Participant Observation to Apply an Empirical Method of Codesign with Children

Abstract

Dental anxiety in children is a well-documented problem in the scienti c literature. Tools mediated by Information Technology have been shown to positively in uence children’s mood based on distraction as well as relaxing activities. We propose an empirical method of codesign with children to generate app content for reducing dental anxiety. e results are embedded in text through a thick description as an ethnographic technique. e method was applied to 163 children (6–8 years old) from a summer school and a primary school, obtaining multimedia products that were integrated into an app prototype. Finally, although this use case of the presented method is applied to the health eld, it can be transferred to any other eld of application of codesign to children by using material that is speci c to new scenarios.