Abstract
These days mobile phone which were used mainly by grown-up persons are now widely used among children as well due to new social demands. Despite this trend, existing mobile phones are still being designed and produced according to the taste of people in their 20s and 30s, even the elderly, not satisfying physical, emotional and cognitive characteristics raised by children. This study aimed to extract the design factors of mobile phones for children by reflecting functional factors requested by children and parents in QFD's customer demands. First, functional and design factors requested in mobile phones for children were extracted from existing products and documentary records and some functional factors were selected through a process of integration and omission. The survey research was conducted on children and parents, based on the selected functional factors. Based on the survey research, functional factors were analyzed using AHP, and key functional factors considered by children and parents in mobile phones for children were investigated. Finally, in order to reflect the results in QFD, the correlation between functional factors and design factors was constructed as HOQ through experts' evaluation. The results showed that both children and parents recognized the basic functions such as telephoning, text messaging and phone directory as high priority functional factors, even though the relative importance was different between children and parents. Therefore, it is likely to satisfy the desires of both children and parents by designing mobile phones for children in consideration of design factors such as menu depth, button independence and button arrangement. It is expected that this study will promote experiments on design factors and propose basic data for and guidelines to mobile phone design for children.