The study, led by Oscar Bergens, Eva Flygare Wallén, and Marlene Sandlund, brought together nine adults aged 40 to 60 with mild to moderate intellectual disability in a co-creation process spanning fifteen months. Over five two-hour workshops held at a community centre familiar to all participants, the co-creators tested a reference exercise application, critiqued its shortcomings, and progressively shaped a new digital tool for balance and muscle-strengthening exercise. The researchers then analysed the workshop discussions using the Optimised Honeycomb Model for user experience, which organises design considerations into seven facets—useful, useable, desirable, findable, accessible, credible, and valuable—grouped under three dimensions: Use, Feel, and Think.

The starting point was blunt. When the co-creators tried the existing reference application, developed previously with older adults, they found it too difficult to use. Navigation between functions was confusing, and several participants simply gave up. Their verdict, delivered in unison during the second workshop, was unambiguous: the app was too difficult. Rather than adapt the existing tool, the group concluded that a completely new solution was needed, one built from the ground up around the cognitive and sensory realities of its intended users.

The first design principle to emerge was radical simplification. The co-creators insisted on minimising the number of choices presented at any moment, limiting the home screen to just three options: exercise programmes, an exercise diary, and exercise tips. They paired this with a consistent colour scheme of green, blue, and pink, applied throughout the app so that each page carried a unique visual identifier, reducing navigation errors. Images—a person exercising, for instance—would signal where to find content, and an introductory video would explain how everything worked before users ever had to guess.

Accessibility discussions went deeper still. The co-creators, several of whom had additional impairments such as colour-blindness, poor eyesight, or limited literacy, insisted that every function be presented simultaneously through text, colour, and image, so that no single disability would block participation. They specified black text on lighter backgrounds for readability and rejected jargon such as sets and repetitions in favour of plain constructions like do x number of times. Several volunteered to help write the app’s texts themselves, reasoning that they were better equipped than professional developers to phrase instructions clearly for people like them. For timing exercises, they proposed a visual bar that slowly declines, ending with a sound cue—an elegant solution to the difficulty many adults with intellectual disability experience in perceiving time.

Usability debates centred on a genuine tension: whether users should build their own exercise programmes, which offers ownership but demands complex decisions, or follow pre-set routines, which are simpler but less flexible. The group settled on pre-set programmes available in three difficulty levels and three lengths of five, ten, and twenty minutes, each containing only three to five exercises. Ten exercises, they agreed, would simply be too many. Exercise videos, they decided, should be filmed in ordinary domestic settings such as living rooms and kitchens to convey that exercise can happen anywhere, presented one movement at a time with distinct pauses, and always in the same order when repeated. One participant criticised a commercial video that told viewers to take it at your own pace while racing ahead—a mismatch between instruction and demonstration the group was determined to avoid.

Motivation proved the most psychologically nuanced facet. Drawing on their experience with the mobile game Candy Crush Saga, the co-creators envisioned a virtual gaming world in which completing exercises advances a character and earns rewards such as badges—when I reach 10,000 steps, then I get a pink shoe, as one participant put it. Yet they were equally clear-eyed about the risks: one had abandoned Candy Crush because the reward progression was too slow, and the group flagged dangers of reward addiction, boredom, and discouragement after lapses. They therefore balanced extrinsic incentives with intrinsic ones, emphasising fun, enjoyment, and growing self-awareness of one’s own abilities. One participant described how using the reference app had taught her, after surgery left her unsteady, exactly what her balance could and could not do—a form of empowerment no badge could replicate.

Safety and credibility emerged as inseparable concerns. Because effective balance training must be sufficiently intensive to produce improvement, it inherently carries fall risk—a tension the co-creators negotiated directly. They called for instructions on safe execution, warm-up routines, and guidance on involving support staff. Trust also flowed from recognition: participants were more willing to attempt an exercise when it matched something their physiotherapist had already prescribed. Most strikingly, they wanted to be the faces of the app itself, volunteering as instructors, exercising in everyday clothing, and smiling to signal confidence in future users. Preferably ourselves, one said when asked who should demonstrate the exercises—because then it comes from us.

The Think dimension surfaced practical integration strategies. Knowing that intended users receive an overwhelming number of notifications, the co-creators specified reminders with unique sounds, verbal cues, or animations so the app’s prompts would stand out. They described highly individual exercise habits—some watching videos the night before and exercising from memory, others needing support staff to start the app—and insisted the design accommodate all of these patterns, with minimal equipment and easy-to-remember instructions. They even requested activity suggestions beyond formal programmes, such as short exercises doable while walking or waiting for a bus.

Perhaps the study’s most moving finding concerns the seventh facet, value. The co-creators spoke of feeling alienated by a society that labels them as different, talks about them rather than to them, and rarely designs services with them in mind. Building an app from their own guidance reversed that dynamic. One participant asked for a picture of the development group on the app so people can see that we are a part of this, and another insisted the front page declare this is for everyone—open not only to people with intellectual disability but to anyone seeking better balance, including language learners who benefit from simplified instructions. The researchers conclude that universal design assumptions fail this population and that involving end-users across the entire development cycle, from ideation to refinement, is essential. The co-creators themselves made the case most simply: an app that talks to them, not about them, is one they will actually use.

Subject of Research: Co-creation of a digital balance and muscle-strengthening exercise application with adults with intellectual disability

Article Title: Exploring user experience perspectives in co-creation of a balance exercise application for adults with intellectual disability: A qualitative study

Article References: Bergens, O., Flygare Wallén, E., & Sandlund, M. (2026). Exploring user experience perspectives in co-creation of a balance exercise application for adults with intellectual disability: A qualitative study. Heliyon, 12(15), Article e45563. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2026.e45563

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2026.e45563

Keywords: intellectual disability, co-creation, user experience, balance training, exercise application, digital health, accessibility, fall prevention, physical activity, qualitative research, inclusive design, Honeycomb Model

The research, conducted by Anika Stoffel, Johanna Linimayr, and Christina Schulze of the Zurich University of Applied Sciences, surveyed 35 parents of children aged 4 to 7 with a confirmed diagnosis of developmental coordination disorder, commonly abbreviated as DCD. Families lived across eight regions of German-speaking Switzerland and Liechtenstein, and each parent evaluated the playground their child used most frequently. The children, whose average age was 6.0 years, were predominantly boys, and more than half showed impairments in gross motor function. Eight parents reported common comorbidities, including attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, learning disability, Tourette syndrome, and vestibular disorder, reflecting the broader clinical reality that DCD rarely appears in isolation.

The study’s conceptual backbone is a framework of occupational wellbeing developed by Saraswati and colleagues, which breaks a child’s experience of meaningful activity into five domains: competence, autonomy, contentment and pleasure, identity, and belonging. In playground terms, competence means mastering the climb up a lookout tower or balancing across a beam; autonomy means freely choosing what and with whom to play; contentment describes the deep immersion of uninterrupted play; identity reflects a child’s sense of self built on strengths and interests; and belonging captures the experience of connecting with peers. The researchers paired this wellbeing framework with the concept of usability, defined as the ability to navigate and interact with an environment on comparable terms with others, always from the user’s own perspective rather than against official design standards.

Because no existing German-language instrument could capture both constructs, the team built a custom questionnaire, refining it through panels of researchers, occupational therapists, and mothers of young children. Parents rated statements on five-point Likert scales covering everything from sensory stimulation to equipment accessibility, and they added open-ended comments at the end. The data were analyzed descriptively using SPSS, an approach the authors acknowledge was appropriate given the small, exploratory sample. Recruitment ran through 120 pediatric occupational therapy practices, of which 23 agreed to distribute survey materials, with an extension through a Swiss parent counseling organization’s social media channels after the initial four-week window produced too few responses.

The headline finding is unambiguous: parents overwhelmingly value playgrounds. Ninety-four percent agreed or strongly agreed that the playground is an important and valuable play area for their child, and 88 percent endorsed the idea that playgrounds should stimulate multiple senses. Eighty-three percent agreed that diverse children can play according to their own abilities, and 80 percent said versatile equipment that can be used in many ways helps their child. Most families lived within a kilometer of their favorite playground, children spent an average of 72 minutes per visit, and 77 percent of the playgrounds were rated attractive or very attractive. On the surface, the person-environment fit appears remarkably good.

Beneath that positive surface, however, the wellbeing data tell a more complicated story. While autonomy scored high, with a median of 4.5, and contentment and pleasure reached a median of 4, with 89 percent of parents reporting their child has fun almost always or often, the domain of competence exposed the sharpest limitations. Only 34 percent of parents said their child frequently seeks out motor challenges, and exactly half reported that their child could not consistently master playground risks without help. The activities children most wanted to do, climbing (66 percent) and swinging (54 percent), were precisely the activities most often restricted: 54 percent of parents said balancing was difficult, 42 percent flagged climbing, 38 percent monkey bars, and 32 percent swinging. In other words, the very equipment that draws children to playgrounds is where children with DCD hit a wall.

This contradiction between desire and capability carries real clinical weight. Children with DCD are already at elevated risk of anxiety, depression, low self-efficacy, and poor quality of life, and repeated experiences of failure in a public, peer-visible setting can reinforce motor anxiety and learned helplessness. At the same time, risky play is a documented motivator for physical activity and health. The authors argue that playgrounds must therefore strike a delicate balance: offering graduated challenges that invite children to take the next step in mastering motor skills at different levels, without excluding those who are not yet ready. Equipment with multiple difficulty levels, generous handrails, wide platforms, and surfaces that remain safe in all weather emerged from parents’ comments as concrete design priorities.

The domain of belonging showed similarly mixed results. Seventy-one percent of parents said their child could play easily with other children, and the overall belonging score reached a median of 4. Yet responses about positive affirmation from peers spanned the full range from 1 to 5, and among the five children who faced social difficulties, outright social isolation was reported in two cases. Qualitative comments emphasized that keeping up with peers was the key to inclusion in parents’ eyes. The authors note this is more optimistic than earlier studies describing solitary play tendencies in DCD, but they caution that subtle peer dynamics may still reinforce isolation in children already vulnerable to negative self-appraisal. They also raise an intriguing possibility: children may be quietly adapting their own play styles and creating their own places on the playground in ways parents cannot observe, meaning some of the apparent fit may reflect children’s hidden agency rather than genuinely inclusive design.

The study has clear limitations. The self-developed questionnaire was not statistically validated, the sample of 35 is small and purposively recruited, potentially overrepresenting highly engaged parents, and there was no comparison group of typically developing children. Crucially, the children’s own voices are absent; parents served as proxy informants, and prior research suggests adult perceptions of children’s play choices may diverge from children’s lived experiences. The authors call for future work incorporating direct child reports, observational data, and universal design principles to build playgrounds that work for all children from the outset.

Even so, the implications are immediate. For occupational therapists, parents are valuable informants when evaluating a child’s competence and wellbeing in natural settings, and the five-domain framework offers a structured lens for tailoring interventions to playground participation. For planners and communities, the message is that accessibility is not just about ramps for wheelchairs; it is about whether a child with coordination difficulties can climb, swing, and balance alongside friends without help. Playgrounds, the study concludes, are genuinely important places where children with DCD experience autonomy, joy, and connection, but realizing their full inclusive potential will require design that treats the full spectrum of motor ability as a core requirement rather than an afterthought.

Subject of Research: Playground usability and occupational wellbeing in children with developmental coordination disorder

Article Title: Occupational wellbeing on playgrounds: Parents’ views on children with coordination disorder

Article References: Stoffel, A., Linimayr, J., & Schulze, C. (2025). Occupational wellbeing on playgrounds: Parents’ views on children with coordination disorder. Scandinavian Journal of Occupational Therapy, 32(1), Article 2526417. https://doi.org/10.1080/11038128.2025.2526417

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1080/11038128.2025.2526417

Keywords: developmental coordination disorder, playgrounds, occupational wellbeing, inclusive design, parent perspectives, child development, motor skills, occupational therapy, usability, social participation, Switzerland, pediatric health

The review arrives at a moment of extraordinary turbulence for education systems worldwide. Since the explosion of generative AI tools such as ChatGPT, debates about academic integrity have dominated institutional agendas, from universities drafting new assessment policies to examination boards in West Africa catching candidates who used AI to answer exam questions in the 2023 WASSCE tests. Yet the authors argue that the fixation on cheating misses a far more structural problem: the very architecture of educational AI reflects the economic, infrastructural, and epistemic conditions of the wealthy countries that build it, and is being deployed into contexts radically unprepared to interrogate it.

Technically, the problem begins with data and infrastructure. Large language models and adaptive learning platforms are trained on corpora dominated by English and a handful of other high-resource languages, embedding the cultural assumptions of their training data into what appears to be neutral technology. Low-resource languages, including many spoken across Africa and Southeast Asia, are poorly represented, which means generative tools perform worse for learners who most need affordable educational support. The review notes that linguistic challenges in generative AI translate directly into pedagogical disadvantage, because students are often forced to learn through the linguistic and cultural frames of former colonial powers rather than their own.

Infrastructure compounds the linguistic gap. AI-powered education presumes reliable electricity, broadband connectivity, modern devices, and institutional technical capacity. The differential levels of economic development, digital infrastructure, cultural norms, and technological capacity across countries mean that the integration and impact of AI in education vary enormously between systems. In urban centers of the Global North, AI tutoring is layered onto already well-resourced classrooms. In rural communities of sub-Saharan Africa or Southeast Asia, even accessing a digital platform can be impossible, so the technology widens rather than narrows existing divides. The review characterizes this as a mechanism through which AI deepens the processes of educational inequality rather than resolving them.

The authors ground their analysis in the intellectual tradition of critical social theory, drawing on thinkers such as Herbert Marcuse, whose critique of one-dimensional society warned that advanced technology can suppress critical consciousness, and Pierre Bourdieu, whose concepts of cultural capital illuminate how dominant groups convert their advantages into seemingly meritocratic success. Viewed through this lens, educational AI is not a neutral delivery mechanism but a cultural artifact that carries the values, priorities, and worldviews of its creators. When a curriculum platform decides what counts as knowledge, which language is standard, and which forms of reasoning are rewarded, it exercises a form of power that students and teachers rarely see, let alone contest.

This invisibility is precisely what makes algorithmic systems so potent in educational settings. Black-box models, the review observes, are increasingly shaping decisions about admission, assessment, and learner support without transparent accountability. Prior research on algorithmic injustice has documented how commercial systems can exhibit accuracy disparities against marginalized groups, and the review extends that concern to classrooms: when biased systems mediate learning, they do not merely make errors, they systematically misrecognize certain categories of students. The danger, in the critical theoretical framing, is a new one-dimensionalism in which students learn to work with machines they cannot question, and educators become facilitators of opaque systems rather than agents of critical pedagogy.

The review also confronts what it identifies as colonial legacies embedded in technological innovation. Concepts such as cognitive imperialism and the cognitive empire describe how dominant knowledge systems marginalize indigenous epistemologies, and the authors argue that AI risk reproducing this pattern at unprecedented scale. Global AI governance conversations, they note, remain dominated by wealthy nations and multinational corporations, while African voices, values, ethics, and worldviews are largely absent. Referencing the African Ubuntu perspective, which emphasizes communal personhood and relational ethics, the review contends that alternative ethical frameworks are not merely cultural curiosities but substantive resources for rethinking how educational AI should be designed, governed, and evaluated.

The empirical picture assembled across the reviewed literature is sobering. Studies of AI deployments in Africa document persistent barriers of cost, connectivity, and policy capacity. Research from India highlights both the promise and the difficulty of AI in inclusive education. Analyses of government AI readiness across Latin America and the Caribbean, and of digital inequality between urban and rural communities in Southeast Asia, reveal the same structural asymmetry: AI readiness correlates strongly with existing wealth. Meanwhile, the hype surrounding AI in education and development often outruns the evidence, with discursive enthusiasm obscuring the material conditions required for meaningful implementation. The review’s synthesis suggests that AI in education currently follows the contours of global power rather than correcting them.

Yet the paper is not a rejection of educational technology. The authors explicitly acknowledge that AI offers genuine opportunities for teaching and learning, and their concern is not the technology itself but the conditions of its design and deployment. Their central recommendation is that AI developers adopt inclusive design from the very start of the application lifecycle, ensuring that educational tools are accessible, adaptable, and affordable to the economies of the Global South. That means designing for low-bandwidth environments, supporting low-resource languages, involving local educators and students in development, and pricing models that do not exclude the majority of the world’s learners. It also means building AI literacy among teachers and students so that users can critically evaluate rather than passively consume algorithmic outputs.

The review’s most pointed conclusion is political: Africa and other developing countries must not merely be sites of AI deployment but key actors in shaping the educational futures these technologies enable. Incorporating African expertise into global AI governance, the authors argue, is essential to confronting colonial legacies in technological innovation and ensuring that AI advances democratic empowerment rather than digital dependency. In an era when governments, universities, and technology firms are racing to embed AI into every layer of education, the study offers a timely corrective: the question is not only whether AI can improve learning, but who decides what it improves, whose knowledge it carries, and whose futures it shapes. The answers, the researchers insist, must include the billions of learners the technology claims to serve.

Subject of Research: The negative social impacts of artificial intelligence in education, including inequality, power relations, and cultural marginalization, analyzed through critical social theory

Article Title: A Systematic Review of the Dark Side of AI in Education: A Critical Social Theory Perspective

Article References: Adu, K. K., & Owusu-Agyeman, Y. (2026). A Systematic Review of the Dark Side of AI in Education: A Critical Social Theory Perspective. Frontiers of Digital Education, 3(2), Article 10. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44366-026-0084-0

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s44366-026-0084-0

Keywords: artificial intelligence, education, Global South, digital inequality, critical social theory, AI governance, academic integrity, Africa, generative AI, digital dependency, algorithmic bias, inclusive design