Helping Children Becoming Digital Creators Through Design

Abstract: In 2022, acting in the digital world has become a large part of children’s culture in the west. There are plenty of big companies that approach children as customers and consumers by producing digital entertainment content to tie them to their brands. There is nothing wrong with a moderate level of consumption, but it should not be the only activity that children are engaged in. To give children alternatives to consumption I have done research and design for children’s digital maker’s culture. My focus was on digital game making and engaging the children in that process through them drawing. I developed a digital game making workshop and two products for workshops called the Analog Game Engine and Draw Your Avatar. During my workshops and play-testings, children got to see their crafting process as a digital end result. This experience has shown to be empowering to the children I worked with and goes along with the deeper message that I wanted to communicate to children as digital citizens, the message that anyone can be a digital maker and shape internet culture through digital art.