CHECk: A Tool to Inform and Encourage Ethical Practice in Participatory Design with Children

When working with children in participatory design activities ethical questions arise that are not always considered in a standard ethics review. This paper highlights five challenges around the ethics of the value of design and the ethics of the children’s participation and presents a new tool, CHECk that deals with three of these challenges by virtue of two checklists that are designed to challenge researchers in CCI and HCI to critically consider the reasons for involving children in design projects and to examine how best to describe design activities in order that children can better consent to participate