This research focuses on the co-creation process of tactile 'Design Probes' for adolescents with chronic pain. Qualitative analyses of two components:
(i) twenty-seven (27) artistic pieces created by adolescents and
(ii) eight (8) semi-structured interviews with experts are conducted.

This is intended to serve as the starting point to engender the said 'Design Probes', which would be subject to a future empirical study with chronic pain patients at a medical institution.

The study has been conceived with the learnings from a pilot study at an Austrian clinic with twenty (20) chronic pain patients presenting evidence that artistic interventions have a marked effect in improving subjective well-being and expressing physical sensations.

The artistic pieces are digital-animation short-films created by groups of students from an Austrian high school, belonging to a similar age group as the target chronic pain patients, in five (5) participatory design lessons. Twelve (12) 'ASMR'-sound compositions served as the impulse for the visualisations through character animation revealing the perception of touch.

The experts for the semi-structured interviews are from the fields of artistic research, neurology, pediatric pain medicine and youth psychology. The questions revolved of target group-specific knowledge pertaining to each expert's area of concern and existing fields of application in the respective fields.

Ten (10) students of art-pedagogy from an applied-arts university are proposed to participate in an 'Applied Design Thinking' workshop to further develop prototype 'Design Probe' patterns based on the findings of the above analyses.

The findings of this interdisciplinary co-creation process will support in actively developing 'Design Probes' through visualising and investigating the sense of touch as artistic tools for non-verbal expression to address the issue of chronic pain.

Keywords: Qualitative Analyses, Interdisciplinary Co-Creation, Design Probes, Sense of Touch, Adolescents with Chronic Pain.