Design for Children - Ergonomics in a Ceramic Tile’s Project

A ceramic tile’s project, which is intended to stimulate the interaction of the child with his/her surroundings, was developed and prototyped. It focused on physical and emotional comfort through visual and tactile properties, targeting children but also parents as users and consumers. This project aims to create diversity by appropriation of the users, who may customize it using their imagination. The contribution of Human Factors and Ergonomics in a stage of evaluation of this design project had to be taken under account and applied as a useful tool in the design process. Besides literary review, this paper reports a study with primary school children with 9–12 years of age, based on interview and a quasi-experimental approach with drawing sessions, facing prototypes of the ceramic tiles’ project. The results revealed much diversity and gave clues about their preferences, their interaction with indoor home environment, ceramic coatings and the child’s imaginative universe in the context of the pre-teenage phase of their development. Also conclusive is the overall importance that HFE revealed once more in the development of a design project.