The Firefly Design Task: A Dataset of Children's Colour-Signal, Animal, and Message Choices (DataSet)

This dataset records the responses of 89 children (ages 3–15) to the "Firefly" design task, a creative activity carried out with BlueBlocks. In the task, each child assigned a colour to three imagined light signals on a firefly — a Glow light, a Hello light, and a Danger light — then named an animal they would like to communicate with and wrote a short message to that animal. The dataset captures how young children map colour onto communicative function, which animals they choose as imagined interlocutors, and how they phrase spontaneous messages. It is suited to research in child development, colour cognition, design and play-based learning, and early communication. Each record preserves the child's verbatim colour, animal, and message entries and adds a set of derived, analysis-ready variables: a normalised primary colour, a multi-colour flag, and a warmth class for each of the three signals; banded age groups; a researcher-coded animal category; and message presence, word count, and a coded message theme. A unique record identifier is provided, and participant codes that were missing in the source have been given temporary placeholders. The accompanying workbook includes a full data dictionary and seven analysis sheets (descriptive statistics, colour analysis, animal analysis, message analysis, and cross-tabulations), all computed with live formulas so that summary tables update automatically if the underlying data is revised. Notable patterns include a strong tendency to assign warm colours — red in particular — to the Danger signal, a high rate of message engagement, and a recurring tendency for children to name the firefly itself as their chosen animal.