Children imitate!: appreciating recycling in participatory design with children
Abstract
The cooperative design practices as well as the participatory research tradition and contextual design have inspired the researchers of a relatively new and challenging design context, i.e. design with children for children. An ample literature base of its own has been generated on the subject already. However, the phenomenon of children imitating each other's work in the design sessions has been largely disregarded in current research. This article sheds light on the practices of 'recycling', originally characterised as 'imitation', in the drawings produced by children during participatory design workshops in a school setting. The article suggests that instead of ignoring the issue of imitation and recycling, practitioners might start to appreciate it; both when planning design sessions as well as when making interpretations and judgments on the basis of the results produced by children. Implications for practice and future research are discussed.
