Applying children’s rights to digital products: exploring competing priorities in design

Despite efforts to promote children's rights in digital environments, a gap remains between principles and practice. To understand this gap and identify possible solutions, we examine whether and how designers embed children's rights when developing digital products and services. Using the child-rights-informed Playful by Design' (PbD) principles and associated card pack as discussion probes in workshops with 30 designers from diverse companies, we identify designers' understanding of children's rights, their workplace requirements for implementing these, and competing professional and commercial priorities faced in designing for children's play. Findings reveal the challenges of embedding rights-based principles, themselves building on theories of child development, in product design. Designers may believe that children's rights are sufficiently realised by protecting children from risk, without ensuring their rights to provision and participation. Further, given the competing demands of commercial design settings, designers require a compelling rationale for and a practical means of implementing children's rights.