Chinese preschoolers as design partners - Lessons learned

Participatory design (PD) with preschoolers is an emerging and challenging research topic. This paper reports findings from a series of PD activities with children aged 4-6 years in China. China is an interesting culture for PD, and there is a hole in PD research with Chinese children of this age group. PD sessions were found challenging to conduct in this context, but techniques such as using a familiar comic character as a metaphor, the facilitator as the drawer, and one-on-one communication in a group setting seemed to alleviate the difficulties. Based on the case study findings, the pros and cons of each tested technique in designing child-computer interaction are discussed.