Abstract
Child participation in healthcare requires tools that empower children to co-produce their care. Development of such tools should involve children, but participatory design with children raise challenges, particularly when involving children with disabilities. However, using the right participatory approaches can bring more effective tools for this group. Personas is a method for strengthening user perspectives, through representation without user presence. However, research on persona generation in this context is limited. This study aims to develop a participatory, inclusive persona generation method, adjusted to suit children with disabilities. The method development was based on three rounds of image-based workshops involving 16 children with various disabilities in persona generation, through co-creation of characters and scenarios. Eight children without disabilities, 1 young adult with disability and 1 rehabilitation professional also participated in validating the results. Throughout the process a qualitative thematic design analysis was used. The results consist of an iterative co-construction method, accompanied by personas that were generated and validated within a games for health project. The results show effectiveness in enabling flexible communication and co-construction, through salutogenic and social model perspectives. The method is discussed in terms of norm-creative tradeoffs, participation levels, and salutogenic descriptions of barriers. The method may influence design projects towards more inclusiveness and enable increased representation for disabled children in research. Using this method successfully will need a norm-critical awareness as well as extensive facilitation. Suggestions for further research include applications of the method in similar contexts or user groups.
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
Disability; Children; Norm-critical; Participatory design; Personas; Co-produced care
