Participatory Design of the World’s Largest DPD Project with Children

Abstract

In this workshop, we invite researchers and practitioners as participants in co-designing the protocol for the world's largest Distributed Participatory Design (DPD) project with children. Participatory Design -whose inclusive benefits are broadly recognised in design -can be very challenging, especially when involving children. The current COVID-19 pandemic has given rise to further barriers to PD with such groups. Recent key barriers include social distancing and government-imposed social restrictions due to the additional health risks to vulnerable children and their families. This disrupts traditional in-person PD (which involves close socioemotional and often physical collaboration between participants and researchers). However, alongside such barriers, we have identified opportunities for new and augmented approaches to PD across distributed geographies, backgrounds, ages and abilities. We invite the CCI community to examine Distributed Participatory Design (DPD) as a solution for overcoming these new barriers, during and after COVID-19. Together, we offer new ways to think about DPD, and unpick some of its ambiguities. This workshop builds on work conducted in a similar workshop in IDC 2020, and this year will focus on the planning and design of the protocol for the world's largest DPD project with children.

Customizing and Evaluating Accessible Multisensory Music Experiences with Pre-Verbal Children—A Case Study on the Perception of Musical Haptics Using Participatory Design with Proxies

“…This greatly affected the extent to which we could connect with the students; social-distancing measures were required to ensure the safety of the users since they are a risk group. As a consequence, we adapted our methods to a distributed participatory design setting (see, e.g., [63][64][65]). Distributed participatory design is a term that is used to describe situations in which all or most design team members are physically, and perhaps also temporally, dispersed.…”

Pushing boundaries of co-design by going online: Lessons learned and reflections from three perspectives

“…While these have been important first-steps in advancing the notion of distributed, online co-design, they have not been broadly adopted. DPD with children has only been the focus of recent scholarship, with discussions on the possibility of conducting Video-CoDesign and eCoDesign ( Fails et al, 2013 ); early tools like DiSCO ( Walsh et al, 2012 ) that enabled the facilitation of the layered elaboration design technique ( Walsh et al, 2011 ), online and asynchronously; and recent workshops within the last couple of years seeking to construct the world’s largest participatory design project ( Constantin et al, 2020 ), and others ( Constantin and Hourcade, 2018 , Korte et al, 2021 , Ratakonda and Fails, 2021 ).…”

“…The primary advantage of online PD is the potential to include children of diverse cultures, languages, and abilities ( Korte et al, 2021 ). Children who may have been unable to participate previously due to transportation limitations, location, and access may now be able to take part ( Antle and Frauenberger, 2020a , Constantin et al, 2021 ).…”

“…Some children may dominate the screen ( Constantin et al, 2021 ) and some partners may not be attuned to online etiquette, such as muting microphones and using chat functionality instead of talking over other participants ( Kennedy et al, 2021 ). There are additional distractions at home ( Fails et al, 2020 ) and the possibility of incidental participants ( Korte et al, 2021 ).…”

“…DPD is a slower process ( Constantin et al, 2021 ) and unexpected situations and disruptions are likely to occur requiring improvisation ( Lee et al, 2021 ). Thus, more patience, time, and spontaneity should be allocated to the sessions ( Fails et al, 2020 , Korte et al, 2021 , Lee et al, 2021 ). There should be no more than two children per adult ( Constantin et al, 2021 , Fails et al, 2020 ) and more facilitators are needed to run breakout rooms ( Kennedy et al, 2021 ).…”