read Wyeth and Diercke's Designing Cultural Probes for Children

Some key points that come out of reading  Wyeth and Diercke's (2006) 

Designing Cultural Probes for Children

" Engagement and Cultural Probe Activities
The responses to activities demonstrated that children were best able to provide insights when the activities
provided opportunities to be creative and appealed their sense of fun. Evidence from probe returns suggested that children were prepared to spend a significant amount of time engaged in the completion of such activities. Children found futuristic explorations and activities where they could work outside traditional perceived educational boundaries appealing.

Children appeared unwilling to engage in activities that have been proven to work in participatory design groups, such as journals, brainstorming exercises and collages. The success of such activities with children seems dependent on support from others, and evidence from this study indicates that they do not translate well to individual, autonomous activities. Activities also needed to be self-contained. As demonstrated by the failure of children to engage in the technology collage activity, children were not prepared to complete activities that required material from outside the cultural probe pack to be used. The first task in a cultural probe pack should be easy for children to complete. An example of such a task is the subject ratings activity. While not particularly useful in providing inspiration, it made the children feel that they could easily accomplish a task. Providing such as task will motivate participants to move on to other activities.

DESIGN INSPIRATION
Invention, design and role play were themes that emerged as we explored the probe returns. Children were interested in robotics, artificial intelligence and the way machines work.

CONCLUSION

This project has demonstrated that cultural probes are a useful, minimally-intrusive means by which we can gain contextual insight into the lives of children. Early results have shown that well-designed cultural probes can be effectively used as a basis for inspiration to inform the design of educational technology. Our recommendation for the target age-group is a cultural probe pack which includes five or six self contained activities. These activities should focus on topics of direct interest to children and should include an educational context at the periphery. Each activity should be clear, differentiable from other activities and able to be completed in a relatively short time frame. Activities should allow for open-ended and creative responses; they should be playful, but include a supporting framework."

from
 Wyeth, P., & Diercke, C.(2006). Designing Cultural Probes for Children, Proceedings of OZCHI 2006.  Retrieved 7 February 2012 from elec.uq.edu.au/~peta/wyethcpfinal.pdf