Child Design/ers

There are many things designed for children but few of them are designed by children. What needs do children experience? What are their preferred solutions? 

This project has been a collaboration between me and a school class (age 8-9) with the dual goals of giving children more power to shape their surroundings and giving me a greater understanding of the design process by leading them through it. The class has been part of the project from start to end. From creating the brief – Make it less boring and difficult to tidy up – and all the way to contributing ideas for the colour scheme and name of the final product: SAMMY is a tool for collecting all those little things – legos, beads, pens, socks – that get strewn across your floor and then take a while to pick up one by one. It is a helpful companion that mechanically sweeps these things into its belly and then lets you pour them out directly where they belong.