ABSTRACT
Designing interactive, digital games for preschool children can be a challenge as the children arrive at school at an early stage in their cognitive, physical and social development (Gelderblom & Kotzé, 2009). They are pre-literate and therefore any interaction instructions must be basic and used in an intuitive way. There are also challenges in evaluating the success of an interaction design as the children lack the metacognitive skills for think-aloud techniques (Edwards & Bendyk, 2007) because of their developmental age. As well as considerations of these cognitive limitations, there are physical limitations such as the lack of fine motor control (Gelderblom & Kotzé, 2009). Preschool children in mainstream schools arrive with a range of social skills and some may lack skills to interact socially and may yet be diagnosed with problems with interacting socially (e.g., those with autism spectrum disorder, ASC. The lack of these skills may affect their ability to cooperate with peers in playing games.
