Readings

=Week 7 | Feb. 15 = Identification and playful design methods (DARIA) Gaver, B., Dunne, T., and Pacenti, E. (1999). Design: Cultural probes. Interactions. 6 (1): 21-29. Available online at: http://simplelink.library.utoronto.ca/url.cfm/53098

SUMMARY: Smith, K. L., McPhail, B., Ferenbok, J., Tichine, A., & Clement, A. (2011). Playing with surveillance: The design of a mock RFID-based identification infrastructure for public engagement. Surveillance & Society. Available online at: http://library.queensu.ca/ojs/index.php/surveillance-and-society/article/view/playingKensing, F. & Blomberg, J. (1998) Participatory Design: Issues and Concerns. Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW): 7 (3-4), pg. 167-185. Available (MOHAMMED)
 * The article describes a research project that aims to discover new interaction techniques to increase the presence of the elderly in their local communities
 * The researchers conduct their study using cultural probes in different cultures and countries: packages of maps, postcards, and other materials, which are designed to provoke inspirational responses from elderly people in diverse communities. Researchers left these probes to the elderly and waited for them to return fragmentary data over time.
 * The probes were part of a strategy of pursuing experimental design in a responsive way. They address a common dilemma in developing projects for unfamiliar groups.
 * it was necessary for researchers to understand the local cultures so that their designs wouldn't seem irrelevant or arrogant, but they didn't want the groups to constrain their designs unduly by focusing on needs or desires they already understood. They wanted to lead a discussion with the groups toward unexpected ideas, but they didn't want to dominate it.
 * their cultural probes included:
 * postcards that had images on the front and questions on the back such as (tell us a piece of advice or insight that has been important to you, what place does art have in your life, etc). The questions concerned the elders' attitudes towards their lives, cultural environments and technology. Researchers used oblique wording and evocative images to open a space of possibilities, allowing the elders as much "room" to respond as possible. Postcards allow for an informal and friendly mode of communication
 * maps that inquired about the elders' attitudes toward their environment. They had straightforward and poetic requests on them such as where they would go to meet people, where they would go to be alone, where they like to daydream and where they would like to go but can't.
 * each probe include a imposable camera that had a list of requested pictures such as their house, what they will wear today, something desirable, etc.
 * last probe was a photo album and a media diary, requested elders to take a few pictures to tell a story. In a media diary, elders were asked to record their TV and radio use.
 * the project itself was relatively unconstrained, defined only in terms of its overall goal and its flow over time
 * The research into new technologies is approached from the traditions of artists-designers rather than the more typical science- and engineering-based approaches. Not a lot of emphasis on precise analyses or carefully controlled methodologies; instead, a lot of concentration on aesthetic control, the cultural implications of the designs, and ways to open new spaces for design.
 * **Goal: instead of designing solutions for user needs, they work to provide opportunities to discover new pleasures, new forms of sociability, and new cultural forms.Trying to shift current perceptions of tehcnology functionally, aesthetically, cutlurally, and even policitically.**
 * elders represent a lifetime of experiences and knowledge, often deeply embedded in their local communities. this could be an invaluable resource to the younger member of their community.

3 people, 3 readings :)

 Put your name next to the reading you will do


 * __Summary of Participatory Design: Issues and Concerns.__** __Article by F.kensing and J.blomberg (Mobolade)__

Participatory Design is a maturing ﬁeld of research and an evolving practice among design professionals. PD researchers explore conditions for user participation in the design and introduction of computer-based systems at work. The ﬁrst international PD conference was held in Seattle in 1990 and since then PD conferences have been held in the United States every second year. These biennial conferences were preceded by conferences in Europe that focused on worker participation in technology design. PD conferences have attracted researchers concerned with a more human, creative, and effective relationship between those involved in technology’s design and its use, and in that way between technology and the human activities that provide technological systems with their reason for being”

Three main issues dealt with by PD researchers

i) The politics of design;

ii) the nature of participation

iii) the methods, tools, and techniques used in PD

3 issues involved in relation to the primary recipient group for participatory design.

Arena A: The individual project arena where specific systems are designed and new organizational forms are created (ibid: 195).

2. Arena B: The company arena where “breakdowns” or violations of agreements are diagnosed and hitherto stable patterns of organizational functioning questioned and redesigned (ibid: 196).

3. Arena C: The national arena where the general legal and political framework is negotiated which deﬁnes the relations between the various industrial partners and sets norms for a whole range of work-related issue

This strategy to rebalance the power of workers and management was ﬁrst experimented with in Norway. The pioneering work of Nygaard and his associates in the NJMF project (Nygaard, 1979) was the foundation upon which later PD projects, the Swedish DEMOS project (Ehn and Sanberg, 1979) and the Danish DUE project (Kyng and Mathiassen, 1982), were launched. The strategy included a research agenda in which researchers and local trade unions explored the potential and actual consequences of introducing speciﬁc computer-based systems into the workplace (Arena A) and developed goals and strategies for workers and their unions to pursue in relation to management’s technological initiatives (Arena B).

Finally, they helped formulate and advocate the adoption of laws and agreements concerning union rights in relation to the introduction of computer based systems (Arena C)

Three basic requirements for participation

1) Access to relevant information

2) The possibility for taking an independent position for the problems

3) Participation in decision making

4) The availability of appropriate participatory development methods

5) Room for alternative technical and/or organizational agreements

Participatory design projects have varied with respect to how and why workers have participated. At one end of the spectrum, worker participation is limited to providing designers with access to workers’ skills and experiences. The workers have little or no control over the design process or its outcome. Here projects are initiated at the behest of managers or design professionals. Workers are asked to participate in those aspects of the project where their input is viewed as valuable (e.g. description of current work practices and testing/evaluation of technology) but left out of most technology-related decisions.

//Methods//

Developing a single participatory design method has not been the aim of PD researchers. However, some groups have systematically organized their design practices into a coherent ensemble of tools and techniques. For example, Grønbæk et al. (1997) offer an approach, Cooperative Experimental Systems Development (CESD) that is characterized by its focus on active user involvement throughout the entire development process; prototyping experiments closely coupled to work situations and use scenarios; transforming results from early cooperative analysis/design to targeted object-oriented design, speciﬁcation, and realization; and design for tailorability” (ibid: 201). Beyer and Holtzblatt (1997) have introduced a customer-centered approach called Contextual Design that focuses on early design activities. Potential users and other organizational members are interviewed while they work to provide input to the product deﬁnition process

//Political change//

PD is not deﬁned by the type of work supported, nor by the technologies developed, but instead by a commitment to worker participation in design and an effort to rebalance the power relations between users and technical experts and between workers and managers

Article : [] (Mohammed) From Small Scale to Large Scale User Participation: A Case Study of Participatory Design in E-government Systems

Summary: StakeHolders in Participatory Design : The end user of the services (client). This is a heterogeneous class in terms of age, gender, family status, main activity, education, language skills, nationality, country of destination, etc.

- The end user as citizen with political opinions about mobility, migration, international cooperation, and about technology, security, privacy and trust in e-government systems.

- The clerk using the new systems in changed work arrangements.

- The administrative management responsible for the way the services are organized and operated. As more services could be implemented on one smart card, this group may be heterogeneous too.

- Technical management, involved in shaping the technical infrastructure, and the coupling of heterogeneous databases and protocols.

- The strategic management and politicians, engaged in the legal and political deliberations about regulations and their translation into administrative procedures. Also this is a heterogeneous group, as visions and interests may differ, depending on the political point of view, the administrative sector involved, and depending on their position in the governmental system (local or national).

- The producers/and providers of the website.

- Other parties that may use the service, such as providers of other public or private services.

Article – PARTICIPATORY DESIGN - [] (Mobolade)


 * The information in this article could be used to showcase how PD faces problems in situations where computer systems are being developed. Non technically inclined people who might not be able to communicate properly with the developers even though might be the end-users.**

[Initially, the goal of Participatory Design was to shift the stance of technology from one which inherently favored management and entrenched power structures to one which favored and worked with the workers. Given the theory's avowedly political beginnings, a good question to keep in mind as we continue to think about participatory is whether or not it has kept its ideological commitment to the democratization of technology since its conception. In order to be called "participatory design," must a project undertake the political goals of the theory's founders? Is this political stance what is necessary to differentiate it from other theories of co-design? We'll start with a review of the design processes of the VozMob project. VozMob is a joint project by the University of Southern California and the Center for Popular Education to build a mobile blogging platform to serve immigrant workers in southern California ([]). VozMob's participatory design philosophy was itself heavily informed by the popular education movement, which emphasizes horizontal communication structures and the co-production of knowledge over top-down structures. Melissa Brough, Charlottle Lapsansky, Carmen Gonzalez, and Francois Bar examined the design processes used in the development of the project and how they were received by the community partners in their paper, "Participatory Design of Mobile Platforms for Social Justice? Learning from the Case of Mobile Voices" The central priorities of the VozMob participatory design process were to foster a sense of ownership over the platform amongst the community partners, enable those community partners to exert control over the platform, and encourage participation by the community in the design process and the resultant blogging community. The VozMob project incorporated a core group of 8 community members into the design process. These individuals attended weekly meetings and later acted as facilitators, bringing other members of the community into the projects as it grew. These community members were able to actively engage in iterative design processes as they occurred in face to face meetings, but their participation in many of the computer-mediated processes was hampered by issues of access and different knowledge and skills levels. As a result, it was difficult for community members to communicate directly with the platform developers. The lack of control they felt over the technological aspects of the project, however, was balanced by a strong sense of control over the graphical aspects of the project, both in its web form and printed distribution platform (a printed newspaper incorporating the blog content) ]


 * Issues brought to the for by the VozMob case study are the problems of mediating across skill and knowledge differentials and the need for facilitators to bridge that divide. The authors also bring into their analysis the question of the relationship between "appropriation" practices and participatory design practices.**


 * Article – [|PARTICIPATORY DESIGN Who’s the designer in PD?] - [] (Mobolade)**

Industrial designers, of which I am one, make use of PD methodologies in order to understand and cater for complex social-technical interactions, and more recently, the method has been used to facilitate fluid design. Such an approach is evident when trained designers create a product’s essential ‘building blocks’, and which are then in turn, assembled and modified by untrained designers into complex products that suit their individual application. The Zimbabwe Bush Pump is an example of fluid design within a PD framework, and places an emphasis on acknowledging and using existing community rituals and traditions to, for example, identify the location of the pump and physically install it (de Laet & Mol, 2000, p. 42).