Computational empowerment of children: Design research on empowering and impactful designs by children

Abstract

Prioritizing children’s empowerment in and through design has been on the agenda of child–computer interaction (CCI) research for a long time. Recently, the notion of the computational empowerment of children has received attention. However, there are still open issues in our understanding and advocacy of it. A related development is the recent interest in the longer-term impacts of our work. Fast and furious participation of children in design sessions is considered inadequate. We should advocate for longer-term trajectories and possibilities for children to make changes that will influence our world. However, the literature is limited in addressing longer-term impacts. This study taps into these two research gaps and showcases how we have addressed the computational empowerment of children in a project tackling bullying at school through critical design and making. In this paper, we examine in detail the children’s designs and their trajectories from the viewpoint of empowerment and impact: whether and how these children’s designs show potential for the empowerment of those bullied and whether and how their designs have had an impact in the realm of digital technology development. Our study has interesting conceptual and methodological implications for CCI research and practice on the computational empowerment of children and on our design research practice.