ABSTRACT
The value of family in the physical, emotional, and intellectual growth of children is indispensable. Family life is a primary context for children to learn, and the importance of the family unit is accepted as a driver for academic achievement. Participatory design (PD) methodologies, in particular, show great potential for fostering balanced parent child interactions by creating a rich context that can illuminate and enhance the ways in which families learn together. This chapter discusses how PD can be used to gather rich contextual information that can improve family dynamics and guide the design of systems and artifacts aimed at supporting family learning. Design thinking is a movement that elevates the philosophy and approaches of design into a disposition, whereby design is a lens through which one engages in thinking and doing with the goal of innovating for a better world. Parents are constantly balancing a myriad of work and home responsibilities as they help their children grow and learn.
