Adults are from Earth; Children are from

the Moon
Designing for Children: A Complex
Challenge
By Randy White
© 2004 White Hutchinson Leisure & Learning Group
One of the challenges we constantly face when designing for children is to create an
environment (including equipment and furniture) that produces the desired behavior and
outcomes - and deters undesirable behavior. This challenge holds true whether we're
designing a children's environment for entertainment, edutainment, play or enrichment (early
childhood education). Just as there is a gulf of misunderstanding between genders, often
described with the analogy "women are from Venus; men are from Mars," likewise there is a
gulf of misunderstanding between most adult designers of children's environments and the
children they're designing for.

Kids will do the darnedest and most unexpected things when it comes to interacting with the
environment. If you have any doubts about this, consider a recent news story:

A 7-year-old boy crawled inside an arcade-type crane machine at a Piggly Wiggly supermarket
in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, and then couldn't get out. The website for Action 2News in Green
Bay, Wisconsin, reported that when firefighters arrived, the child was sitting inside the
machine among the stuffed animals. He had crawled into the 8-inch by 10-inch vending slot
while his father talked on a pay phone three feet away. The child remained calm during the
hour that it took a locksmith to free him, then made a quick dash for the restroom, said fire
department officials.

This story from the news is a good illustration of how children will make things in the
environment that aren't meant to be interactive, interactive. And the younger the child is, the
more likely this will happen. This is because of the vast differences in the way children and
adults look at their environment. Adults view the environment in terms of form, shapes, and
structures and as background. So if something like a couch is in a public place, adults will
interpret it only for its socially acceptable use, for sitting upon. Children, on the other hand,
interpret the environment holistically and evaluate it for all the ways they can interact with it.
They use the environment to aid their development and improve themselves. They look for the
environment's affordances -- the opportunities it affords them to do things. Also, children
interpret the environment in terms of its possible function rather than its form. So in the case
of the couch, because children haven't yet acquired the social norms for its accepted use (and
aren't developmentally ready to accept social norms for behavior), they see the couch as
something that affords them opportunities for bouncing on, sprawling out on, climbing on,
jumping over and hiding behind. A rock, if small enough, is perceived by a child as something
to grasp and throw — it affords grasping and throwing. If the rock is larger, it could afford
stepping on, looking under or climbing on.

Another simple example is a long straight hall in a building. A child sees it as affording her a
chance to run, and run down the hall she will. Similarly, a wall 3-feet high is perfect for walking
and balancing on. In all these cases, the child is not misbehaving. She is doing exactly what
her brain is biologically wired to have her do, based upon the environment's affordances and
her developmental age. She is fulfilling what is known as her development tasks, one of which
is to explore and interact with the environment. When a child behaves in an environment in a
way that adults see as improper, it is not usually the child's fault, but more often adults' fault
for not designing the environment appropriately for children.
Environments for children need to be designed with careful consideration of four basic
environmental needs children have:

• Movement
The environment needs to offer children an invitation to move within safe and tolerable
limits, and every child will move to a different drummer. If too restricted, children
become frustrated and fidgety, or they try to gain access to prohibited components of
the environment.

• Comfort
A feeling of comfort is important to children's use of and exploration of the
environment. There needs to be moderate and varied levels of stimulation for all the
senses. Behavior is optimized at a comfort zone of stimulation, neither too little or too
much. An overload of sensory stimulation and noise will exacerbate children's feelings
of discomfort and result in undesired behaviors.

• Competence
Children need to feel successful in negotiating the environment. Yet the world at large
forces them to constantly confront intimidating and frustrating experiences. Successful
children's environments are designed to make children competent inhabitants and
users.

• Control
Children need the ability to exercise control over the environment and acquire
increased levels of autonomy. Children must have experiences that allow them to
experiment and make decisions.

The balance of this article explores in greater detail the elements of design required to
accomplish these four goals and create successful environments for children's use.

One of the challenges in designing environments for use by children is to offer them the
affordances for the desired behaviors. Through deliberate design, you can keep children from
using the environment in inappropriate ways by eliminating affordances for undesired
behavior. When it comes to leisure and play areas, this is accomplished by offering children
age-appropriate affordances that produce the desired outcomes. If children are drawn to the
entertainment and play components, they will not be drawn to inappropriate use (in an adult's
eyes) of the other elements in the environment. This requires that children be challenged and
not become bored. Otherwise, they will start interacting with those other elements or
sometimes become aggressive in their behavior. Of course, there is also the issue of
eliminating affordances for the wrong behavior, such as not having throwable stones, or walls
that can be climbed and walked, or long straight halls.

Children become bored when there's a mismatch between what they have the ability to do and
what they are expected or want to do. They enjoy themselves when their skills match the
developmentally appropriate task at hand. If they're challenged beyond their capability, they
become anxious and often claim boredom as a defense. If not challenged enough, they're
bored. In either case, a bored child will find ways to be challenged by climbing, running or
other behaviors that match their abilities. Children prefer and are most drawn to play
environments with high degrees of challenge, diversity, novelty and complexity. The type,
quality and diversity of children's play environments directly affect the type, quality and
diversity of their play.

Since children's developmental tasks and skill levels change constantly as they age, the point
where boredom sets in is a moving target. Children's physical (fine and gross motor),
intellectual and social skills are constantly advancing. This means that children's environments
must offer what is known as graduated challenges, a range of challenges, as even the same
age children have different levels of skills and acceptable challenge.

The ability children posses to interact with, control and transform their environment is very
important to them. Children want to explore, manipulate and transform the environment.
Environments that include loose parts that children can manipulate, move and construct with
are immensely more engaging than static equipment and environments.

Most of young children's play centers around their incredible imaginations. The environment
needs to promote and support imaginative role-play with props and loose parts. However, the
environment needs to be open-ended so children can use their imaginations to develop their
own play scripts. Highly scripted, structured and overly themed environments stifle children's
creativity, short-circuit extended play and can quickly lead to boredom.

An important aspect for children's use of the environment is that they are more interested in
the process of using the environment than achieving an end result like adults do.

And then there are the concepts known as anthropometrics and ergonomics, (sometimes
referred to as human factors engineering) which means designing things to match children's
physical sizes and abilities. This includes such characteristics as height, grip, reach, field of
vision, etc., so that tasks can be performed with a minimum of stress and maximum of
efficiency and safety. It doesn't do any good to design equipment that doesn't fit a child's
anthropometrics and skills and isn't ergonomically correct. Either he will not be able to use the
equipment or he will feel incompetent trying to, and neither outcome will make him desire to
return. And poorly designed equipment, furniture and environments that don't match
children's anthropometrics can actually be dangerous. If a shelf is too high and a child wants
something on it, she will often find a way to get to it -- likely in an unsafe manner such as
climbing on lower shelves that may not be designed to support the weight of a child.
Ergonomically incorrect environments can injure children. Research is now showing that
children, with their still growing musculoskeletal systems, may be susceptible to
musculoskeletal injury (MSDs) by using improperly designed equipment such as standard
adult-size computer keyboards and ergonomically incorrect computer workstations. Surveys
report a high incidence of children's computer-related aches and pains, including discomfort
with wrists, necks and hands.

OK, as complicated as all this sounds, it gets even more challenging.

There's the issue of children's attention spans, which can be much shorter than that of adults.
So something that at first interests a child can 10 minutes later become boring. To overcome
this challenge, the environment must offer a wide variety of options. Too little a variety of
equipment and materials limits children's play options and leads to increased levels of
boredom and aggression. Another factor that drives the need for variety is known as multiple
intelligences. The theory of multiple intelligences challenges the traditional notion that
intelligence is a single, fixed commodity. Rather, it says we all possess eight distinct and
somewhat autonomous intelligences to differing degrees — linguistic, logical-mathematical,
musical, spatial, bodily kinesthetic, intrapersonal, interpersonal and naturalist. We tend to be
most interested in activities that match our stronger intelligences. There are also distinct
differences between the interests of girls and boys. Therefore, the variety of activities must
appeal to the broadest range of multiple intelligences and to both genders.
The scale of the environmental space also influences children's behavior. Research shows that
the more child-scaled the environmental space, the higher the quality and complexity of
children's play will be, and the longer they will be preoccupied in the play. In other words, a
child-scaled environment increases children's interest and concentration, and it delays
boredom. In a large space, children are encouraged through reading the environment to move
about from one thing to another, whereas in small contained areas, they are more focused.
Areas for different activities need to be well defined with identifiable boundaries in ways that
children can interpret. The relationship between areas and activities, what we call adjacencies
and zoning, also has an impact on children's behavior and the quality of their activities.
Institutional size and looking buildings and large entries, lobbies and public spaces are very
intimidating and uninviting for children. Children are most comfortable with residential looking
buildings and residential scale spaces.

Other factors also influence children's enjoyment of play and entertainment. Indoors this
includes the décor, colors, lighting and acoustics. And outdoors, nature and the abundant use
of plants in informal settings have been shown to enhance children's concentration, reduce
their stress, increase their feelings of well-being and help them further develop imagination
and a sense of wonder. Children have a strong preference to play outdoors in a natural
environment, as opposed to one built indoors.

Predictability and routine are important to children, as well. It helps give them a sense of
control over the environment and their daily lives. There needs to be a balance between not
too much sameness and not too much change and contrast -- what is called differences-within-
sameness. This concept is best exemplified by nature, with its subtle changes of wind, light,
sounds and its seasons. If an environment a child repeatedly visits is constantly changing, the
child will experience discomfort and anxiety.

A well-designed environment can be deciphered by children. They can orient themselves,

recognize how the space they are in connects to adjoining spaces and figure out how to get to
a desired destination - a concept know as wayfinding. Children's short stature makes this
especially challenging unless the environment is designed from a child's-eye view. Younger
children don't read. So where signs work for adults, the environment itself needs to be
designed to give children equivalent non-language wayfinding communication. An important
aspect of younger children's orientation is known as transitioning. Children cannot process new
enviorments as quickly as do adults. They need more time to adjust. The use of transitioning
spaces and transparency from space to space greatly assists children with transitioning.

Safety is also a crucial consideration. The environment must be designed not only to prevent
unsafe behavior or situations and injury, but also designed to minimize injury when an incident
occurs. Situations where a child cannot evaluate the risk, such as head and finger
entrapments, need to be avoided. However, to be interesting to children, equipment must
present some risks, but risks where a child can evaluate the challenge. What are considered
risks for older children can be hazards for younger children. Environments considered
appropriate and safe for older children will often be dangerous to younger children, requiring
age segregation of areas. Environments with activities that are safe when children are
supervised can be dangerous if children are left unsupervised.
Children's familiarity with each other also affects their play and interactions with other
children. A group together regularly in a childcare setting will interact differently both with the
environment and with each other than will children who do not know each other. The same
environment design won't necessarily work for both groups.

Another consideration: Children are also more sensitive to environmental hazards than adults
are. This includes chemicals, VOC emissions (volatile off-gassing organic chemicals from
building materials) and foods they are allergic to. Good air quality is also essential. Toxicity
and sanitation are especially important considerations for the youngest children who will often
mouth anything they come into contact with. Many designers overlook the aspect of selecting
non-toxic indoor plants and outdoor vegetation in children's environments.

Accessibility for children with disabilities is another design challenge. Unfortunately, the
Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) fails to adequately address children's accessibility, as it
focuses mainly on wheelchair accessibility for adults. Even the alternative ADA children's
standards fail to address the environmental challenges faced by children with non-wheelchair
mobility disabilities, including walkers, leg braces, limited vision, Attention Deficit Disorder
(ADD) and Attention Deficient Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). The other problem is that
following ADA standards during the design process can often make the environment and
equipment unusable by able-bodied children. An approach known as universal design is
required to make environments truly usable by the greatest number of children. Universal
design is an approach to design that honors human diversity and addresses the right for
everyone — from children to the elderly — to use all environments, products and information
in an independent, inclusive, and equal way.

Durability and maintenance are important considerations in designing any environment for
children's use. Children will give things more wear and tear than adults do and will definitely
get things dirtier faster. Materials need to be durable and easy to clean and maintain. Using
materials and finishes that can be sanitized is important, especially when with infants and
toddlers will be present in the environment being designed.

Designing for children is no simple task, since most adult designers have a completely
different perception of the environment than the users they are designing for. If you put
children in an environment not properly designed for them, all kinds on unexpected and
undesired behaviors and outcomes result. Children are going to use the environment in ways
that their biology tells them to, so it's the responsibility of adults to design children's
environments carefully to produce the desired behaviors. Positive outcomes for children's
behavior in a leisure or education setting will be produced only when the environments have
been design with a thorough knowledge of child development, play, anthropometrics,
ergonomics, environmental factors, wayfinding, environmental psychology and universal
design.

Designing For All Children

by Vicki L. Stoecklin
©1999 White Hutchinson Leisure & Learning Group
Children need age-appropriate and developmentally appropriate physical environments that
support, promote and include child-directed and child initiated play and learning. Active,
creative play and exploration is central to normal child development.

The physical environment can either contribute to children's development and support learning
and exploration or become a permanent impediment to the above stated goals. The design
and layout of the physical environment which includes the building, interior finishes, outdoor
spaces, room arrangement and selection of equipment has a profound impact on children's
behavior. Quite unlike adults, children figure out how to behave in most situations through
instantaneously reading the environment. Children also read the environment differently than
adults, not as background but as something to interact with.

The concept of designing for all children is based upon the tenets of child development which
recognizes that each child is unique and passes through a series of recognizable stages of
development, which are different for each child including children with disabilities. The
underlying definition of design for all children is similar in context to the definition of universal
design. Designing for all children means creating environments that can be usable by all
children without the need for adaptation. It also means that the environments are free from
both physical and social barriers. The following list of key elements can be used by designers,
architects and early childhood staff in creating environments that are inviting and functional to
every child.

Equitable Use
The intent of all state and federal legislation for children with disabilities is to provide for equal
and equitable access. Equal access does not mean segregating and stigmatizing any user,
able-bodied or disabled. Designing for equitable use means creating a design that is functional
to a wide variety of users and one that allows for socialization between all children. For
example, in designing a water play element for children our company chose to create a
universal design of multi-height tables that would allow for an undertable or side approach by
wheelchairs of various heights, walkers of various sizes and design or standing children of
various heights. Children could then self select the height and design of the table which best
worked for them. This design solution also allowed for socialization to occur between all types
of children who used the table, both able-bodied, those using chairs or walkers and non-
disabled children of various sizes. A far less equitable approach would have been to label each
side of the table by chronological age of the intended users and to then designate areas for
wheelchair and/or walker access.

Equitable use means creating a design that works for all types of users and does not exclude
any intended users. For example, the height of a transfer deck for a child using a wheel chair
in the draft ADA Play Areas Rule is stated in a variable height measurement. Depending on
what height you choose to make this transfer deck and if the adjacent stairs are going to be
used by non-wheel chair using children, you may be creating a situation where the needs of
the wheel chair using child are superceding the needs of the other children. Young children of
all stages of development and older children with delayed motor development simply cannot
adapt to inappropriate design. For example, if the stair next to a transfer station is too high,
they just cannot use it. You can imagine the problems when access to the piece of climbing
equipment creates a situation where no children can get on the equipment without assistance
from an adult. This same principle can be applied to creating appropriate sinks and toilets for
all children. Not only should these facilities work for the child with disabilities but it must work
also for the non-disabled child as well. If sinks and toilets are too high they can't be reached
and if they are too low you may be creating safety problems especially for very young or
cognitively impaired children who might climb in them.

Another example of inequitable design is when the intended function of the design is lost after
the adaptation is made. One piece of equipment that comes to my mind when thinking of this
problem is the elevated sandtable. Sand serves as a sensory experience for children of all
ages, abilities and development. As a sensory experience, sand play is best executed as it has
been for probably centuries, with the child being immersed in the sand. I feel that designers
and manufacturers are defeating the principle of equitable use when an equivalent solution for
sandplay is the elevated sandtable. The elevated sandbox/sandtable creates a situation where
now, no one can get in the sand including the non-disabled child. Anyway, at what one height
would you put one elevated table to meet the needs of all children? Quickly answered, that
one magical height intended to meet all children's needs simply does not exist. A more
equitable design solution is to continue to use a traditional sandbox that could have added to it
a transfer station for a child using a wheelchair and/or add an adapted stair for children using
walkers, a child with limited sight or a child with underdeveloped motor abilities. In this
manner, all children can continue to experience the sensory experience of immersed sandplay.
Immediately from birth, children reply on touching, feeling and using their senses to provide
information. We should create environments that are rich for exploration though all the senses:
touch, taste, sight, sound and smell.

Designing for all children means creating spaces that are free from social barriers. Spaces,
indoors and outdoors, must allow for positive interpersonal interaction and socialization
between children with different abilities and of both genders. Spaces must be available for
small groups, solitude, quiet play, large groups and active play. Appropriate space will create
opportunities for the development of self-confidence and social skills.

Flexibility and Independence

For any age child, the environment should foster independence. A developmental task of
childhood is to move from total dependence on adults to a more mature independent stage.
Independence can best be achieved by creating environments that can be used by children
with a wide range of individual preferences and abilities. When designing an interactive
cooking station, we created a design of multi-height movable counter tops and multi-height
stools that could both be adjusted to meet the diverse needs of a group of children including
those with disabilities.

Often times what happens in some settings over time is that the adults and sometimes the
children learn to adapt to poor design. I remember observing this phenonenom in an early
childhood inclusionary setting that had children with diverse abilities and disabilities enrolled.
One of the four pieces of outdoor playground equipment had been adapted for children with
disabilities. As required by the current draft ADA Play Areas Rule, this particular piece of
equipment only had a transfer deck for children who were using wheelchairs. However, this
program did not have any children enrolled who used wheel chairs but it had a high number of
children enrolled who used a variety of walkers. I watched in amazement as teachers were
forced to take each child out of their walkers and carry them up the stairs. Not only does this
type of poor design foster dependence on the child's part but it created a situation very unsafe
for the teachers and children. As a team, we chose to remedy the situation by creating a
master plan for the complete renovation of this outdoor play space to make it better meet the
needs of all children. Data was collected for this design project through extensive observations
of children and interviews with staff including physical therapists. In addition to the transfer
stations, we added a series of steps and ramps which could be used by children in either
walkers or wheelchairs.

Designing for all children means understanding that children come in a variety of sizes which is
sometimes not directly related to chronological age. Our team makes use of a variety of
anthropometric charts which are then adjusted based on the children's motor abilities and how
the design will be used. Many children with disabilities do not follow typical growth patterns.

Includes Safety
Creating designs for all children must include adherence to a variety of mandatory and
voluntary safety guidelines not only for children but for staff as well. The design must support
active experimentation and risk-taking without being unsafe for children. The physical
environment and equipment must be arranged to minimize hazards and errors. It must also
support the role of staff and parents in assisting in the play and learning environment. The
design of outdoor playground equipment is tightly regulated and controlled by several safety
guidelines, however there are no standards for similar types of equipment and design used in
the indoor environment. I could list numerous examples of unsafe buildings, playgrounds,
furniture and equipment I have observed in day care centers, children's museums, public
schools and children's play spaces. Dangers include inadequate or no shock absorbing fall
zones which could prove lethal to a child, designs which encourage inappropriate behaviors,
materials and plants which are toxic to children, and strangulation and body entrapment
hazards which can also be potentially lethal.
 A Team Effort
The process of envisioning and designing environments that support competence,
independence, exploration and inclusion is far more complex that following a list of suggested
guidelines. The product can only be as good as the process that creates it and the expertise of
the design participants.

Designing for all children requires a multi-disciplinary, cross-functional design team from the
beginning. The team should meet in a concurrent format where experts who design the facility
and those who operate it create the design program, goals and requirements together at the
same table. Program goals, building use, children's needs, staff needs and parents need drive
the concurrent design process. Other issues that need to be examined up front in the process
are furniture, equipment and operating costs prior to designing the physical space. Everything
impacts everything.

The design team needs to be structured and sensitive to staff, parental and community input.
The team should have members with specialized expertise in early childhood education,
special education, child development, children's environmental design, architecture, landscape
architecture, interior design, horticulture, acoustics for children, equipment selection, universal
design for children and cultural competency. A team can bring the added benefits of a broad
view and collaborative creativity.

In summary, designing for all children asks us to more closely examine our values and beliefs
and to learn to collaborate with others whose expertise may be different than our own. As
much as we may be different, we are all alike in many ways. Designing for all children finds a
way to support and encourage each child's abilities, similarities, and uniqueness.

References
1. Bunnett, Rochelle and Davis, Nancy Leigh, "Getting to the Heart of the Matter", Child
Care Information Exchange, 3/97, Vol. 114, pages 42-44.
2. Center for Universal Design, Definition of Universal Design, North Carolina State
University, 1997.
3. Stoecklin, Vicki and White, Randy, "Designing Quality Child Care Facilities", Region IV
Quality Improvement Center for Disabilities Services Newsbreak, Chapel Hill, North
Carolina, February, 1998.
4. Youcha, Victoria and Wood, Karren, "Enhancing the Environment For All Children",
Child Care Information Exchange, 3/97, Vol. 114, pages 45-49.