Designing for Children’s Participation in Everyday Life
Bridging Human–Computer Interaction and Occupational Therapy through Roles, Activities, and Contexts 

Call for Participation

We invite researchers, practitioners, designers, technologists, educators, occupational therapsits, and students to participate in a full-day workshop exploring how interactive systems can support children’s meaniningful participation in everyday life. 

The workshop focuses on children with diverse abilities and examines participation not only as involvement in design processes, but also as engagement in valueds activities, relationships, routines, and roles across everyday contexts such as home, school, therapy, play, and community life.

Building on work in accessibility, inclusion, child-computer interaction, participatory design, and occupational therapy, this workshop creates a spece for interdecispinary dialolgue about how technologies can support children's participation beyond system use. From an occupational theapy perspective, participation is understood as involvement in life situations and emerges through the dynamic interaction between the child, the activities they engage in, the environments they inhabit, and the roles they enact, such as a student, friend, sibiling, players, learner, or community member. 

This framing complements participatory design by asking not only children can participate in design, but also design can support children's participation in everyday life. 

Workshop Aim

The aim of this workshop is to bring together interdisciplinary perspectives to explore how interactive systems can be designed, evaluated, and implemented in ways that support children’s participation in real-world contexts.

The workshop will focus on three connected questions:

1. How can HCI and occupational therapy understand children’s participation in everyday life?

2. How can technologies support children’s roles, activities, agency, and inclusion across contexts?

3. What design principles, methods, and research directions are needed to support meaningful participation for children with diverse abilities?

This workshop will be held in person.  Each participant will need to register for the workshop through the NordiCHI conference website.

Understanding Participation

In this workshop, participation refers to more than attendance, access, or use of technology. We are interested in participation as meaningful involvement in everyday life.

This includes:

• being present and included in everyday contexts;

• being actively engaged in activities that matter to the child;

• having opportunities to make choices and express preferences;

• being recognised in valued roles, such as friend, student, player, family member, or community participant;

• having environments, technologies, and social supports that enable participation.

We are particularly interested in approaches that respect children’s rights to express their views, communicate in accessible ways, and be involved in decisions that affect their lives.

Topics of Interest

We welcome contributions from Human–Computer Interaction, occupational therapy, design, engineering, education, rehabilitation, health, and related fields. 

Relevant topics include, but are not limited to:

• Designing for children’s participation in everyday contexts (e.g., play, learning, social interaction)

• Role- and context-based approaches to interaction design

• Participatory and co-design methods with children with diverse abilities. 

• Interdisciplinary collaboration between HCI, occupational therapy, design, education, and health professionals. 

• Technologies that support children’s communication, choice-making, autonomy, and social participation. 

• Real-world case studies of systems used in home, school, therapy, community, or play contexts. 

• Methods for understanding participation beyond system use or task completion. 

• Ethical, social, cultural, and contextual considerations in designing for children with diverse abilities

Submission Format

We invite submissions that contribute to understanding and designing for children’s participation in everyday life. In line with the workshop’s case-based and co-creative structure, we particularly encourage contributions grounded in real-world examples, practice-based insights, design work, or emerging research.

Submissions may take one of the following forms:

• Position papers 

2–4 pages, excluding references

Position papers may describe research, design work, theoretical perspectives, methods, or practice-based reflections relevant to children's participation and interactive systems (ACM, single-column format) 

• Case-based contributions 

1 page, with optional supporting data or media 

Case-based contributions may present a real-world situation involving children’s participation in everyday life. These may include examples from home, school, therapy, play, social, or community contexts. 

Case-based contributions may describe :

• • 1. • • the child’s roles (e.g., student, friend, player);

         • the child’s activities, routines, and goals; 

         • technologies or supports involved;

         • barriers and enablers of participation;

         • design opportunities or unresolved challenges. 

• Pictorials or visual submissions 

1 page plus optional media  

Visual submissions may illustrate contexts, systems, design processes, interaction scenarios, or participation challenges. These may include images, sketches, diagrams, storyboards, or a short video of up to 3 minutes. 

Please include:

• title;

• author names and affiliations;

• abstract of 150–250 words;

• visual material;

• short explanation of relevance to the workshop.

• Work-in-progress or provocations 

Maximum 1 page  

These submissions may raise critical questions, unresolved challenges, emerging ideas, or provocative perspectives related to children’s participation in everyday life.  

Note that workshop submissions will not be published in the conference proceedings.  Submissions are not a requirement for participating in the workshop.

Submission Guidelines 

Submissions should be prepared in the ACM single-column format where appropriate.

Submissions should not include identifiable information about children, families, schools, services, or clinical settings unless appropriate permission and consent have been obtained.

For case-based or visual submissions, please anonymise all personal and contextual details. Images, videos, or other media involving children should only be submitted if consent has been obtained and if the material can be shared safely within the workshop context.

If the submission is based on research involving human participants, authors should confirm that the work complies with the ethics requirements of their institution or research environment.

All submissions should be accessible. For example, please use readable formatting, meaningful headings, alt text for images where possible, and captions or descriptions for video material.

Submit your position paper contribution here: 

https://easychair.org/my/conference?conf=chiot2026

Submit your case-based contribution, pictorial or visual submission, or work-in-progress or provocation here: https://forms.gle/Jwrm6tSD5q1UP9H38

RSVP or submit your intent to participate without a submission here: https://forms.gle/VrkSWQSsUDvpmrHF7

Important Dates

Submission deadline: [Insert date]
Notification of acceptance: [Insert date]
Workshop registration deadline: [Insert date or TBA]
Workshop date: Sunday 4 October 2026
Workshop time: 09:30–17:30 local time
Location: Vaasa, Finland

At least one author of each accepted submission must attend the workshop and register for the workshop through NordiCHI 2026.

Workshop Activities

The workshop is structured around case-based, participatory, and co-creative activities.  Participant contributions will be used as shared material throughout the day. 

Activities will include:

• Interdisciplinary discussions on participation across HCI and occupational therapy;

• Collaborative analysis of participant-submitted and curated real-world cases;

• Mapping children’s participation across activities, environments, and technologies;

•  identifying barriers and enablers of participation in everyday contexts; 

• Co-design sessions to develop participation-centered concepts; 

• Synthesis of design strategies, principles, and future research directions.

The workshop will not be organised as a sequence of traditional paper presentations. Instead, submissions will be used to support shared analysis, discussion, design activity, and community building. 

Expected Outcomes

Participants will contribute to:

1. A shared interdisciplinary framing of children’s participation for HCI and occupational therapy.

2. A set of participation-centred design strategies grounded in everyday-life contexts.

3. A collection of case-based insights highlighting barriers, enablers, and design opportunities.

4. A research and design roadmap for future work on technologies that support children’s meaningful participation.

5. Opportunities for future collaboration, including possible joint publications, research networks, or follow-up activities.

Accepted contributions may be shared on the workshop website, subject to authors’ permission and ethical considerations.

Who Should Attend?

This workshop is intended for researchers, practitioners, designers, technologists, clinicians, educators, students, and advocates interested in: 

• child–computer interaction;

• accessibility and inclusive design;

• participatory design and co-design;

• occupational therapy and rehabilitation;

• child development and disability;

• educational technology;

• assistive and interactive technologies;

• children’s rights, voice, agency, and inclusion;

• designing for real-world everyday contexts.

Join us in rethinking participation beyond system use and design processes, and in shaping how interactive systems can support children’s meaningful engagement in everyday life.

Why This Workshop Matters 

Interactive systems are increasingly used in children’s everyday lives, including in education, therapy, play, communication, and social participation. However, technologies are often evaluated in terms of usability, engagement, or task performance, rather than their contribution to children’s meaningful participation in everyday life.

This workshop invites participants to rethink participation as a design outcome. By bringing together HCI and occupational therapy perspectives, we aim to develop richer ways of understanding how children participate, what supports or restricts participation, and how interactive systems can be designed to support children’s roles, relationships, activities, and agency across real-world contexts.

Join us in rethinking participation beyond system use and design processes, and in shaping how interactive systems can support children’s meaningful engagement in everyday life.

Let us know if you'll be attending without a submission!