process.•The study compares children's brainstorming and prototyping output for
novelty.•The often used novelty metric by Shah et al.(2003) yields challenging results.•We
propose an alternative measure based on percentiles; simpler and more sensitive.•The most
novel ideas are generated by children when prototyping follows brainstorming.When
involving children in the design process, it is important to understand the novelty of their …