Exploring children's designs for maker technologies

There is growing interest in maker technologies around how they can be included in school curriculums to engage children with science subjects and about their use to explore new creative possibilities. Given that maker technologies are currently unfamiliar to most children across the world this work sought to use these technologies to investigate whether technology experience has an influence on design within a making context. A study was carried out with 29 participants aged 8-9 that involved a design task and a scaffolded making task based around a physical game using Arduino. Half of the participants completed the making task first then the design task, the other half completed the design task first then the making task. The design ideas created were then coded on 5-point scales for complexity of construction and novelty of concept, the coders also looked for evidence of transference from the making task to the design ideas. Results indicated that completing the making task prior to the design task increased the mean complexity of construction score. No clear evidence was found of elements from the making task being transferred into the design ideas. In addition to the specific findings about technology influence on design, the paper offers more general insights for those working within this space

The Future Digital Innovators: Empowering the Young Generation with Digital Fabrication and Making

So far, the implications of digital fabrication and making on digital innovation and the future of IS discipline and profession remain unexplored. This is where this study contributes and it does so by focusing on the perspective of the young generation, in whose hands the future of IS profession, indeed, lies. Digital technology has become intimately intertwined with our everyday life. New stakeholders take part in its development and innovation processes, including children. Calls for offering more in-depth technology knowledge for children have emerged within research on digital fabrication and the maker movement: children need to be educated to design, make, and build new technology. We critically examine existing studies on digital fabrication and making with children, in order to see what the potential of digital fabrication and making for empowering children to become digital innovators of the future is. Implications to IS research, practice, and education are presented

Applying Design Fiction in Primary Schools to Explore Environmental Challenges.

This paper presents a case study describing the use of design fiction in a cross-curricular project with four classes across two primary schools in inner-city Sheffield. The project combined elements of a Mantle of the Expert dramatic- inquiry approach with design thinking and design fiction, to explore the world of the honey bee. We worked with the schools and children during half a term, leading them through a set of activities (including drama, design, creative writing, and 3D prototyping) to enable the children to discover and understand the threats facing bees, beekeeping, pollination, and the global environmental ramifications of a world without bees. This paper describes the approach adopted and the created design fictions. We discuss the value and limitations of our approach and conclude by offering suggestions for researchers and teachers wishing to engage young people with complex problem spaces

Participatory design process engaging intergenerational cohorts: using value elicitation to co-create interactive media experience

This thesis explores the inclusive design challenges of engaging intergenerational participants (IGP) in a participatory design process. The IGP comprise a paired generation, grandparent (aged 65 and over) and grandchild (4-6-years-old), leveraging their pre-existing relationship. Overarching research questions aim at exploring how to adequately reflect IGP voices and values in interactive media products intended for them; and how to integrate new and effective methodologies and tools for co-engaging the two generations between themselves with enhanced creativity in design processes.Under the scheme of an industry-based Ph.D. programme, the investigation is phased with three probing projects building towards the fourth main project, conducted in close collaboration with small-scale and large-scale media companies anchored in the Northwest region of England. For the fourth project, a unique data set is drawn from participatory design sessions in the form of ethnographic documents (e.g., fieldnotes), video corpus, text data, and artifacts acquired and co-created during 8 months of face-to-face and virtual participatory sessions with IGP. Data were analysed applying methods such as video coding and thematic and axial analysis across multiple documentation. The main findings are synthesized and presented as: 1) interaction patterns between two age groups when either sharing or co-creating interactive media experiences; 2) a set of IGP values elicited through storytelling-based methods in participatory activities; 3) a values-led model to predict IGP psychological processes guiding their shared media experiences; and 4) a set of methodological recommendations and criteria to engage younger and older citizens together, in participatory design processes. The resulting data highlight IGP’s interaction patterns that are centered around purpose sharing, collaboration, fun-seeking, helping each other, and mutual assurance. It also highlights that IGP place a high value on being safe, autonomous, and competent in shared media experiences. The main output is a values-led to comprehend intergenerational interactions and a methodological guide consisting of a list of recommendations on how to engage IGP in participatory design processes, aimed at designers or researchers working with intergenerational cohorts.The research contributes to social awareness by systemically modeling IGP’s underlying values and interaction dynamics while informing values-led design practices in the media industry. Further design and research hypotheses can be generated using the model to facilitate and promote positive interaction behaviours and IGP’s wellbeing. This research also contributes to strengthening participatory design methodologies through interdisciplinary research approaches with the theoretical underpinning from personal construct psychology (PCP) applied to data analysis and modeling in this work