Designing tools to foster young children's fine motor skills development at home

Developing fine motor skills early (10-18 months) is critical. During early infancy, the home environment, and children's developmental milestones, such as motor and cognitive development, are strongly linked. The availability of play materials and space and parents' input provide children with opportunities for action and support their motor development. This thesis focuses on designing tools to foster fine motor development at home. We designed a concept tool consisting of i) nine modules to support the performance of various fine motor tasks such as throwing, pinching, grasping, and twisting and ii) a companion mobile app to help parents monitor their children's demonstration of these tasks. We first conducted a user study with parents, investigating their reactions towards and expectations of the concept. Then, we conducted a user study with 20 children to observe how they interacted with the modules, looking into which fine motor skills they performed through the modules. The results of these two user studies revealed five design recommendations for developing tools to support young children's fine motor skills at home. We examined these recommendations under three border themes: i) parental involvement in motor skill development, ii) specialized household tools for fine motor development, and iii) sustained usage of tools for supporting fine motor development. Accordingly, designers should 1) provide tailored guidance on developmental needs for parents, 2) present information on motor skill performance in a positive and non-normative way, 3) focus on modular tool design and provide modules with diverse material and form attributes to support the performance of various motor skill 4) open-ended design might provide a child to explore unexpected and surprising interaction and finally 5) allow users to explore various configurations by making modules attachable and customizable.