Children’s products and services
Children’s products and services play an important part in the life of a society: the games children play now will influence their future interests, values and perception of the world around them. This means that every item intended for children must be designed primarily as an educational product containing a game component.
The children’s industry has not been an industry in itself until lately. Children’s furniture was made by furniture producers, children’s clothes were made by light industry, and children’s food was produced by the food industry. This often led to a situation where children’s needs were simply neglected by producers. The sector was recognized by the state as an independent industry only in 2013.
Several important processes are now happening in the area. The first is mediatization, with 90% of products being made are based on long multi-character stories (e.g. cartoon series). Media characters shape the notions of values and behavioral standards in children’s minds. For example, every episode of the Smeshariki series deals with a difficult situation that a child may face in his life.
Second, the current most successful strategy is to create long-lasting educational products (i.e. existing in different media: comic books, cartoons, computer games, toys), growing together with the child and helping him meet new challenges. For example, Lego products follow a path from simpler parts and scenarios to those more complicated, with the child able to play with construction sets as well as online games, or watch a feature film with his favourite characters.
Professions
Children’s future image expert
Specialist involved in shaping the possible image of the future life of a child and his development pathway, based on the parent’s wishes and the child’s own abilities and perceptions.This specialist will pick matching educational programmes (artistic, sports, etc.), educational games and software to help a child master new skills on a selected trajectory.
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Professional skills and abilities
Transmedia product designer
Specialist engaged in designing content (characters, stories, conflicts, problems, educational content) and services for several mass media at once (TV programmes, games, etc.). He/she should be able to build a coherent system of interaction between different formats (consistency of character images and interrelation/consistency of stories involving them). The job will require unconventional thinking. For example, in one American school, students working on an art project encoded the text of a poem as software code, imported it into the Scratch training animation program, and then into LEGO Mindstorms EV3, a robot programming language. The interactive children’s series Inanimate Alice uses text, video, images and interactive games.
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Professional skills and abilities
Children’s psychological security specialist
Professional tasked with testing various children’s products and services (toys, games, cartoons, clothes, furniture, etc.) for psychological threats and potential harm for children’s health.Based on the tests, the specialist provides recommendations on corrections to be made to the product, or its possible applications.
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Children’s R&D manager
Specialist who organizes children’s creative activities to invent new children’s products, and adapts their ideas for mass production.Sometimes, children manage to invent with more interesting designer solutions than a team of adult professionals.For example, in 2007, the entrepreneurial artist Wendy Tsao from Vancouver started making stuffed animals based on her four year old son’s drawings.The hobby turned profitable, and she opened her own business called Child’s Own Studio.Now parents from different countries order Wendy’s plush toys based on their children’s pictures.The famous artist Damien Hurst admitted in 2014 to have used his own childhood ideas in his art.
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