Theatrical co-design method creates mixed-reality family installations

A team of researchers (Panagiotidis, Patel, Koleva, Benford, Spence, Tennent, Martinez Avila, Cliffe) developed a mixed-reality installation for environmental sustainability through a novel co-design approach using applied theatre. Published on arXiv (2607.06754) and accepted at Creativity & Cognition 2026, the paper reports on three workshops and user testing with families across a national tour. The core challenge they tackled: habitual family roles and uneven participation, especially between adults and young children, constrain co-design. Applied theatre methods—such as playful status shifts—allowed children and adults to co-create narratives, artefacts, and interactional roles that directly shaped the public installation. The key innovation is treating the design process as a theatrical one: designers work not only with artefacts and ideas but with roles, rhythms, authority, and social conditions that support collective imagination.

This approach solves a second common problem in participatory design: the continuity gap between workshops and final deployment. Workshop relationships and embodied ways of working often don't survive into the finished product—only artefacts travel. The researchers show how selected workshop dynamics can be re-staged within a public mixed-reality installation, preserving the interactional richness that families built together. For tech professionals building collaborative AI or MR experiences, this paper offers a concrete method for designing systems that adapt to shifting social dynamics rather than imposing rigid interaction patterns. It's a reminder that the most engaging mixed-reality experiences may come not from better graphics or faster tracking, but from thoughtful choreography of human roles and rhythms.