User centered design

I was glancing at the book below, 'Interaction Design- beyond human-computer interaction', that I have in my collection and I came across a case study of 'Phillips approach to designing a communicator for children' and the article below from the same book, both talk of the inclusion of children almost as the designers, with the designers taking a backseat at early stages of design( in terms of designing for children). It really would be so useful for me to go this route, to resource a group of appropriately aged children (my set user) to brainstorm my project at this stage. Truely this is how I would love to design, user centered totally. However I havent got a great time scale or resources to plan such an event and fit it in before I move further allong in my research.

I regret not being able to constantly brainstorm with the type of users who would use my artifact throughout the development. I have to remember to put this under my evaluation or contemplation at the end.

The author of one of my current reads Alison Druin a top expert at designing for children, is a firm believer of immersing children (user) into the design and development of a artifact.
I really strongly agree with this and am cant tell you enough how disappointed I am its not possible for me to do this till later in the design, when I test my artifact due to the scale of my project. I chose this project so I could design specifically for a type generation of user and get it near accurate. I hope to go on to do a masters specializing in user centered design.

I am still hoping for this to become a show piece, hopefully I can research hard on learning approaches for kids and casestudies to compensate for this form of input into the design.