Today I was fortunate to participate in the IDC 2016 pre-conference workshop which explored Roles and Values of Children in Design.
‘Role Workshop’ organisers: Monica Landoni, Elisa Rubegni, Emma Nicol, Janet C Read

‘Value Workshop’ organisers: Helle Skovbjerg, Tilde Bekker, Wolmet Barendregt

The course organisers carefully orchestrated discussions on how participants of this interdisciplinary group reflected on the multitude of assumptions and positions we take in striving to involve children in positive and meaningful ways.

For me, the main take-home messages focused on:

• how multi-stakeholders approach this with different design and research goals which ultimately influence the roles we may already pre-conceive for children
• Fostering a dialogic learning process for all
• negotiations with different stakeholders; whether this be academia, industry or families around the child, and
• tools for helping to promote reflexivity.

The organisers introduced a card based tool to support in questioning designer / researcher assumptions about a ‘type of child’ that technologies might be intended for; which allowed again, for reflecting on and questioning a specific persona one may have in mind for specific technologies.  The group also presented the Clothes Line approach for supporting the design process whilst working through, ‘sorting’ and ‘airing’ ideas.

A really interesting day packed full of many fruitful mini discussions!