Children as coresearchers: more than just a roleplay

Abstract

Coresearch is a method that engages participants in contextual user research by giving them the role of researcher. This method aids to capture their input in the fuzzy front end of the design process. A previous study [5] showed that children can act as coresearchers to gather contextual knowledge. In that study 20 children aged 912 interviewed their peers or their grandparents. One of the findings from that study was that the professional role of the coresearcher is a motivating and influencing factor, which we want to enhance in a followup study. Another finding was that the way of reporting (audiorecording and notes in a research booklet) could be improved. In the present study 28 children (aged 9/10) acted as coresearchers by interviewing their peers. The goal of this study was to enhance the professional role of the children and to experiment with different recording devices, in order to explore the methodological consequences. Using coresearch gives an opportunity to go to places that are less accessible to lead researchers, like the child's room, and looking at it through the children's perspective. Making a choice between audio recorders and video cameras depends on the research set up and topic, in this case video added a lot of context since we were interested in personal belongings and a tour though their bedroom. It was found that giving mobile phones to coresearchers in order to record their interviews is not advisable; the quality of the audio is not that good and switching between making pictures and explaining them on audio is hard for them.