Co-design with Children: Using Participatory Design for Design Thinking and Social and Emotional Learning

Abstract

This paper discusses leveraging design thinking techniques for involving children in serious game design in Japanese elementary schools. Our action research project approach accomplished two different goals: (1) to inculcate design thinking in pupils, and (2) to sensitize children on bullying victimization. Our approach uses a range of participatory design methods to distil design ideas from children and to support their design thinking aiming to boost children’s creative confidence and develop social and emotional skills. Key findings from our project are: (1) children made valuable design contributions including realistic bullying scenarios, language content, user interface design, storyline progression, character profiles, coping strategies etc., and (2) participatory design and design thinking stimulated ethical reasoning, reflection and empathy in children on bullying victimization. Our approach is unique in the current design thinking landscape, because it moves from designing “thing” (object) to designing “think” (bullying sensitization). Future research should focus on highlighting ways how participatory design and design thinking enrich and complement each other. The significance of our paper stems from the simple standpoint that those participating in a design should gain from participating in the design process. Takeaways for practitioners are: (1) building relationships with stakeholders, especially children, (2) empathy and user research techniques, (2) translating field data into usable insights, (3) idea-generation and rapid concept development, (4) product co-prototyping, (5) user engagement and co-creation, (6) multiple perspectives on effective communication.

Understanding children’s perceptions of, and priorities for, healthy neighbourhoods in Aotearoa New Zealand: study protocol for a cross-sectional study

“…31 Here, we draw from Horgan, 30 in particular by being cognisant of power and representation, managing the potential risks of group thinking (which could exclude individuals), and using visual and activity-focused methods. Co-creation of information will draw from Paracha et al 35 including approaches to allow for multiple perspectives on effective communication, translating field data into usable insights, and idea-generation and rapid concept development. Concept mapping is likely to be a useful method to aid children's generation of meaning frameworks, 36 as children are not required to come with pre-existing frameworks or understanding.…”

“…In session 2, following reorientation activities to remind children of the concepts from session 1, the children will select a concept from session 1 and will co-create dissemination materials to share with stakeholders. 35 It is possible that these dissemination materials, determined by the children, will include posters, flyers, written speeches and/or a video made using models and other materials. Research team member roles will be to support children in creating these materials which may include helping to finalise and fine-tune wording, but their role will not include determining the topic of interest or key messages.…”

“…This research was approved by the University of Auckland Human Participants Ethics Committee in 2019 (reference number 022910). Community dissemination activities will include: a child and researcher co-created output 35 that outlines community needs and strengths-based solutions for promoting child health and well-being in urban neighbourhoods for sharing with the general public and stakeholders (eg, in urban design or transport planning, dependent on the topic chosen by children) and a technical report (that can also be used for academic dissemination purposes). The research team have existing relationships with a wide range of stakeholders in urban design, child health and transport planning through previous research.…”

Using Distance Communication for the User-Centered Development of a Smartphone-Based Serious Game for Children With Type 1 Diabetes: Participatory Design Approach

“…Children have frequently participated in the design and development of serious games [ 4 , 11 , 40 , 43 , 44 ]. Traditionally, participation has been implemented using different face-to-face methods, including semistructured interviews, participatory design workshops, and co-design sessions [ 4 , 11 , 43 ].…”

What are the social and personal drivers to engage in co-creation? A study of UK 7–13-year-olds

“…However, these contributions have invariably used adult samples (Sarkar and Banerjee, 2019), limiting what is known about children’s co-creative behaviours, despite the acknowledgement in the literature that brand-user characteristics impact upon co-creation activity (Trischler et al , 2017). A review of the extant literature presents an array of empirical papers that indicate that children do engage in co-creation, or “participatory design” (Slingerland et al , 2020), but scrutiny of this body of work indicates that these investigations are highly contextual, and centred within education and educational policy (Breive, 2020; Catala et al , 2018; Clement, 2019; Novlianskaya, 2020; Paracha et al , 2019; Sharma et al , 2020), child development (Slingerland et al , 2020), developmental disorders (Alsem et al , 2017; Huijnen et al , 2017; Whelan et al , 2015) and social learning paradigms (Bevelander et al , 2019; Crosby et al , 2020). Moreover, several of the above studies fail to incorporate children (Crosby et al , 2020; Sharma et al , 2020) and none of the works explore children and co-creation in the context of the marketing literature.…”