‘I’m the boss of the Stiemerbeek valley!’ Reconsidering children’s empowerment in participatory design from the perspective of infrastructuring

Abstract

ABSTRACT Although researchers and designers have paid attention to children’s empowerment in Participatory Design (PD) processes, there is a lacuna in research into manifestations of empowerment in and as a result of PD processes concerned with the building of dynamic infrastructures. In a response, we conducted a case study in which 10–12-year-olds participated in designing prototypes related to a local nature area and reconsidered existing views on empowerment. The findings resulted in (1) a broad operationalisation of the critical form of empowerment; (2) a mapping of the possibilities for empowerment in informal time frames next to traditional, project-related time frames; and (3) an extended analytical framework for the span of activities considered to be empowering in PD processes. The contribution of this study is a comprehensive understanding and lingua franca to consider children’s empowerment in relation to infrastructuring. This infrastructural view on empowerment allows to include notions of active citizenship and empowerment-in-use in the discourse and analysis on children’s empowerment, placing design participation in a holistic context, beyond the formal participation in the design process.