Parallel Design: Achieving both Researchers' and Practitioners' Goals in the Design of an Interactive Learning System

Co-design has been traditionally employed as an approach to design learning technologies with stakeholders, offering tangible benefits in practice. However, this approach may sometimes struggle to adequately fulfil the objectives of both researchers and practitioners, particularly when their goals are slightly different. To address this issue, we propose Parallel Design, a bottom-up participatory design process specifically formulated to meet the objectives of both parties without compromising one for the other. Our initial efforts involved collaboration with a middle-school mathematics teacher to create interactive algebra learning software that meets his instructional needs. Simultaneously, we also pursued our research goal that could be tested in parallel with the instructional goal. This paper introduces Parallel Design as an approach to designing technology with practitioners that can advance both research and practice.