Abstract
In this work, kindergarten toy storage, defined as the construction area, puzzle area, scientific observation area, and role-playing area, and the toy characteristics of the four areas, was studied. Interviews and grounded theory were used to observe and summarize the behavioral needs of 3- to 6-year-old children and preschool teachers. Analytical hierarchy process (AHP) was used to analyze behavioral needs. It was concluded that the kindergarten toy locker optimization was designed to improve storage efficiency. However, the current layout of kindergarten toy lockers is chaotic, and children cannot efficiently and autonomously take toys from toy lockers. The best toy locker layout scheme was selected through an eye tracking experiment. The subjects were all 3- to 6-year-old children, a total of 30 people. By comparing the data such as hot spot map, trajectory map, area of the first viewpoint, and gaze time when children observed different lockers layout during the experiment, the optimal layout scheme of kindergarten toy lockers was comprehensively analyzed. Optimizing the zoning, classification, and storage of kindergarten toys is conducive to improving the efficiency of children’s independent storage, creating a kindergarten game and teaching environment conducive to children’s development.
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Design of Kindergarten Toy Lockers
Yanfeng Miao,a Xiaojie Xie,a Wenye Qi,a and Wei Xu b
In this work, kindergarten toy storage, defined as the construction area, puzzle area, scientific observation area, and role-playing area, and the toy characteristics of the four areas, was studied. Interviews and grounded theory were used to observe and summarize the behavioral needs of 3- to 6-year-old children and preschool teachers. Analytical hierarchy process (AHP) was used to analyze behavioral needs. It was concluded that the kindergarten toy locker optimization was designed to improve storage efficiency. However, the current layout of kindergarten toy lockers is chaotic, and children cannot efficiently and autonomously take toys from toy lockers. The best toy locker layout scheme was selected through an eye tracking experiment. The subjects were all 3- to 6-year-old children, a total of 30 people. By comparing the data such as hot spot map, trajectory map, area of the first viewpoint, and gaze time when children observed different lockers layout during the experiment, the optimal layout scheme of kindergarten toy lockers was comprehensively analyzed. Optimizing the zoning, classification, and storage of kindergarten toys is conducive to improving the efficiency of children’s independent storage, creating a kindergarten game and teaching environment conducive to children’s development.
DOI: 10.15376/biores.19.1.434-455
Keywords: Kindergarten toy lockers; AHP; Eye-movement experiment; Storage efficiency
Contact information: a: College of Furnishings and Industrial Design, Nanjing Forestry University, Nanjing 210037, China; b: Jiangsu Co-Innovation Center of Efficient Processing and Utilization of Forest Resources; * Corresponding author: myf1203@163.com
Research Background
In general, there is a lack of research on the design of kindergarten furniture, especially research that focuses on user needs and relevant research that utilizes the children’s group as the conceptual research object. Published work, up to this point, not only lacks in-depth children’s group face-to-face observation, but deep excavation of the real needs of the children’s group. Thus, studies cannot meet the actual needs of the target users.
In the early stage, the observation method was used to investigate the storage behavior of children. It was found that the kindergarten toy locker is the main furniture in the play area. The locker serves as a regional space division tool. While due to batch customization or procurement, the internal division of the cabinet does not provide characteristic differences, and the location of each play area is close to each other, regional characteristics that are vague do not facilitate children to play area identification, and labels should be used to for indication. Children can use this series of actions as an educational game when putting toys into correct places. However, in the process of this game, the children may not be easily able to identify complex visual information features, resulting in toy storage errors. This not only affects the experience of children’s play, but it also increases the workload of preschool teachers. Therefore, it is necessary and feasible to research kindergarten toy lockers to reduce children’s storage error rate and improve storage efficiency.
Research Review
Research related to user behavior and user needs
Generally, in the research process, through in-depth interviews, questionnaire surveys and behavioral observations (Village et al. 2015; Merbah et al. 2020; Konstanti et al. 2021), analysis of the needs of target users can be carried out to clarify the explicit and implicit needs of target users (van Liempd et al. 2018; Richter et al. 2019). If there are too many demand points, SPSS software can be used for principal component analysis or the AHP method used for weight calculation, and the main requirements of users can be determined based on the weight results, which would allow targeted design optimization (Yang et al. 2019; Neira-Rodado et al. 2020; Wang et al. 2021).
Grounded theory is a qualitative research method that uses systematic procedures to develop and inductively guide grounded theory for a certain phenomenon. Grounded theory contains initial encoding, focus encoding, and theoretical encoding. Zhou et al. (2023) used grounded theory to code and analyze the humanistic care factors to improve the design standards of intelligent elderly products and to promote the more rational use of humanistic care factors in design. Grounded theory can effectively study the needs and behavioral characteristics of target users. Cheer et al. (2015) have found that researchers are increasingly using grounded theory methodologies to study the professional experience of nurses and midwives.
Emotion plays an important role in the use of furniture. Through combining case study and field investigation, the user emotion can be integrated, the user’s emotional response can be identified, and the user’s emotional evaluation can be analyzed, which can enrich the research of emotional design (Cheng et al. 2020; Angelaki et al. 2022).
Research on the design of kindergarten furniture
The research-literature for kindergarten furniture is relatively small, mainly in the field of storage, sitting furniture, activity area furniture, and interior space-related design studies (Cheng et al. 2019). The design strategy is mainly reflected in the playful, guidance, modularity, safety, fun, growth, and emotional design methods (Purwaningrum et al. 2015; Gimenez et al. 2016). Fun and emotionality are concentrated in the color, shape, and material performance of kindergarten furniture. Safety is expressed in the stability and physiological appropriateness of kindergarten furniture. Guidance is mainly manifested in the design of storage guidance for young children. Playfulness and interest are expressed in the integration of game mechanisms and interesting elements into furniture design to increase the interaction between children and furniture. Modularity is expressed in the design of furniture that can be combined and disassembled to meet a variety of functional forms by building combinations.
Choi et al. (2016) presented a CMF (Color, Material, Finishing) strategy for a table in kindergarten classroom. The multi-sensory CMF strategy can deeply understand the characteristics of children’s development. Through comparing the developmental characteristics of the kindergarten students with those of the CMF to derive the multi-sensory design element, the multi-sensory design elements can be obtained. Design factors derived from the development process of kindergartners are classified into keywords and used for table analysis for kindergartners.
Research on children’s furniture design
Some scholars have studied children’s furniture from the perspective of furniture size or furniture color. Sejdiu et al. (2023) obtained anthropometric data of primary school students in the Republic of Kosovo by measuring the body parts of 720 students in 12 different primary schools in four different regions of the Republic of Kosovo. Based on the study, they provided effective recommendations for school furniture design. Jiang et al. (2020) analyzed children’s influence on furniture selection from the perspective of color preference. The study found that the influence varies with different types of furniture. In addition, children have slightly different preferences for furniture in different functional spaces, and children of different genders and ages have different choices in furniture color.
Environmentally friendly design is increasingly and widely used in the field of children’s furniture design. Environmentally friendly design follows the theory of sustainable development (Tian et al. 2018; Peng et al. 2021). Such design practices recycle resources and provide a scientific basis for product rationality (Vidal et al. 2022). The environmentally friendly design of children’s furniture has a significant impact on children’s growth. Wei and Madina (2022) focused on the use of environmentally friendly materials in the design of children’s furniture and combined fuzzy technology with structured design technology to build a fuzzy technology-based children’s furniture design system.
In the process of emotional design, children’s furniture design needs to consider the application of artificial intelligence design concept, to meet the rapid growth of children’s physical and mental needs. Through discussing the necessity and design principle of the application of artificial intelligence in children’s furniture from the perspectives of society, children, and development trends, it can lay a foundation for interesting and multifunctional children’s furniture design (Zhang and Li 2022).
Eye tracker and furniture design
Eye tracking technology, based on human visual attention mechanism, is an objective and effective means of research and a feasible method to solve objective problems (Deng and Gao 2023). Eye movement data reflect objective indicators of human eye movement behavior and focus of attention, and each indicator has a specific meaning and scope of application (Chang et al. 2016). It is one of the focuses of this study to select appropriate indicators to establish the relationship between eye movement data and user morphological elements intention preference (Zhagn and Xu 2020). Through eye-tracking technology, one can extract the elements of furniture shape design, study the cognitive intention preference of shape features, and study the color preference of furniture (Xu and Zhang 2012; Liu et al. 2018). In the existing papers, no scholars have used eye-tracking technology to study children’s toy storage furniture, so the use of eye-tracking technology to study the layout of children’s toy lockers has innovative significance.
EXPERIMENTAL
Kindergarten toy storage defined
According to the definition of the unitary activity in kindergarten, the classroom is the main environment for children’s teaching and play activities. The classroom usually contains various types of regional activity spaces. The different activity areas are the unitary parts that constitute the overall classroom environment. Zhu (2019) summarized the views of experts and scholars in a study on the guidance strategies of kindergarten area activities, and defined area activities as areas where teachers create a reasonable teaching environment for children according to their educational goals and characteristics, and meet children’s free, autonomous, and self-selected interactive operation activities by putting in play materials and intervening to guide them. Generally, they set up constructive areas, educational areas, science areas, play areas, and art areas. These areas are set with construction area, puzzle area, science area, play area, artwork area, etc. As shown in Table 1, there are four main activity areas where the materials are toys: construction area, puzzle area, science observation area, and role-playing area, and other activity areas where the materials are not toys, so they are not included in the present study.
Table 1. Attributes of Toys and Materials Placed in the Activity Area
Based on the above situation, toy storage in kindergarten is defined as toy material storage in construction area, educational area, scientific observation area, and role-playing area.
Kindergarten Toy Storage Features
Characteristics of toy materials in the construction area
The main development area is health-related, through the development of children’s fine motor and creative imagination, the main core experience is to develop children’s hand-eye coordination and organization and construction ability, to understand the nature of various construction materials, to learn the spatial relationships, to understand the concept of whole and part, and to enhance the understanding of quantity and figure. The main core experiences are aimed to promote the development of their perception and thinking, and to improve their aesthetic ability in constructing shapes.
The toys in the construction area are mainly wooden blocks, which can be divided into small blocks, medium blocks, and large blocks in terms of their size (Fig. 1).
Characteristics of toy materials in the puzzle area
The toys in the puzzle area are diverse. To ensure that children explore and discover in rich materials, enough toy materials should be put in the puzzle area, which can provide children with more opportunities to choose and effectively reduce the phenomenon that children do not use enough toys, which may result in them arguing with each other.
The toys in the puzzle area are divided into four categories: puzzles, cards, rules, and math, including pegs and stacking toys to develop children’s fine motor skills; cards, including phonics cards and puzzles to develop children’s reading and writing skills, and cognitive skills; tabletop games and board games to exercise children’s thinking skills; and math, including graphical matching and arithmetic games to improve children’s mathematical and graphical cognitive skills. To enhance children’s mathematical cognition and graphics cognitive ability, the most used educational toys are puzzles, chess toys, counting toys, and literacy and phonics cards (Fig. 2).
Characteristics of toy materials in the science observation area
The toys and materials in the science observation area are mainly scientific observation instruments and props and game materials. The main developmental elements are intended to exercise children’s ability to discover and solve problems and to develop and deepen scientific cognition. The number and types of toy materials are smaller compared to the educational area. The toys in the science observation area are mostly in bulk form, small in size, and difficult to calculate, and require baskets for storage. The storage for children is to observe and manipulate anytime and anywhere. The most commonly used toys in the science observation area are magnet toys and magnifying glasses (Fig. 3).
Characteristics of toy materials in the role-playing area
The toy materials in the role-playing area are mainly situational simulation toy sets and include props and materials such as simulated food and household items. The game is played by children acting out the role of different occupations, using simulated toys to simulate and restore the work or life scenes of adults, rehearsing and communicating with each other, mainly to cultivate children’s social interaction and adaptability, and to exercise children’s communication and expression skills (Fig. 4).
Distribution of applicable objects of toys
Based on the requirements of preschool education for early childhood development, toys were classified into six types that can serve in the education of preschoolers and can be understood and filled by early childhood educators. One-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was conducted using SPSSAU software (Beijing Qingsi Technology Co., Ltd., version 23.0, Beijing, China) to test and analyze whether the number of toys of each type differed across age classes. As shown in Table 2, the significance levels for all six toy categories were greater than 0.05, indicating that there was no significant difference in the number of toys in the puzzle category across age classes. This reflects that the age differences in toy manipulation among preschoolers were not significant.
Table 2. Categorization of Toys
Study of Human Behavior
Qualitative interviews were conducted with kindergarten teachers to understand the behavioral needs of children and teachers in the process of using toy lockers. The collected interview records were converted into text. Qualitative research methods and grounded theories were used to analyze the interview results, which were divided into three steps, namely initial coding, focused coding, and theoretical coding, to obtain the information of teacher user groups for kindergarten toy lockers.
The initial coding is the process of the primary analysis, comparison, and screening of the original interview text data to find the conceptual class, and conceptualization and labeling by extracting keywords. A total of 22 conceptual coding results were extracted from the interviews. The specific initial coding is shown in Table 3.
Focus coding is the process of transforming empirical descriptions into analytical concepts, extracting the most important or most frequently occurring concept codes for correlation, classification, and summarization, as well as merging abstract concept genera, which is a process of cluster analysis, forming main categories and sub-categories from top to bottom, and finally obtaining five main categories. These include functional improvement and optimization, appearance and styling, functional extension, operational requirements, and user experience, specifically the specific focus codes are shown in Table 4.
Table 3. The Process of Initial Encoding
Table 4. The Process of Focus Encoding
The theoretical encoding was completed by further integrating and condensing the conceptual categories coded in the first two stages to form the core category, with the core content being user needs. The interview data of the two interviewed users set aside were tested for saturation around the theory of user needs. No new initial conceptual categories or new relational links emerged during the coding process, so it was determined that the theory had reached saturation, and the primary and secondary categories were more complete. All category classes were logically concatenated to create a theoretical analysis model of user needs, as shown in Table 5.
Table 5. Influencing Factors of User Needs