Enabling children to design for others with expanded proxy design

Abstract

We explore the question of how child designers can provide design ideas for technology that might reduce the marginalisation that can be experienced by some of their peers. To do this, we introduce the idea of Expanded Proxy Design that moves beyond the notion of "proxies as people" in design, to guide methods for engaging children into thinking about design ideas for a group that exists at some distance from their own experience. We outline three case studies where we made use of such methods. First, we consider expanded proxies in the context of technology and newly immigrant children who are unable to speak in English. Second, we consider the case of designing technology for children with and without visual impairments. Finally, we consider designing playful experiences for children with different temperaments. We reflect on the extent to which this expanded notion of proxies can be used as a meaningful vehicle for overcoming marginalisation and exclusion when children with different abilities design for each other. And we suggest ways to characterise, develop and refine expanded proxy design methods in this broader sense.

Critical user-configurations in mHealth design: How mHealth-app design practices come to bias design against chronically ill children and young people as mHealth users

“… 23 However, scholars have voiced challenges associated with including minors in such processes in terms of power gaps, 24 complex technology, and objectives that seem distant from the child's own experience. 25 Furthermore, user-driven innovation is often challenged in continuously involving users and transforming gained insights and requirements into technical requirements of the design (and the other way around) in a multidisciplinary development process. 21 ‘Although the user-driven innovation paradigm advocates an open perspective and stimulates the involvement of users from the early development stages onwards, this still contrasts sharply with the narrow and technology-centric scope of many projects’ de Moor argues.…”

“…Metatla et al 25 Inability to translate complexity of the objectives into something that minors can relate to.…”

The Inclusion of Children on the Autism Spectrum in the Design of Learning Technologies: A Small-Scale Exploration of Adults’ Perspectives

“…In many situations, designers will depend on "proxy participation" relying on the knowledge and authority of other adults such as parents, teachers or other personnel (Boyd-Graber et al, 2006;Shen et al, 2016). The use of proxies, as an alternative to using challenging or difficult to access populations in user-centred design research, is not new and in some instances children themselves have been employed as proxies in design processes (Metatla et al, 2020). For instance, designers have sought to use neurotypical children as proxies to represent children with autism in design and development (Sofian et al, 2021).…”