From New Zealand to Mongolia: Co-Designing and Deploying a Digital Library for the World’s Children

From the abstract of this article in Children, Youth and Environments, Volume 19, Number 1: "This paper discusses seven years of strategies and methods learned in co-designing and deploying the International Children’s Digital Library (ICDL) with children in multiple countries. Our experience with iterative, international co-design and developing world deployment shows that acquiring site-specific knowledge is critical to adapting the methods needed for success. In the case of co-design, a combination of face-to-face and email collaboration is important for building on-going partnerships. With deployment activities, it is important to be prepared for the unexpected - managing complex technologies in rural settings is very difficult. The more site-specific knowledge that can be acquired the more likely there will be a successful outcome."

As stated here, "Since 2001, an interdisciplinary, international, and intergenerational team of adults and children has been designing a digital library for the world’s children. Led by researchers at the University of Maryland in the U.S. [United States], co-designing has taken place with partners in New Zealand, Honduras, Germany, Mongolia and the U.S. These collaborative research experiences have led to unique online tools for searching... and reading fully digitized children’s books from around the world....Since the inception of the ICDL, a guiding principle has been to shape the design of the library’s tools and collection by an understanding of children as technology users, book readers, and library visitors."

Through a case study on the research for this virtual library, the article presents experiential information on methods for co-designing with children and on "real-world obstacles and opportunities for designing and deploying online technologies for children." Specific methods included interviewing, and observation of and by children and adults, sticky note idea graphs, and low-tech prototyping (building physical models and making sketches using art material). Work was done both in a university lab in the US where the model was being developed and through mail and email with children in international locations. The children, chosen for the team based on interest in technology, their ability to communicate, and their desire to collaborate with their peers and with adults, joined researchers from the fields of computer science, education, psychology, art, and robotics. Together this interdisciplinary and intergenerational team brainstormed, set project directions, tested new ideas, and implemented technologies.

In the design partnership where neither children nor adults were "in charge", it was found that the most important goal of any partnership between adults and children is "idea elaboration". In order to promote an equality in which both children and adult ideas are considered, the team insisted upon four basic practices: no raising hands, using first names (no last names or titles), wearing informal clothing, and sitting on the floor.

Challenges included: trying to fit co-design work in to a child's school schedule (after-school scheduling became the norm); working at a distance (drawing was substituted for modelling so that prototypes and idea generation could be faxed or emailed and a "like/dislike" matrix was substituted for sticky notes); bringing children from different sites together via video conferencing (failed due to time differences); and face-to-face meetings (cost prohibited meeting more than once a year). A blend of face-to-face and email was the ultimate solution to collaborative contact. The duration of team-building time was much longer for the international teams than among those who worked in the lab. (A chart on the 16th page of the document compares methods used for the lab team and those used for the international team.) The unanticipated challenge that demanded attention directly after the launch was the technical deployment in different country contexts. The Java Web Start would not load in the computers of international partners until a rewrite of the software to HTML was done.

The authors distinguish between “internationalised” computer interfaces (meaning that a single design is accessible by people from many cultures) and “localised” (meaning that the design is adapted for use by a specific culture), as well as what is understood by younger or older children. For example, “Simple” and “Advanced” searches were not understood by younger children through either the textual or iconic representations. With years of refinement, changes have been made to aspects of the user experience. "For example, some changes that we have made in recent years are that the entry point to access books from the home page requires no language skills (a clear and central animated image of a book is shown on the home page). Also, once you start looking for books, the entire interface can be displayed in any of 16 languages."

Through the case study of Mongolia, the document describes localised adaptation to language and technical limitations and challenging technical problems concerning hardware, repair, incompatibility, and lack of internet access, among others. However, teacher engagement was high at all sites, indicating their understanding of the value of the library to student learning.

Lessons learned include:

• "Site-specific knowledge is critical to success," including technical knowledge and cultural knowledge.
  
• Face-to-face time is needed to sustain email partnerships.
• Deploying complex technologies requires technical and problem-solving expertise.