Pushing political, cultural, and geographical boundaries: Distributed co-design with children from Namibia, Malaysia and Finland

Previous research and initiatives in participatory design (PD) with children has focused on co-located participation, leaving a paucity in theoretical and empirical work on geographically distributed on-line co-design with children. This gap presents a unique opportunity for children across the globe to become co-designers of their own digital inclusive learning environment. From a political perspective we strive for a pluriversal design of a hybrid distributed participatory design space using a transcultural approach. Thus in this paper we literally push boundaries in PD as (1) we reflect on two exploratory studies where we engaged children from Finland together with ”underrepresented children in PD”, namely from Namibia and Malaysia, thereby contributing to pluriversality; (2) we expand the concept of transcultural competencies in digital design inspired through co-designing with mixed groups of children from different geographical locations; (3) we raise practical issues requiring attention and further research, namely team building considering goals, social relations, skills and roles of participating children, facilitation goals and challenges, and technologies to enable conducive geographically distributed co-design.