Introduction

Severe or chronic illness in childhood may contribute to physical and psychosocial problems later in life. Peer support among individuals who share the same experience is an important factor in promoting health and wellbeing and can act as a buffer against stress and adversities. Empirical evidence that could guide development of digital and interactive solutions for peer support between school-aged children affected by illness is limited.

Purpose/Methods

The process presented here is focused on establishing method- ology for children's participation in innovation processes and to capture the child's underlying behaviors and goals related to peer support processes and health. Focus group interview is a child-friendly method that promotes participation and access to children's perspectives, insights and experiences related to their health. Healthy children were recruited from a local elementary school. Focus groups were carried out in two sessions for each group with an interval of 1-2 weeks.

Results

Adjustments were made between each focus group to adapt the meeting structure to a level commensurate with the chil- dren's experience, age and abilities and to focus discussions on innovation incentives related to a digital peer support service. A mixture of informative and creative techniques such as open questions, brainstorming, drawing and painting and photog- raphy were used to assist the children to express themselves. The children were pleased to participate and wanted to meet again in this form of group.

Conclusions

Our adapted focus group structure are now being used with children with experience of severe illness (cancer) to develop Personas (fictitious characters of users) in the innovation pro- cess. Children's participation through our method has improved the chances of capturing children's goals and behavior, and added unique material for the continuing design process.