Inviting children to adopt a Protagonist role regarding technology has recently become advocated. Such a role embraces the original political participatory design (PD) agenda and aims at empowerment of children through design and making. However, so far the literature is limited in exploring the adoption of this role by children. While studies have reported experiences of engaging children in design and making activities, in-depth inquiries on children's experiences and challenges involved are lacking. We also maintain that the PD community has so far neglected education of children - in participation, design and technology - as our task and duty. This study reports findings from a design and making project aiming at empowerment of children, carried out in school context. We show that adopting the Protagonist role is not easy and there is a lot of variety between children. We present children's experiences and reflect on the challenges involved in progressing towards Protagonist role adoption.Full text at ACM
Purpose – Children have been recognized as an important user group for information and communication technology (ICT) and methods for involving them in ICT design have already been devised. However, there is a lack of research on children's genuine or authentic participation in ICT design as well as a lack of critical research scrutinizing how "children" and "their participation" actually end up constructed in ICT design. The paper aims to discuss these issues.
Design/methodology/approach – An intervention involving children in ICT design following the research strategy of nexus analysis was implemented. A qualitative data archive of this intervention is examined through a Foucauldian lens.
Findings – The study reveals that numerous discourses were relied on when talking about "children" and "their participation" in the case project: the discourses of participation, equality, domination, segregation, rebellion, and patronization were identified. Moreover, "children" were constructed as equal partners and influential, but also as ignorant, ignored, silent, and silencing each other. Some of the findings are in line with the existing ICT literature on the matter, others even with the literature on genuine participation of children. However, children and their participation were also constructed as "problematic" in many senses.
Research limitations/implications – The study contributes to and opens up avenues for critical research on genuine participation of users, especially children.
Practical implications – Practical suggestions for researchers interested in participation of children in ICT design are provided.
Originality/value – While research literature offers an abundance of best practices and an idealized view on children and their participation, this study shows the multitude of challenges involved and discourses circulating around.
In: International journal of social and organizational dynamics in IT: IJSODIT ; an official publication of the Information Resources Management Association, Volume 2, Issue 2, p. 48-64
Children are active technology users. Still, a literature review reveals that they are not positioned in a very strong role in large-scale efforts involving information and communication technology (ICT) development. Information systems (IS) literature hardly mentions children in connection to ICT. The authors have examined how children have participated in the development of a 'future school' in a large-scale ICT development effort, involving also developments in the domains of pedagogy, architecture and interior design. They identified three established roles for children: the user, the informant and the tester. In addition, the authors identified traces of children's more genuine participation, hardly addressed in the IS literature but discussed extensively within other disciplines. Therefore, the authors offer a broadened conception of what 'participation' may entail for the IS community. They argue that large-scale efforts of this kind would benefit from more active participation by children as it has been acknowledged that children's participation may lead to improved decision-making.
We are witnessing an emerging digital revolution. For the past 25–30 years, at an increasing pace, digital technologies—especially the internet, mobile phones and smartphones—have transformed the everyday lives of human beings. The pace of change will increase, and new digital technologies will become even more tightly entangled in human everyday lives. Artificial intelligence (AI), the Internet of Things (IoT), 6G wireless solutions, virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), mixed reality (XR), robots and various platforms for remote and hybrid communication will become embedded in our lives at home, work and school. Digitalisation has been identified as a megatrend, for example, by the OECD (2016; 2019). While digitalisation processes permeate all aspects of life, special attention has been paid to its impact on the ageing population, everyday communication practices, education and learning and working life. For example, it has been argued that digital solutions and technologies have the potential to improve quality of life, speed up processes and increase efficiency. At the same time, digitalisation is likely to bring with it unexpected trends and challenges. For example, AI and robots will doubtlessly speed up or take over many routine-based work tasks from humans, leading to the disappearance of certain occupations and the need for re-education. This, in turn, will lead to an increased demand for skills that are unique to humans and that technologies are not able to master. Thus, developing human competences in the emerging digital era will require not only the mastering of new technical skills, but also the advancement of interpersonal, emotional, literacy and problem-solving skills. It is important to identify and describe the digitalisation phenomena—pertaining to individuals and societies—and seek human-centric answers and solutions that advance the benefits of and mitigate the possible adverse effects of digitalisation (e.g. inequality, divisions, vulnerability and unemployment). This requires directing the focus on strengthening the human skills and competences that will be needed for a sustainable digital future. Digital technologies should be seen as possibilities, not as necessities. There is a need to call attention to the co-evolutionary processes between humans and emerging digital technologies—that is, the ways in which humans grow up with and live their lives alongside digital technologies. It is imperative to gain in-depth knowledge about the natural ways in which digital technologies are embedded in human everyday lives—for example, how people learn, interact and communicate in remote and hybrid settings or with artificial intelligence; how new digital technologies could be used to support continuous learning and understand learning processes better and how health and well-being can be promoted with the help of new digital solutions. Another significant consideration revolves around the co-creation of our digital futures. Important questions to be asked are as follows: Who are the ones to co-create digital solutions for the future? How can humans and human sciences better contribute to digitalisation and define how emerging technologies shape society and the future? Although academic and business actors have recently fostered inclusion and diversity in their co-creation processes, more must be done. The empowerment of ordinary people to start acting as active makers and shapers of our digital futures is required, as is giving voice to those who have traditionally been silenced or marginalised in the development of digital technology. In the emerging co-creation processes, emphasis should be placed on social sustainability and contextual sensitivity. Such processes are always value-laden and political and intimately intertwined with ethical issues. Constant and accelerating change characterises contemporary human systems, our everyday lives and the environment. Resilience thinking has become one of the major conceptual tools for understanding and dealing with change. It is a multi-scalar idea referring to the capacity of individuals and human systems to absorb disturbances and reorganise their functionality while undergoing a change. Based on the evolving new digital technologies, there is a pressing need to understand how these technologies could be utilised for human well-being, sustainable lifestyles and a better environment. This calls for analysing different scales and types of resilience in order to develop better technology-based solutions for human-centred development in the new digital era. This white paper is a collaborative effort by researchers from six faculties and groups working on questions related to digitalisation at the University of Oulu, Finland. We have identified questions and challenges related to the emerging digital era and suggest directions that will make possible a human-centric digital future and strengthen the competences of humans and humanity in this era.
