When children are involved in a design process as an aid in creating better experiences

How can children be involved in a design process and which ethical considerations should be made?

Thesis project description

Service Design is a process where designers create sustainable solutions and optimize experiences for both users in unique constrallations as well as possible involved stakeholders. This can include both user research, user journey creation and optimisation of possible weak points in a service or designing a new service. 

As part of our thesis we wish to work with how children can contribute to creating more unique experiences for themselves by including them in the design process. We are therefore looking for a case study project to base our research on. We are open to basing our project on an actual problem or identifying a challenge or opportunity which can be of value for the collaborating company in the future.

Our research statement will be along the lines of: How can children be involved in a design process as an aiding tool in creating better experiences?

And we are hoping to look at the following points in our thesis:

1) How can children contribute to co-designing their own experiences? 
    - Deliverable/goal: A theoretical insight contributing to Service Design, and with a practical solution that is beneficial for the company. 
2) What ethical considerations should be considered when co-designing with children? 
     - Deliverable/goal: Theoretical knowledge with contributes to the service implementation for the company.
3) What value can a design process gain from including children instead of adults? 
    - Deliverable/goal: A theoretical contribution to Service Design.

Project goal: An overall Service Design contribution on how children can contribute to a design process with focus on ethical considerations. With a company product as a case study to support the findings. 

We are open for alternations that match the need of the company, as well as inputs and ideas for the process. 

 

 

 

 

Managerial value of the research

We believe that children have great prospects and potential when it comes to design. They are creative and innovative, and they often think outside the box in ways that adults and industry professionals are not able to. Due to this we think there is potential in including children in design processes when designing new services and we wish to explore this more indepth with a practical project to support our theory. 

Research topic motivation

We are interested in designing new and better experiences for users in the cultural sector, and we are interested in investigating a new approach to this, by focusing on the children.

Why collaborate with us

We both have our backgrounds in the tourism and service industry and through our thesis we are hoping to gain more experience with designing better user experiences. We have gained a lot of knowledge and theoretical experience through our masters degree at Aalborg University, but we wish to expand this with more practical experience and hands on work to gain more experience. 

We are both hard working and dedicated with a big desire to learn more about our field of interest.