Lessons Learned and Future Considerations for Designing Remotely Facilitated Co-Design Studies with Children Focused on Socio-Emotional Experiences

Abstract

The IDC community has a rich history of developing new methods for involving children in design research. However, few papers discuss developing new remotely facilitated co-design approaches. Fewer still focus on the challenges of eliciting discussion and generating design ideas around subjective experiences involving emotions, feelings, and thoughts. We argue these are of growing need in a post-Covid world. In this paper we contribute a methodological design rationale for a remotely facilitated co-design study aimed at addressing challenges related to ethically eliciting reflection on, promoting ideation around and capturing data of children and families about their personal Covid-19 experiences. To illustrate our methods, we provide exemplar cases of data collected from our participants to show the type of data that can be elicited using our methods. Lastly, we contribute considerations for future methods design based on a selection of our lessons learned.