Cruise (Out of) Control

Main story : The Future is Younger Than You Think

More: Brainstorming the Future, Little Hands Teach Big Hands, Who's Teaching Whom?, Workscapes of the Future

So it's no surprise that companies look to children for market intelligence. Levi Strauss & Co. has a 500-kid Trend Advisory Panel whose members visit stores and tell researchers what they like and don't like. Nickelodeon's Zoom Room panel lets kids watch shows and offer reactions. It's just so conventional. Do you like dolls? Do you like pink dolls or blue dolls? What kinds of games do you play after school?

But a few companies are doing it differently. They're inviting kids into the design process itself, encouraging them to experiment with beta versions of products, learning from their reactions to new technologies. They are, in short, trying to understand the mental models of young people - how they see the world and interact with the artifacts they encounter - and to let those insights shape their products.

Witness one day at the Compaq Software Evaluation and Research Center, a serious-sounding name for a place that might better be called the Compaq Kid Lab. The facility, based in San Mateo, California, features two large observation galleries with one-way mirrors and video cameras, three smaller group-testing rooms, a children's testing room with plenty of computers, plus - and this is a big selling point - the Fisher-Price Triple Arcade, a combination pinball machine-basketball hoop-skeeball game.

Around 11 a.m., Rachel, 7 years old and very blond, walks in with her mom. Yolanda Jenkins, the lab's director, has a PhD in educational psychology and experience at Atari, Apple, and IBM - but never at "a company that funded this kind of research." She strikes up a conversation in the lobby. After less than 30 seconds later, Rachel is not-so-subtly swinging her arms, clapping in back and front. Jenkins, who has mocha skin and a calming smile, laughs: "You've been here before, so I guess you're ready for business?" Rachel nods seriously. With that, Jenkins's overalls-clad assistant, Jose Feito, a doctoral student in child development psychology, leads the now-skipping Rachel down the hall, to beta-test Spruce Squirrel's Hiccup Mix-Up .

Only three years ago, Compaq leased this site to house the company's entire software division, with Jenkins working with kids in just one room. But when Compaq employees started bringing their children to her office to try out products, the lab took on a life of its own. First the Compaq kids started begging to come back. Then their friends began clamoring for appointments. Soon Jenkins found herself meeting with teachers and principals from 29 local schools, explaining what the lab does (it tests software titles, mostly for Wonder Tools, a joint venture between Fisher-Price and Compaq); what it offers to kids who participate (books, software, and a meaningless-but-neat-looking Wonder Tools driver's license); and how it works (adults, most of whom have teaching experience and degrees in child psychology, observe unobtrusively as kids play).

Jenkins always believed in the value of the lab, in the ability of young people to point grizzled software programmers in directions they wouldn't discover on their own. But the sheer number and quality of her pint-sized volunteers still amazes her. "We haven't done testing for a couple of weeks," she says, walking into the conference room with Rachel's Mom and turning on the closed-circuit TV. Two images come up: one of Rachel, one of her game monitor. "So I'm getting calls all the time. You wouldn't believe how my phone rings."

Just over the wall, Rachel's enthusiasm is utterly believable. She is literally a kid with a new toy. Today she's familiarizing herself with the Wonder Tools Cruiser, a brightly colored contraption that's meant to be an alternative to a keyboard. It plugs in to a computer and contains, instead of letters and a mouse, a steering wheel, throttle, phone, camera, horn, radio, key, and several brightly colored buttons. Rachel launches Spruce Squirrel's Hiccup Mix-Up, meets the game's title character, and commences to play. The game is simple in concept (players scour a virtual world, searching for remedies to cure Spruce's hiccups) yet complicated in execution (there are lots of mini-activities embedded in the game, designed to encourage kids to work on their musical, memory, and learning skills). As Rachel drives through snail-infested roadways and takes snapshots of animated plants, a researcher jots notes on her body language and answers such formal questions as: Did the child react to Woodruff the Dog on the home screen?