Little backpackers: studying children's psychological needs in an interactive exhibition context

Psychological needs have become an important viewpoint in understanding user experience (UX), however there have been few attempts to operationalize the existing need theories for studying children's experiences. The aim of this research was to experiment with two methods, a laddering interview and a new quantitative theory-based questionnaire, in studying the fulfillment of ten basic psychological needs. A mixed-method approach consisting of these methods was tested in evaluating an interactive children's activity called Backpack Tours in an exhibition center with 18 children of 6-9 years of age. The laddering interviews made it possible to connect the designed elements of the activity to fulfillment of six psychological needs: pleasure-stimulation, relatedness, self-actualization-meaning, autonomy, physical thriving, and competence. The quantitative results showed significant variations in the children's evaluations of the fulfillment of the ten needs. The results of the evaluation are useful in understanding the strengths of various design solutions and as a basis for further development of the activity.