Promoting Criticality through Design Futuring with Young Children

Abstract

As children’s everyday interaction with emerging technologies increases, they need to develop criticality to navigate ethical impacts of technology and when imagining futures with technology. We explore how design futuring can facilitate children’s criticality through four different workshops with children from India, Finland, and the USA. Participants imagined futures with technologies while critically considering ethical impacts. In the findings, themes related to empowerment and ethics emerged in children’s imagined futures. We discuss promoting criticality and empowerment with children’s imagined futures, and how these futures can respond to diverse, local issues based on their lived experiences. Our work diversifies design research by highlighting local futures, and the criticality of those imagined futures, from children across the world.