Participatory Design Futuring with Children
Participatory Design Futuring with Children
PlayFutures: Imagining Civic Futures with AI and Puppets
Supratim Pait, Sumita Sharma, Ashley Frith, Michael Nitsche, Noura Howell
One group of children reimagined their local natural history museum to be more vibrant and full of life.
Our project supports children's critical AI engagement through participatory workshops re-envisioning public spaces. We ran a workshop with children aged 9-12 combining AI, puppet-making, performance, and design futuring to reimagine civic spaces. Participants used ChatGPT to visualize changes to local places, created puppets of characters who had different viewpoints regarding these changes, and performed debates about the proposed changes. Our findings reveal children's critical engagement with AI as a design tool, preference for iterative refinement, and desires for authentic over 'AI-like' content. This work contributes methods for engaging children in civic discussions through making and performing futures. It also demonstrates how these methods can scaffold critical AI literacy.
Children formed teams or 'councils' inspired by city council to debate proposed changes. They reimagined public spaces in Atlanta.
Partners
Supratim Pait is the lead PhD student researcher.
Professor Michael Nitsche is collaborator on grants and daily project execution.
Decatur Makers , all-ages makerspace
Dr. Sumita Sharma from Oulu University directly informed the workshop design from her project PAIZ (Participatory AI with Schoolchildren).
The Center for Puppetry Arts graciously provided advice on puppet-making and some template designs.
Papers
Funding
Applying Generative AI for STEAM Education: Supporting AI Literacy and Community Engagement with Marginalized Youth. 2024. PI: Noura Howell, Co-PI: Michael Nitsche, Community Partner: Kalia Morrison from Decatur Makers. Grant from the Georgia Tech Institute for Data Engineering and Science (IDEaS).
2023 - 2026