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Designing technologies for and with children: theoretical reflections and a practical inquiry towards a co-design toolkit

Year: 2016
Type: dissertation
Abstract: Giving those who are destined to use a product or service a critical role in its design is a\ncore tenet of the Participatory Design (PD) tradition. PD is characterized by a process of reciprocal learning, co-realization, and the sharing of decision-making power among relevant\nstakeholders in the design process, including envisioned users. PD practices often incorporate generative techniques, such as co-design, which enable participants to externalize and\nembody their thoughts and ideas by the act of making artifacts.\nIn the Child Computer Interaction (CCI) community, children are often involved passively\nin the design of technology (e.g. as testers). Through the growing use of PD practices, children have become active contributors to the design process, co-determining the direction\nand the final design outcome. However, two particular issues are insufficiently addressed in\nthe CCI community.\nThe first issue relates to challenging group dynamics that limit children’s participation in\ndesign and hamper their creative abilities. If this problem is addressed at all, CCI researchers tend to focus on remediating asymmetrical power relationships between adults and\nchildren, while neglecting group dynamics between children themselves. The second issue\nconcerns the analysis of children’s contributions in co-design activities. The CCI community\nlacks robust methods to integrate visual and tangible dimensions of co-design artifacts, and\ntheir verbal explanations into a coherent analysis. The unilateral focus on the verbal explanation implies that co-design techniques are regarded as a direct means to access children’s\nperspectives (cf. naive empiricism). In addition, interpretative approaches that aim to go beyond the surface level of children’s ideas often lack rigor and transparency.\nTo address these issues, this PhD project combined a research through design and case study\nresearch approach. Based on insights derived from a review of the academic literature and\nfour case studies with 9- to 10-year-old children, the research resulted in a co-design toolkit.\nThe first part of the toolkit presents CoDeT (Collaborative Design Thinking), a co-design procedure that builds on the theoretical models of Social Interdependence Theory and Design\nThinking. With the CoDeT procedure, design researchers prepare and conduct co-design activities with children that account for challenging group dynamics. The procedure is especially useful for high child-to-adult ratios (1 adult for 15 to 20 children) such as in a school\ncontext. CoDeT is unique in how it structures sufficient work-group features and strengthens children’s Design Thinking abilities in co-design activities. In the toolkit, the different steps of the procedure are presented in a ‘what why how’ structure, offering concrete instructions as well as in-depth information about why these steps are important. CoDeT is\ntherefore a flexible procedure that can be used in a broad range of design contexts.\nThe second part of the toolkit presents GLID (Grounding, Listing, Interpreting, Distilling), a\nmethod that relies on a values-led approach to PD, Multimodality, and Means-end Theory.\nGLID identifies children’s underlying values embedded in co-design out-comes resulting\nfrom CoDeT. With GLID, value conflicts between children and other stakeholders can be accounted for, shifting the focus to what endures beyond interaction, that is, the outcomes\nand lasting impacts of technology. Another characteristic of GLID is its thorough consideration of different modes (tangible, visual, textual, et cetera), which are analyzed for similarities and differences. As with the CoDeT procedure, the toolkit presents GLID in a ‘what\nwhy how’ structure. The method provides detailed guidelines for design researchers to analyze co-design outcomes in a transparent and coherent way, beyond the surface level of children’s ideas.\nTogether, the CoDeT procedure and GLID method comprise a holistic approach to involving\nchildren as design partners at the early stages of technology design.
Source: Lirias
Language: English
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2525568412
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Cited by: 15
Related to: 10