An investigation of a method for gathering basic information about children with an aim to design educational Game considering user-centered approach

Today, the importance of "playing" in childhood has been proved by a large number of researches. There is a consensus that playing is the natural method of learning. In fact, games encourage children to undergo more difficult tasks, facilitating the process of transforming to higher levels and changing drastically. Without doubt, psychologists emphasize the role of playing in children's growth; but most often, in designing proper games for children the relationship between these games and learning and growth is being ignored, and often these games are designed improperly and without considering the social and cultural needs of children, partly due to a lack of proper relationship with the "users". This article is intended to explain how to gather basic information from the users, who are little children, in order to design suitable games. Because of the fact that the main approach towards designing these games is user-oriented, the process of gathering information and also the method of designing and even the final process of its completion depends on the ideas of users (children aged five to seven) in their own real environment. The reason of selecting the target group between five and seven years of age is that, at this spectrum of age, children's imaginations have been evolved and they tend to play more roles, to create relationships and to combine learning and targeted activities. The use of this user-oriented method and the related designing in this project, forced us to gather information directly from children. This article will help to improve the prior knowledge in this regard and about children. Firstly, a new method of gathering first hand information through children themselves is introduced and explained. Then, it will evaluate the acquired information and takes advantage of them to create a new family of games (free games). In this regard, applying Mars Interview method to properties of Iranian kindergartens and combining it with already-tested methods, after discussing it with the entire operating group including trainers and designers, invaluable information about the favourite games of kindergarten children aged five to seven was acquired. These are as follows: The majority of their favourite games were games involving bodily activities like running, playing catch and so forth. A lot of children enjoy the excitement and the suspense in their games, like the excitement of waiting or seeking in hide-and-seek or even the excitement of winning and jumping in hopscotch. Role-playing and pretending were one of the things which roused boys' interests. One of the children confessed that once pretending to be someone else, they are free to act foolishly. In the other hand, watching plays or puppet shows or even attending in the play itself were quite interesting to children, so much that they were excited even about describing or talking about them. Children like to be present in the games continuously and they only enjoy themselves when constantly present in the games. During the course of this research, merely one study group was targeted, about whom we will discuss in the investigation part.