Editorial
Editorial: Pushing the boundaries of Participatory Design with children

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijcci.2022.100547Get rights and content

Abstract

Participatory Design (PD) with children allows children to contribute to, or have control over, the development of technologies for themselves and others like them. However, the children who are most likely to be involved in PD are often the most privileged. This special issue seeks to push the boundaries of PD with children. The papers published in this special issue examine designing with children from many countries; designing with minority groups; digital distributed PD; the right length for PD projects; and new approaches to PD.

Introduction

Participatory Design (PD) with children allows children to contribute to, or have control over, the development of technologies for themselves and others like them. The children who are most often engaged in PD are affluent (Walsh, 2018), neurotypical, verbal (Wilson, Brereton, Ploderer, & Sitbon, 2019) and “abled” children (Allsop, Holt, Levesley, & Bhakta, 2010) of school age (Guha, Druin, & Fails, 2013) in Western, educated, industrialised, rich and democratic (WEIRD) countries, who historically have been able to attend PD sessions in-person (Constantin et al., 2020). There is a growing movement to widen inclusion in PD, with research involving groups such as neurodiverse children (e.g. Wilson et al. (2019)), children with disabilities (e.g. Allsop et al. (2010)), culturally and linguistically diverse children (e.g. Antle and Bevans (2012)), and children from low socio-economic backgrounds (e.g. Walsh (2018)). Despite these efforts, PD seldom occurs with mixed groups of children (i.e. children with a spread of different abilities and experiences) (Börjesson, Barendregt, Eriksson, & Torgersson, 2015).

This special issue is intended to highlight research that “pushes the boundaries of PD”, whether that means: involving children in and from a wider range of countries; working with children from cultural and linguistic minorities; working across larger spreads of socio-economic strata; working with children with disabilities; working with mixed groups of children; or – especially in light of the COVID-19 pandemic – promoting inclusion through online and distributed PD.

We were delighted to receive submissions addressing many of these topics.

Section snippets

Themes in this special issue

A number of themes have emerged from the papers published in this special issue, which highlight the boundaries of PD that our authors feel should be pushed to increase the inclusivity of PD:

Designing with children from around the world, especially non-WEIRD countries: Children from WEIRD countries (Western, educated, industrialised, rich, and democratic) receive the lion’s share of attention when it comes to PD. Several of our authors have challenged this, by highlighting their work in diverse

“Pushing political, cultural, and geographical boundaries: Distributed co-design with children from Namibia, Malaysia and Finland”, by Winschiers-Theophilus et al. (2022)

Winschiers-Theophilus et al. report on two international distributed/hybrid PD projects they have undertaken with children in Namibia, Malaysia and Finland, which combined local in-person sessions with online international sessions. They identified three major considerations for such PD work: team building, the importance of facilitation, and the requirements of technologies.

“New co-design techniques for digital game narrative design with children”, by Uğra et al. (2022)

Uğra et al. report on their experiences using three new techniques, ‘Five Elements’, ‘Game Motif’ and ‘Superhero

Conclusion

Each of the papers included in this special issue pushes the boundaries of participatory design as we know it, by expanding access to new places in the world, new demographics of children, new timelines for PD, or exploring the ways technology can bring together distributed participants. We hope that, as you read through them, you will find ways to push the boundaries in your own PD practice.

Declaration of Competing Interest

Several of the editors would like to declare that they have authored articles within this special issue. Where this has been the case, the relevant editors have not been involved in the reviewing process for their own publications.

Acknowledgements

We warmly thank all the authors who submitted to this special issue. We appreciate your contributions to the diverse and important work going on in the field to push the boundaries of PD.

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