Properties of Participatory Approaches for Designing with Children in a Health Related Context

Information technology in health services has an increasingly important role in people’s lives. However, the design of this constitutes a complex situation in a sensitive context. The complexity further increases when the users are children. Participatory approaches are beneficial for design with children, but there is limited research on how to design with children and how existing methods can be made to suit a health related context. This paper aims identifying common properties of participatory design methods when performed in a health related context. The identified properties of design methods were found to relate to three different categories: activities, designers and participants. To these were added properties of research methods with children in health contexts, where a majority related to the category of designers. This indicates the designers’ responsibilities are particularly important when designing with children in a sensitive, health related context.