"This is a flying shopping trolley": a case study of participatory design with children in a shopping context

Participatory design methods are increasingly used to investigate design ideas for new forms of information and communication technologies. We present a methodological variation of a user-centered idea generation, with children using a playful setting in the real usage context. This playful context-aware design workshop with children is situated directly in the context for which the device should be designed: the shopping context. To investigate the methodological concept we have conducted a three day design workshop with children to find out if this method can be beneficially used to provide recommendations for the design of new forms of information and communication technologies, especially mobile devices. We could show that this method can be useful to stimulate the creativity of children, helping them to focus on the usage context by a high number of shopping context related inventions.