The Stargazer Map of participatory sessions with children: Scoping review of contextual elements and framework for reporting

There is a general agreement in the Child-Computer Interaction community that participatory is a core value in our research practices. However, the way we report the sessions tends to limit the focus on design decisions and flatten the session complexity, resulting in a superficial description that hinders the full understanding of the process and makes it difficult for other researchers to learn from it. In this paper, we tackle the need for more reflexive and rigorous reporting of participatory sessions while acknowledging their creative and crafting dimensions. We conducted a scoping review of 101 methodological and theoretical papers in Child-Computer Interaction to understand which contextual elements influence the session and should then be considered an essential part of it. We identified four categories: the Experience Nebula, the Social Nebula, the Structural Nebula, and the Identity Nebula. Driven by the ethnographic concept of thick description, we then organized into rings of the Stargazer Map, a scaffold that displays the contextual elements that shape a session. The Stargazer Map aims to assist researchers in producing a rich report in order to support and share their knowledge claims. Instead of providing a static checklist, it fosters high-level situated reflection, helps keep sight of the direction taken, and contributes to making participatory design research practices more transparent and generative. • Sessions are made of Identity, Structural, Social and Experience contextual elements. • The Map operationalize contextual elements to scaffold interpretation and reporting. • The Map supports thick description to enhance rigor and transparency in CCI research.