title: Advancing Inclusive Paediatric Mobility Design; A Child-Centred Investigation of Voice and Narratives
Creators: name: Shaw, Cara
Publisher: name: University of Liverpool Repository
Year: 2024

description: Mobility is a significant part of daily life which impacts multiple health and quality of life outcomes, particularly for children and young people (CYP). The design of Inclusive Paediatric Mobility (IPM) interventions such as wheelchairs, walking aids and exoskeletons for CYP with mobility disabilities plays a crucial role in facilitating their mobility, and thus the design of such products carries the potential and responsibility to raise standards of living, improve childhood experiences, and ultimately optimise life trajectories. Despite this, there are a multitude of unresolved issues surrounding the design of IPM interventions, from their functionality and viability to their desirability and acceptability, which are often reflected in the lived experiences of CYP, or act as barriers for incorporating IPM into their lives. While there have been notable contributions to the development and implementation of specific interventions, the field of IPM design as a whole is characterised by a lack of cohesion and a fragmented knowledge base, scattered and siloed across disciplines. Past research has not specifically explored ‘designerly ways’ relating to IPM design and there is thus a lack of holistic understanding around what and how transitions need to happen in order to address various issues rooted in design.

This PhD research starts by undertaking an analytical and reflective process to identify issues and opportunities around the way design has been conducted in the field of IPM over the past 50 years. A ‘Reflection for Transition’ conceptual framework is developed and transitions are proposed across five dimensions of design to achieve a more desirable future state for the field. The lens of Children’s Rights is subsequently applied to prioritise two key areas within IPM design; (1) child-centred collaborations focused on ‘voice’ and (2) child-centred investigations focused on ‘narratives’. Focusing on elevating children’s voice, an interdisciplinary analytical framework is developed and used to analyse 130 young wheelchair users’ own 'dream wheelchair’ designs, and findings provide insights into their individual and collective values and requirements. Focusing on advancing the role of narratives in design, a conceptual framework and matrix is developed to capture and incorporate a diversity of narratives into a design process. This is then utilised for the first time, to analyse and categorise the mobility narratives of nine young wheelchair users to offer insights into their lived experiences. The final study in this PhD incorporates a real-world IPM design project and applies the narrative framework to map the potential roles and applications of mobility narratives from a multidisciplinary stakeholder perspective.

This thesis presents a collection of peer-reviewed published chapters (N=6) which collectively offer foundational knowledge for establishing and transitioning the IPM design field. Applying inductive and deductive theory building and testing, and through theoretical, empirical and methodological contributions around designerly ways and child-centred voice and narratives, this PhD research advances knowledge in the field of IPM design and adjacent design domains, with the aim of improving the design of IPM interventions, to ultimately optimise childhood experiences, health, and quality of life outcomes.