Participatory design that matters – with activism education of children

Inspired by the tradition on participatory design, children have been invited to actively participate in the development of digital technology and to critically approach digital technology and its consequences in their everyday life and society. It has been argued that children's computing education should encourage them to adopt a critical, reflective and constructive stance towards computing. Even if valuable work has been conducted along these lines, there is room for improvement regarding participatory design that ‘matters’. We have enriched children's computing education with participatory design combined with activism education. We showcase how we have done that and outline children's experiences, design outcomes and challenges encountered. We identify ways by which our work entailing participatory design with children can be seen to ‘matter’ and by which the tenets of activism education have been included, but also limitations in both respects. Our insights enable participatory design with children to move towards such that ‘matters’.