Participatory design workshops with children with cancer

Abstract

The design and development of information technology for use in health services presents a complex and sensitive situation. It includes not only managing differing interests and situations, but does so in a context that might give rise to negative emotions among the participating users. When the future users are children, this design process becomes even more complex. Participatory design is considered suitable for design with children. The premise for the participation of the children in this study was that they were, or had been treated for cancer. Therefore, their participation could awaken negative emotions, and make the situation difficult for them to handle. How participatory design with children can be conducted in such a sensitive context is therefore explored, grounded in the experience from six design workshops. The workshops evolved around the concept of comics as a way to allow the children to express themselves with familiar means. Three main lessons were learned from the workshops: working in pairs promotes an efficient work situation and the possibility to keep an eye on the children's wellbeing; proxies need to be distanced from the participating children; and the scenarios in the comics set the level of realism of the result.

Co-constructing child personas for health-promoting services with vulnerable children

“…The design context for children who have survived cancer is of a sensitive nature, where ethical considerations need to be addressed regarding what topics can be handled during interviews and workshops in order to ensure a healthy environment for all participants [25]. This puts additional requirements on the design methodology, since the restrictions inherent in this sensitive design context limit the ways user data can be collected compared to traditional approaches.…”

“…The underlying theme for all workshops was that of comics. Having a familiar, recurring theme such as comics makes the design process more understandable for the participants [25].…”

Curious, thoughtful and affirmative—Young children's meanings of participation in healthcare situations when using an interactive communication tool

“…Touchscreens in tablets and smartphones have revolutionised young children's usage as these devices are easy to use independently (Beschorner & Hutchison, ; Plowman, Stevenson, Stephen, & McPake, ). Applications produced for children have grown exponentially, although the development and usability testing processes mostly focus on products suitable for school aged children (Høiseth, Giannakos, Alsos, Jaccheri, & Asheim, ; Lindberg, ; Ruland, Starren, & Vatne, ). There is still a deficit of applications produced for young children and applicable to healthcare situations.…”

“…When children gain verbal skills, they still add a substantial amount of nonverbal expressions into their communication (Iversen & Goldin-Meadow, 2005). In healthcare situations, children's expressions of body language provide adults with information of their cooperation and acceptance or avoidance and protest (Harder, Christensson, & S€ oderb€ ack, 2009, 2013. There is a variation of children's body expressions as well, depending on whom or what they are directed at (Harder et al, 2009).…”

Children's Creativity Lab

“…Children have acted as design partners [10], participated in usability studies [7,19] and workshops [12,16,23] and have provided feedback on the use of design probes [21,26]. Participation in such activities is an opportunity for researchers who get to collect direct qualitative feedback from their target user group [11] and for children to learn, be creative, and inform the design of future educational products that are both effective and fun to use.…”