Child Development Knowledge and Human Factors in Toy Design : An Exploratory Study of Popular Children's Products

Abstract

Play reflects how children understand the world, and it also provides them with opportunities to learn and refine their social, emotional, motor, and problem-solving skills. Before designing a product such as a children's toy, it is important for the engineer to consider all of the tasks that users will be executing with the finished product. From a general human factors perspective, physical and cognitive operations are the primary categories of tasks that are deliberated. The purpose of this study is to assess if child development theory and knowledge informs the design process of those who create children's products. Patents of toys (n=38) selected to be included in this study were analyzed to see if and how knowledge of child development was incorporated into the development of the product, as well as to evaluate if there have been any changes in the use of child development knowledge in toy design. The results indicated that toy patents in this study did utilize knowledge of child development and demonstrated a significant increase in the utilization of child development knowledge more frequently in contemporary toys, particularly in cognitive learning. Overall, there were strong correlations between the number of evidence pieces within the patent discussing various child development topics, thus indicating what could be considered a cultural shift in expectations of children's toy play.