Co-created Personas for Children with Disabilities Enhance Design Inclusivity

Why It Matters

Traditional persona development often overlooks the unique needs and perspectives of children with disabilities. This research highlights a practical approach to ensure their voices are central to the design process, leading to products and services that are genuinely usable and beneficial for this demographic.

Key Finding

A new method was created that uses images and iterative co-creation to build personas with children with disabilities, proving effective for communication and leading to validated personas for health games.

Key Findings

• An image-based and iterative co-construction method for persona generation was developed.
• The method demonstrated effectiveness in enabling flexible co-construction and communication.
• The generated personas were validated within a games for health case.

Research Evidence

Aim: How can norm-creative and participatory design approaches be integrated into persona generation to effectively include children with disabilities in the design of health games?

Method: Qualitative Thematic Design Analysis

Procedure: The study involved developing an image-based, iterative co-construction method for persona generation. This process included conducting interview transcripts and image-based workshops with children with disabilities, followed by validation with children without disabilities and a rehabilitation professional.

Sample Size: 16 children with disabilities participated in persona generation, and 8 children without disabilities, 1 young adult with a disability, and 1 rehabilitation professional participated in validation.

Context: Design of games for health targeting children with disabilities.

Design Principle

Inclusivity in design is achieved through direct, participatory co-creation with diverse user groups, especially those traditionally underrepresented.

How to Apply

When designing for children, especially those with disabilities, use image-based workshops and iterative co-creation sessions to develop personas that accurately reflect their experiences and needs.

Limitations

The study focused on a specific context (games for health) and may require adaptation for other domains. The validation group included a mix of participants with and without disabilities, which might influence the generalizability of findings.

Student Guide (IB Design Technology)

Simple Explanation: When designing things for kids with disabilities, it's best to ask them directly and work with them to create 'personas' (like character profiles) using pictures and by building things together. This makes sure the final product is actually good for them.

Why This Matters: This research shows how to make sure your design projects truly consider the needs of all users, especially those who might be harder to reach or whose needs are often overlooked. It leads to more effective and ethical design outcomes.

Critical Thinking: To what extent can 'norm-creative' approaches truly overcome deeply ingrained societal norms that may disadvantage children with disabilities, and how can designers critically assess and mitigate potential biases introduced by the method itself?

IA-Ready Paragraph: This design project adopted a norm-creative and participatory approach to persona development, inspired by Teleman et al. (2022), to ensure the authentic inclusion of children with disabilities. Through iterative, image-based co-creation workshops, detailed personas were developed that accurately reflect the unique needs and perspectives of the target user group, thereby enhancing the inclusivity and potential effectiveness of the designed solution.

Project Tips

• Consider using visual tools like mood boards or storyboarding when working with participants.
• Plan for multiple, shorter interaction sessions rather than one long one to maintain engagement.
• Be prepared to adapt your methods based on participant feedback and observed engagement.

How to Use in IA

• Reference this study when discussing your user research methodology, particularly if you are using participatory design techniques or targeting a specific user group with unique needs.
• Use the findings to justify the inclusion of diverse participants in your user testing and persona development.

Examiner Tips

• Demonstrate a clear understanding of inclusive design principles by referencing studies that advocate for direct user involvement, especially from marginalized groups.
• Show how your chosen persona development method accounts for potential communication barriers and ensures authentic user representation.

Independent Variable: Integration of norm-creative and participatory design approaches.

Dependent Variable: Effectiveness of persona generation, flexibility of co-construction, communication quality, and resulting persona validity.

Controlled Variables: Type of disability, age of participants, specific design context (games for health).

Strengths

• Employs a novel, norm-creative approach to a challenging user group.
• Utilizes a mixed validation group to strengthen findings.
• Provides a practical, replicable method.

Critical Questions

• How might the 'norm-creative' aspect of the method inadvertently reinforce or challenge existing societal norms in unexpected ways?
• What are the ethical considerations when co-constructing personas with vulnerable populations, and how were these addressed?

Extended Essay Application

• An Extended Essay could explore the long-term impact of using co-created personas on the diffusion and adoption of health technologies among children with disabilities.
• Investigate the transferability of this norm-creative persona method to other fields of design, such as educational tools or assistive technologies.

Source

A Norm-Creative Method for Co-constructing Personas With Children With Disabilities: Multiphase Design Study · Journal of Participatory Medicine · 2022 · 10.2196/29743