Children’s Ideal Nature-Related Digital Tools: A Co-design Experiment

Abstract

Children living in cities are interacting less and less with their surrounding green spaces. It is argued that, while online digital games can decrease children’s outdoor play, emerging digital technologies have the potential to motivate children’s interaction with nature. However, children, who are the end-users of such tools, are hardly involved in their design process. Over the past two decades, children are increasingly being involved in urban and technological design, yet their participation in the design process has been rather passive. To address this gap, we explore the desired characteristics of digital tools for an ideal interaction with nature, from the perspective of children. We conducted an outdoor activity and a co-design workshop with 23 children aged 12–14 years from a secondary school in the Netherlands. The findings of this participatory design process indicate the design characteristics, requirements, functions, and usage of children’s ideal digital tools that can increase their interaction with nature. Our findings are not only relevant for investigating the role of children as co-designers in the whole participatory technology design process, but also helpful for urban or digital intervention designers to improve child-friendly digital tools for ideal interaction with nature.