Creating a Mixed-Reality Installation with Families through Theatrical Co-Design
For researchers and practitioners in participatory design and human-computer interaction, this work offers a theatrical approach to address persistent issues of power dynamics and continuity in family co-design.
The paper addresses challenges of uneven participation and continuity in co-designing with families for environmental sustainability, using applied theatre methods to create a mixed-reality installation. Results show that theatrical co-design rebalances child-adult participation through playful status shifts and enables re-staging of workshop dynamics in the final installation.
Co-designing with families for environmental sustainability relies on participatory imagination, yet habitual family roles and uneven participation, especially between adults and young children, often constrain it. A second challenge is continuity: workshop relationships and embodied ways of working do not easily survive into the final design, where artefacts travel more readily than roles or interactional dynamics. We report on a nationally toured mixed-reality installation developed through applied-theatre-led co-design with families. Across three workshops and user testing, applied theatre methods supported families to co-create narratives, artefacts, and interactional roles that shaped the public event. We show how theatrical co-design can rebalance child-adult participation through playful status shifts, and how selected workshop dynamics can be re-staged within a public mixed-reality installation. We contribute a theatrical account of participatory design in which designers work not only with artefacts and ideas, but with roles, rhythms, authority, and the social conditions that support collective imagination.