Reaching a Consensus through Participatory Design with Children: The Two-Way Approach

Abstract

In this paper, we present a case study which investigates the process of reaching a consensus in a mobile game design project for children, carried on with the participatory design approach. Making consensus, here, is a matter of making group decision on one of the narrative designs produced in different themes with various techniques throughout the early stage of co-design process. We need a new methodology because neither of the methods in the relevant literature is perfectly fit to our case. Therefore we developed “Two-way design selection technique” that consisted of separate debriefing sessions with children and adults. Results showed that the new technique was successful in terms of children’s and adults’ effective participation, contribution to the co-design process as well as reaching a consensus. On the other hand, it has some limitations regarding interaction. In this sense, future studies should focus on enabling more interactive discussion opportunities.