Designing with children: A participatory design framework for developing interactive exhibitions

Involving children in the design process in the context of exhibition settings is a relatively new and unexplored field. We address the challenges of constructing and evaluating a design framework involving children when developing an interactive exhibition. In this, we draw on informant design, participatory design, cooperative inquiry, and child development research in order to adapt the design framework to children. The proposed framework was applied and evaluated on the case of the PULSE exhibition project at the Experimentarium Science Center. Altogether, six children aged six to eleven participated in three workshops based on the design framework. The analysis and discussion of the findings resulted in three design proposals for the exhibition. Furthermore, the study showed that the framework had the potential to engage children in participatory design within an exhibition context. The evaluation of this study indicates possibilities and challenges for future research and for designers to be aware of when designing with children for interactive exhibition environments.