Practical answers for co-designing with children and young people

I think theoretically you can include children at any age in a design project from observational studies of how space is used, or how they interact with a product, right up to more democratic and collaborative processes where children are given the opportunity to design "with" and share their ideas and experiences.

Age really depends on what you want to learn with children in your design project and the ethical considerations - ensuring that children are safe and empowered in the design process and are able to contribute meaningfully.

If you are able to design with children, particularly in pre-primary and primary school years, then it’s really important the design team understand developmental stages and let that guide the methods you use, along with other vital considerations such as social and cultural factors and trauma-informed approaches.

At Portable we use a variety of methods when we are designing with children and most of them are mediated through another party. Most often we work with our client and their partner organisations who have existing networks or youth councils already in place, this can sometimes include snowball recruitment where young people or their parents and families help us spread the word.

When working with schools it is important to understand what approvals are required such as through the relevant Education Department or with a University ethics committee. It is important to understand these requirements early and build them into your engagement planning.

When it comes to selecting students to participate in co-design principals, teachers, or other school staff often support the selection of students. This can be done through a direct recruitment or expression of interest including parent/guardian consent. These processes are all guided by the school and may be influenced by the ethics protocols, if one was required.

You can also engage youth advocacy organisations in your local area who specialise in supporting young people to have their voices heard. There are plenty around who do great work.

For young people over 18 we might do a public call-out through social media channels, although this is rare.

Lots of hospital networks, etc will also have youth councils that you may be able to draw upon. One important consideration, particularly if you are seeking to engaging an existing youth council or advisory group, is to ensure you have funding to reimburse children and young people for their involvement in co-design.

On ethics, if working with schools, the level of approval will depend on how you wish to use the insights generated from co-design. If it is to publish these insights in the public sphere or for research purposes, relevant education department approval will be required alongside consent from the principal and parents of students (as well as student assent). If the co-design is for your own internal purposes only then no formal ethics approval is needed, but school level approval will still be required, and it would be good practice to have some kind of assent process from children to enable them to have agency in the decision to participate.

I’ve worked for a large NGO for the past few years, so have been really privileged to be able to co-design with children and young people who receive our services. Even so, selecting participants is something that I approach differently for every project. This is because a lot of the children and young people who receive services have experienced trauma or instability in their lives, so it’s really necessary to recruit participants with a view to how the project might benefit and impact them. The question of, “How will this project benefit kids?”, is often pretty central to my thinking at the start of an initiative. I will then go and speak directly to program Managers about what I’m trying to do and whether they have any children or young people who they think might like to participate. And this is often not just about the child or young person’s aptitude or interest, but about what is going on in their lives right now. I’ll then work together with the Manager to let children or young people know, and ask if they’d like to participate.

Ensuring that children have choice (and ongoing agency) in relation to their participation is really significant. If anyone is thinking about embarking on a co-design project with children, I’d encourage them to contact large NGOs and ask if they might be able to assist with recruitment. I’ve worked with a lot of university researchers to recruit participants - and it’s something I really enjoy doing. If your project will have a positive impact on children (and can also assist with successful and effective service delivery), then you might find that NGOs are really happy to assist!

Great question! In our experience diary studies that offer multiple ways to contribute have a higher chance of success - this is true for adults and children. Consider online tools that allow participants to safely contribute using video, text, or audio. You might also consider the addition of drawing or visual diaries.

Think about how children and young people engage in their everyday lives and mimic those techniques - creating an Instagram post is one fun and familiar way for young people to share their experiences and ideas in ways that are familiar. It goes without saying that when you are collecting this kind of information data privacy and protocols are incredibly important so plan how you will collect, store, and destroy the data on project completion.

While neurodivergent children are seen as a group who may be at increased risk of harm in research, or participatory methods like co-design, the national Ethics Statement does argue that "strategies should be employed to enable their participation, support their agency and respect their right to self-determination." (pg 67). This National Statement is a useful resource to refer to in arguing for better inclusion of vulnerable groups who have traditionally been excluded from having a voice in/participating in research and research adjacent activities.

And as per the National Statement, the advice is that it is optimal to consult and engage with communities themselves, or advocacy or support groups who represent a prospective participant population to establish the appropriateness and support for including groups in research, research adjacent, service development, etc activities.

This is a link to the National Statement, and Chapter 4 speaks to specific considerations around children: http://www.nhmrc.gov.au/about-us/publications/national-statementethical-conduct-human-research-2025.

What a great project! Everyone has the right and ability.

We have had the opportunity to work with neurodiverse children. Just like anyone you design with, it's about meeting children where they are at and designing activities and conversations that meet their needs, not only the needs of the design project.

During the webinar we talked about a number of things that we have learned, like:

• making sure instructions are shared in multiple formats - verbal, written, and visual
• breaking down instructions into simple steps
• removing extraneous information to avoid cognitive overload
• providing different choices in how people engage in activities such as drawing, writing, sharing ideas verbally
• being clear upfront how children can take breaks when they need to or choose to stop at any time
• using a mix of paired activities, group activities or solo activities

It’s about creating spaces where children can choose how to participate in a way they feel empowered and safe. And make sure the purpose of the activity or question is clear and direct. Don’t beat around the bush or make it conceptual; be specific and be concrete so it's easy to understand.

I’ll just add that all children have a right to participate - and that we can help to respect and uphold that right by providing them with opportunities to engage in co-design and other participatory activities. I think the key is for such activities to be flexible and adaptive to the needs of the children. And the onus is on us as adults to create these kinds of safe, inclusive and creative spaces.

One thing that’s been effective for me is working with a team of staff. I’ve typically run co-design activities with 2 or 3 colleagues, and we each have different responsibilities/roles. One might run some of the main activities, while the others will keep an eye out for any children who might be signalling that they’re disengaged or disregulated (and ask them if they’d like to engage in another activity or have a break).

Our sessions might look quite chaotic - but I prefer to think that they offer children lots of different ways to participate, and that we can be agile in changing things up if the activities don’t resonate with the kids involved.

There is no "best practice" per se, but rather choose/use methods that are likely to engage children and young people and which are developmentally appropriate.

Here are some ideas that have worked for me in the past:

• Ways to keep it simple
  Mailing participants a physical maker kit that you guide them through in an online meeting. The child's parent/guardian or support person can be in the room with them to provide extra support with the activities and using the kit. You can also ask participants to use items available in their immediate environment, if appropriate, maybe a task is to find an item in response to a particular question or activity.

• Collaborative online activities
  For older children, teenagers and young adults online whiteboard spaces like Miro are really great if used creatively. We have run workshops online where young people were invited to use drawing tools, card sorts, create concept posters or collage using images that are either pre-loaded for participants to choose from or which they load themselves. You can use fun polls with kids too. Each of these techniques can be used as individual, pair, or small group activities to encourage collaboration and diversity of thinking.
  One tip is that with younger children in primary school years, online whiteboards like Miro or Mural can feel overwhelming and difficult to navigate, especially if you don't have time to familiarise them with the tool. Using simpler digital tools they are familiar with is helpful.

• Safe online engagements tips
  As with in-person workshops we start with the group creating a room agreement where the group decides how they all want to show up for each other.
  Think about what might be important to normalise such as camera’s on throughout or at certain points in the online workshop. Not only does this help with engagement but it helps facilitators see how people are responding to the session, if any distress might be occurring so people can be supported when they need it. Also, though, make sure if people need to turn their cameras off, they can and we understand why.
  Think about the pre and post activities that are important for building relationships between participants such as pre-briefs or debriefs with each young person. Perhaps the group would benefit from a less formal pre-meet up where they can get to know each other before they start designing together.

As a general rule the question should be asked early in the planning process, before any workshops take place, and re-confirmed at the beginning of any engagement.

Legislative Requirements

From a legislative perspective children can express preference, but depending on jurisdiction, a parent/guardian’s consent is usually required for participation. Children should still be asked who they’d like to be present but the team will still need to confirm with the parent/guardian whether this is possible.

Duty of Care

Some contexts (e.g., if you’re working in schools or a care setting) may require a teacher, carer, or youth worker to be present for safety or duty of care reasons. If so, be transparent with the child that certain adults must attend, but they can still choose additional support people (e.g., a sibling, peer, or trusted adult).

Portable offers public co-design training programs and delivers bespoke packages to help groups understand and actively engage in the design process. We also offer 1:1 coaching for people developing their design practice.

Here are a few organisations we found or, were mentioned in the chat, in no particular order, that offer specific lived experience training:

• Lived Experience Australia
• Lived Experience Training
• LELAN
• IPS (Intentional Peer Support)
• VMIAC
• batyr

Yes! But wherever we are designing with people "it depends". It depends on the participants' individual preferences and their developmental stage. Providing options for how children engage in design is the key, always have multiple, different options, stand in the shoes of the participants and select methods that can best support them to share their perspectives.

My colleague Dr Willhemina Wahlin says all kinds of making are important in designing with children. When well designed, it can leave so much space for creativity and collaboration that builds their capability in brilliant ways.

In one regional co-design workshop, young people spent the first day identifying their values and the second creating "mash-ups". They combined a selfie with acetate overlays of their artwork to express their values, then shared these with the group. This sparked discussion about values, community, and future aspirations all set to a soundtrack that helped create an open, collaborative atmosphere.

I love asking children to draw their ideas about particular things. This can be a really fun part of a co-design workshop! (And even better is when you ask them to explain what they’ve drawn and why… But make sure you have some way of recording their answers!)

I’m a very keen advocate of play-based approaches to co-design - but I also think it’s a bit of an overstatement to say that ALL children and young people are inherently creative. With very young children (say those aged 8 and under), it’s good to remember that they often learn to read pictures before they can understand written words. So expressing themselves through images can come quite naturally.

However, this can often change as they become older. I ran a workshop with a small group of teens last year where they were totally engaged, but refused to pick up a pen and write or draw anything. (They said they were sick of writing things down!) It wasn’t the end of the world. One of my team stepped in to be the scribe, and we created a big mind-map of the young people’s ideas - with them thoroughly enjoying the process of dictating to us! It was also a nice opportunity for us to write down what they said, then to check that we’d written it correctly - so it allowed for a little dialogue and some unpicking/clarification of their ideas. It ended up being a really effective process!

We have not used gamification specifically but we do use play-based approaches a lot, in particular card-style games and drawing and storytelling activities.

A gamification approach could be inconsistent with the goal of co-design, which is to bring everyone's voices into the process. Gamification might create "competition" and division and potentially reward the loudest voice in the room? Something to think about.

I often use games as ice-breakers at the start of co-design sessions - but not really as part of the co-design process. Children are often very sensitive to group dynamics, so I’d be cautious about encouraging them to be competitive with each other in this type of setting. My primary goal in co-design workshops is getting children and young people to collaborate, so games where there is a “winner” might be counter-productive.

At Portable, including the two projects we worked on with Michelle and Victoria, we plan by creating a distress protocol. This protocol helps us to prioritise the wellbeing of people engaged in the project including participants, researchers and our clients.

A distress protocol is a step-by-step document which details how those conducting research or workshops will respond to any distress to participants and/or researchers before, during and/or after a design process. It supports you to address potential distress and adverse reactions, being clear upfront how you can avoid causing distress, how you can respond to it in the moment and how you support people throughout the design process, ensuring it aligns to key trauma-informed principles like diversity, choice, empowerment, safety, collaboration and trust-worthiness.

The distress protocol is all part of our trauma-informed practice so if you are not familiar with what that means or you are building your understanding reach out for support from experienced practitioners. In our case we were fortunate to work and learn from Jax Wechsler - you can learn more about Jax here.

Trauma-informed practice is central to all the participatory projects that I have undertaken with children and young people. I always keep in mind the 5 principles of trauma-informed practice, which are:

• Safety
• Trustworthiness
• Choice
• Collaboration
• Empowerment

In terms of what this means for co-designing with children and young people, I’d argue that creating safe, inclusive and empowering spaces is crucial. This means fostering trust and transparency through clear communication, and making sure that children and young people have agency in the design process. Here is a really good resource on trauma-informed research, that applies equally well to co-design.

One thing Jo talked about in the webinar was the need for co-design to be relational - and this is really important to my practice. I want children and young people to feel safe with me, and to know exactly what I plan to do with the information they share with me. There are also lots of ways to ask children and young people about their views and ideas without expecting them to share intimate parts of their lives that might be painful and/or traumatic to recall. (And this is always my aim in co-design workshops.)

However, sometimes you will establish a safe, trusting relationship with a child over the course of a project and they will consequently share personal experiences with you. It’s important to be prepared for this. You need to be able to respond appropriately - thanking them for sharing this with you, acknowledging that it might have been difficult or brave of them to share it. and perhaps asking for their consent to include it in the insights you’re collecting for the project.

Another aspect of preparing for this is having a very clear idea about processes for handling and responding to disclosures. In my work this happens quite frequently. I like to think that it’s because establishing safe, trusting relationships with children is so integral to what I do - so it’s a sign that we’re doing this effectively! But in NSW there are mandatory reporting requirements if a child or young person under the age of 18 discloses various types of abuse and neglect. Make sure you’re aware if there are any such requirements in your State or Territory.

Our approach to payments is flexible and based on the context we are operating in. Sometimes clients have very specific rules around how people can be incentivised, including what methods, this is common when working with government. In other cases we might talk to participants about their preferences and what is most meaningful and practical for them. I think this is the ideal scenario because it creates more choice and empowerment for people participating in co-design and it prioritises their context over the funder. Within your constraints think about what participants value most and how you can make the process of receiving a payment easy and fast for people.

When using card payments, we try to avoid payments that introduce complexity like cards participants need to register online first before you can access funds, or cards for stores that are not easily accessible for a participant.

Keeping in mind for children under 18 there may be consent processes that also involve parents/guardians.

This has been a hot topic at my work for the past 12 months! My preference is always to ask the child or young person what they would prefer - and to have both vouchers and bank transfers as options. Sometimes you don’t have the option of a bank transfer, in which case I would always choose vouchers that can be redeemed anywhere (i.e. Visa. Mastercard or EFTPOS).

One resource about remuneration that I've found really useful is this one from YACVIC (which generally has amazing resources for anyone working with young people!).