto the design process. More input of appropriate design, testing and evaluation methods and standards.
163 The findings suggest that tools must not only support members of the design team, but also encourage collaboration among child-safety design experts. In terms of developing age-appropriate risk-communication materials and also in incorporating children’s safety concerns into designs, relevant guidance encouraging a systematic and iterative approach centred on the needs of young children is key. An important consideration, as described by Waterson and Monk (2014), is that comprehension and interpretation are likely to be joint processes involving interactions with adults and caregivers; this factor must be taken into consideration when developing support tools. The next section offers suggestions regarding future work exploring prototyping tools and evaluation guidelines in terms of their practical utility.