Participatory Design of AI with Children: Reflections on IDC Design Challenge
It addresses the need for inclusive AI design for children, but is incremental as it builds on existing participatory design methods without introducing new technical approaches.
The paper explores children's design ideas for AI technologies through a participatory design challenge at the IDC 2023 conference, revealing diverse applications and highlighting the potential of involving children in shaping future AI.
Children growing up in the era of Artificial Intelligence (AI) will be most impacted by the technology across their life span. Participatory Design (PD) is widely adopted by the Interaction Design and Children (IDC) community, which empowers children to bring their interests, needs, and creativity to the design process of future technologies. While PD has drawn increasing attention to human-centered AI design, it remains largely untapped in facilitating the design process of AI technologies relevant to children and their community. In this paper, we report intriguing children's design ideas on AI technologies resulting from the "Research and Design Challenge" of the 22nd ACM Interaction Design and Children (IDC 2023) conference. The diversity of design problems, AI applications and capabilities revealed by the children's design ideas shed light on the potential of engaging children in PD activities for future AI technologies. We discuss opportunities and challenges for accessible and inclusive PD experiences with children in shaping the future of AI-powered society.