Friendly Monsters or Children: A Character Design Process Which Considers Representation and Inclusive Design for Young Children

The affordances of newer technologies make it easier for young children to engage with media and its characters. As a result, more digital media is shared with young children and developed for early childhood. Designing characters that appeal to children and support their learning must consider how children engage and identify with characters, children's character preferences, and social group representation. This paper presents a case study of one development studio's approach to developing a suite of preschool apps as part of a technology-based project and the intentional design of characters that children connect to. This essay will focus on how the studio incorporated different sources of data to inform character and content design and tailored user-testing with young children. It concludes with how this project informed the studio's approach to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), and recommendations for children's media developers on promising practices for engaging children in app design.