{"ID":6138866,"CreatedAt":"2026-07-09T01:07:32.349475501Z","UpdatedAt":"2026-07-10T19:34:39.449765243Z","DeletedAt":null,"paper_url":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.06754","arxiv_id":"2607.06754","title":"Creating a Mixed-Reality Installation with Families through Theatrical Co-Design","abstract":"Co-designing with families for environmental sustainability relies on participatory imagination, yet habitual family roles and uneven participation, especially between adults and young children, often constrain it. A second challenge is continuity: workshop relationships and embodied ways of working do not easily survive into the final design, where artefacts travel more readily than roles or interactional dynamics. We report on a nationally toured mixed-reality installation developed through applied-theatre-led co-design with families. Across three workshops and user testing, applied theatre methods supported families to co-create narratives, artefacts, and interactional roles that shaped the public event. We show how theatrical co-design can rebalance child-adult participation through playful status shifts, and how selected workshop dynamics can be re-staged within a public mixed-reality installation. We contribute a theatrical account of participatory design in which designers work not only with artefacts and ideas, but with roles, rhythms, authority, and the social conditions that support collective imagination.","short_abstract":"Co-designing with families for environmental sustainability relies on participatory imagination, yet habitual family roles and uneven participation, especially between adults and young children, often constrain it. A second challenge is continuity: workshop relationships and embodied ways of working do not easily survi...","url_abs":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.06754","url_pdf":"https://arxiv.org/pdf/2607.06754v1","authors":"[\"Pavlos Panagiotidis\",\"Roma Patel\",\"Boriana Koleva\",\"Steve Benford\",\"Jocelyn Spence\",\"Paul Tennent\",\"Juan Pablo Martinez Avila\",\"Laurence Cliffe\"]","published":"2026-07-07T19:34:59Z","proceeding":"cs.HC","tasks":"[\"cs.HC\"]","methods":"[]","has_code":false}