Co-design of educational social games with newcomer children: a case study of arabic-speaking migrant tweens

This article addresses the problem of newcomer children’s social adjustment through the use of educational games and co-design activities. While the adjustment process has been studied broadly, there are few studies on using computer games as a solution, especially the involvement of the children in the design process. This article is based on data collected from two studies aimed at understanding newcomer children’s social adjustment needs and involving them in designing game-based solutions. In the first study and as a pre-requisite to designing any effective solution, we conducted a survey of Arabic-speaking newcomer tweens (9–12 years old), parents, and teachers to understand and contextualise the social adjustment problems the children are experiencing. In the second study, we ran a series of co-design workshops and interviews to investigate what the children learn and which game-play ideas and features they use to promote solutions to the social adjustment problems identified in the first study. Corresponding to our two studies, this article has two main contributions: (1) identifying and confirming the most pressing social adjustment problems, and (2) offering new insights on running co-design workshops with children and the features and ideas that can be used in social adjustment games for newcomer children.