The Dress-Up-Doll Experiment: Codesign with children as a way of drifting into the world of play and exceeding your research question

This paper argues for play experiments as a method for promoting children’s participation in research and acknowledges their meaning-making and knowledge. The paper is based on two dress-up doll codesign experiments with children. We draw on the perspectives of play order and play practices together with Schön’s concept of ‘on-the-spot experiments’ and his ideas of naming and framing in a process of selecting ‘things’ to attend to. From this position, we discuss drifting in design research with children. To enhance children’s knowledge in design research, this paper suggests extending an existing typology of design experiments to include a sixth typology, namely the ‘exceeding typology’, which can be described by the keywords ‘transboundary’, ‘transcendent’, and ‘extending’. The main contribution is showing how children’s play knowledge can contribute to core meaning-making through codesign experiments in ways that challenge and transcend adults’ expertise. By pointing at play as an open space for meaning-making where children’s expertise rules, we demonstrate the value of play experiments in design research in general.