Participatory Design Practices Research Articles

Participatory design as an instrument in designing functionally and technically complex buildings

ABSTRACT This paper explores the practice of participatory design (PD) in the process of designing functionally and technically complex buildings, exemplified through the case study of the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences in Pristina (Kosovo), a building that conducts and promotes scientific discoveries. Functional complexity refers to the number and diversity of functions the building needs to accommodate, while technical complexity refers to the degree of sophistication and intricacy in the building's systems and components. Participatory design can be a valuable design approach in designing complex buildings. The case of the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences in Pristina (Kosovo) is an example of how PD can be transformed into an instrument of understanding the complexity of the building by promoting a user-focused design approach and helping in designing the tools of involvement depending on the goals to be achieved. Briefing workshop, design game and choice catalogue were methods that were used while a variety of tools were designed during the design stages; some were adaptations of existing PD tools and others were designed especially for this case. The participants included a diverse ‘multiple community’ of stakeholders, comprising end users (students, professors and administrative staff), strategic partners (client, investor, project manager and executives) as well as the technical working group (engineers and technical experts). The results demonstrate PD’s transformative potential into a structured instrument for understanding, analysing and preventing mistakes in the design of complex buildings.

Trusting Intelligent Automation in Expert Work: Accounting Practitioners’ Experiences and Perceptions

AbstractAI-based applications are increasingly used in knowledge-intensive expert work, which has led to a discussion regarding their trustworthiness, i.e., to which degree these applications are ethical and reliable. While trust in technology is an important aspect of using and accepting novel information systems, little is known about domain experts’ trust in machine learning systems in their work. To provide a real-life, empirical perspective on the topic, this study reports findings from an interview study of accounting practitioners’ (N = 9) trust in intelligent automation in their work. The findings underline the holistic nature of trust, suggesting that contextual and social aspects, such as participatory design practices, shape domain experts’ trust in intelligent automation. For instance, the participants emphasize their contribution to product development and open communication with the system developers. In addition, the findings shed light on the characteristics of domain experts as technology users, such as the necessity of situation-specific expert knowledge when evaluating the systems’ reliability. Thus, our findings suggest that trust in intelligent automation manifests at different levels, both in human-AI interaction and interpersonal communication and collaboration. This research contributes to the existing literature on trust in technology, especially AI-powered applications, by providing insights into trust in intelligent automation in expert work.

Neuro-adaptive architecture: Buildings and city design that respond to human emotions, cognitive states

Neuro-adaptive architecture has emerged as an interdisciplinary field aiming to cultivate buildings and urban environments responsive to human emotions, cognition, and well-being. Technological advances now enable unprecedented monitoring of occupants' psychological states through unobtrusive sensors, as well as adaptive modulation of environments via “smart” architectural components. If developed responsibly, these advancements hold great potential to optimize human experience and flourishing within the built milieu. However, they also present complex ethical challenges regarding privacy, consent, data security, globalization and equitable access that require thoughtful consideration. This paper provides a comprehensive review and synthesis of the opportunities and dilemmas at the nexus of neuroscience, architecture, and urban planning. Drawing from research worldwide, it examines the multidimensional issues involved and strategies for addressing them through participatory and empathic design practices. Case studies of experimental neuro-adaptive projects are discussed and recommendations provided for longitudinal evaluation of impacts on health, social outcomes, and well-being. Concepts such as cognitive ergonomics, sensory perception and emotional design, restorative urbanism, and adaptive living interfaces are explored through diverse methodologies and design hypotheses are provided for future interdisciplinary collaboration. Overall, this paper argues that responsibly optimized neuro-adaptive architecture could enhance human thriving in complex urban environments, but precautions are necessary to avoid risks to autonomy, equity or unintended consequences. Continued rigorous interdisciplinary work is imperative to navigate these opportunities and challenges, with consideration of technical, social and ethical implications at individual and societal levels.

Future newspapers as a participatory design tool for Chinese rural service innovation

This paper presents a process called Future Newspapers, which aims to advance Participatory Design (PD) practices in rural China. The study draws on a service design project in a Chinese village to develop new revitalization strategies. In the project, 57 villagers organized into five social groups representing various backgrounds created five sets of future news reports of their village in the People’s Daily in 2030. The results show that the characteristics of newspaper journalism align with key service design principles, rendering Future Newspapers a distinctive PD tool. This tool could provide a framework for participants to develop and evaluate concepts for service and strategic innovation, even if they have no prior design knowledge. Moreover, it enables designers to establish a common language with the public sector. In essence, the paper highlights the role of Future Newspapers in facilitating inclusive and efficient service innovation and development of Chinese villages.

Co-Creating News Oases in Media Deserts

The Media Deserts Project is a research effort to map and model the changing media landscape in the United States. Media deserts are defined as geographies lacking fresh, daily news and information. Using circulation data of US print newspapers, emerging hyperlocal online news sites in digital networks, and broadband access data from the Federal Communication Commission, the Media Deserts Project maps these changes using geographic information systems down to the zip code level, making visible local communication systems and gaps. To develop community-centered news and information solutions, this research team used community-based research practices, where students engaged with residents, local business leaders, health, education, and other administrators to examine the communication needs of three specific communities in Southeast Ohio. We centered our efforts on building relationships with community members and designing localized media tools. We learned key insights that we believe may travel well into other projects using community-based engagement, participatory design, and co-creation practices.

Application Practice of Student-centered Participatory Hybrid Teaching Design in Basic Computer Courses

Various online platforms in various forms provide learners with rich and diverse knowledge resources. This article explores student-centered participatory teaching design and application practice. This article is based on the application of learning platform and Tencent Conference and other software in the teaching practice of basic computer courses, and constructs and implements the 4F dynamic guided reflection method based on the BOPPPS teaching model. Mixed teaching model, practical application of teaching activity design analyzes the student- centered participatory teaching model based on the BOPPPS teaching model combined with the 4F dynamic guidance and reflection method, which can not only achieve people-oriented and truly participatory teaching, but also touch students ' emotions. Subjective initiative, always use problem-oriented teaching methods to guide learners to explore, and cultivate students' active participatory learning teaching model design and application practice.

Receipts and Receipts NB

This paper reports on two iterations of our ongoing Receipts project. The project serves as a means to experiment with and propose processes that use social practice and machine learning technologies to prepare testimonies and listeners to more clearly and impactfully speak, hear, and feel what it is like to respond to mimetic trauma and be part of an equity-deserving group in public space. The work is guided by the following question: How can the process of facilitating the preparation and presention of anonymized testimonies of discriminatory aggression in public spaces with the witnesses and victims of said agressions create structures of accountability, solidarity, healing, and community? The first project, Receipts (2020), was presented as part of The Bentway’s Safe in Public Space program in Toronto, and addressed anti-Asian aggression in public spaces. The second project, Receipts NB, in collaboration with ArtFix, an organization that works with artists with substance abuse and mental health lived experience in North Bay, will address the stigmatization and isolation of this community during the pandemic. It will be presented as part of IceFollies 2023, a week-long public art festival on frozen Lake Nipissing. These explorations emerge from and reflect upon a theoretical framework that connects visual culture, data creation, visual perception, cognition, machine learning processes, human-computer interaction, social practice and a practice-based framework for research-creation. The work is also informed by an approach to technoscience that uses a critical race, feminist, and decolonial lens. A necessary component of this framework is to prioritize equity through an emphasis on critical pedagogy, co-creation, and participatory art and design practice. The critical media art practices and processes of Receipts do not aim to replace identifying video as an important means of holding people accountable. Instead, we hope that the project can shape technical, social, cultural practices of testimony and listening and make collectivized community resistance resonate more deeply. We also reflect on how computer vision and artificial intelligence tools increasingly deployed as part of “smart city” infrastructures have been proposed as a means to address these issues in real time by predicting, identifying, and aggregating transgressions. Yet, in practice, these tools lack nuance, approximate and automate-out the importance of relationship building with communities, and have generally been used to identify patterns and build predictive surveillance that disproportionately disadvantages already discriminated-against groups. We hope that Receipts can serve as an example of how to engage the potentials of urban technology while also highlighting some of its pitfalls.

Participatory design practice, event (s) and the activation of public space

ABSTRACT Festivals and events make use of public space (s) as sites for people to gather in, or process through. In urban planning and design the activation and curation of flexible public spaces which enliven places has gained prominence. On one level, programming public space is eventified to make spaces more interesting and convivial. On the other, the process of participatory design is mediated through “events” that seek to disrupt conventional planning techniques and attract participation from a broader cross section of the community. In this paper, we bring together thinking from urban design and critical event studies to explore two live public space design projects that draw on the event concept in both described forms. Our findings demonstrate that the event format loosens social and spatial relations, opening possibilities for new configurations of public space that would otherwise have been difficult to envisage and realise. Second, we contend that facilitating planning and design processes through the lens of events helps involve a wider set of public(s) to participate and can also make the resultant public space itself more attractive for diverse range of users and uses.

Food markets as circular digital hubs: Prototyping enabling ICT solutions for urban food systems

The challenges posed by the environmental sustainability and circular transition of food chains increasingly see the emergence of practices that link strategies and policies to territorial pilot projects that connect physical and digital infrastructures. This aspect is particularly evident in the change of urban production–transformation–distribution–consumption models. They are the basis of a complex system that influences individual and collective behaviours, life within neighbourhoods and the intertwining of incoming and outgoing food flows as the waste flow. The article will discuss the insight emerging from REFLOW, an EU H2020-funded project. It runs from June 2019 to May 2022, aiming to build an integrated approach for developing new participatory design and co-design practices dedicated to innovative and circular urban metabolisms to promote circular solutions capable of bringing environmental, social and economic benefits. In particular, the Milan Pilot involves the municipality of Milan, local makerspaces and FabLabs, agri-food enterprises and other local stakeholders. They collectively worked on municipal food markets to upgrade them into circularity hubs. The Milan Pilot – named ‘Food Market 4.0’ – concerns the design and prototyping of three product–service systems solutions to increase the circularity of the municipal covered markets and their offer service related to agri-food products. The solutions implemented are linked to a data layer that will be the basis of a city-wide renewal process of the 22 other ones. The prototypes could represent some of the building blocks of the datafication of the food distribution metabolisms and the start of a new interactive process of selling connected with other possible service offers.

Whom do we include and when? participatory design with vulnerable groups

ABSTRACT This article makes three contributions to participatory design (PD) research and practice with vulnerable groups: 1) a framework for understanding stakeholder engagement over the course of a PD project; 2) approaches to making user engagement and PD activities more inclusive; and 3) an analysis of how the design and power dynamics of PD projects affect vulnerable groups’ participation. A map of engagement is developed to evaluate stakeholder involvement from initial problem definition to design outcome. The map is applied to three projects aimed at increasing inclusion of vulnerable groups in the planning of public sector services. The first looks at codesign activities to support decision-making in the context of intellectual disabilities; the second looks at culturally diverse youth navigating crisis without adequate assistance from public services; and the third examines nursing students adapting to work in the health sector without accommodations for learning disabilities. Comparing the projects reveals patterns in project planning and execution, and in stakeholder relationships. The article analyses how users are defined, engaged and supported in PD; how proxies shape vulnerable groups’ involvement and PD projects as a whole; and opportunities for greater inclusion when the entire PD project is taken into account.

Practice and reflection of participatory design in tableware design for the elderly.

In the past, the designers used to dominate and conduct user-centered design and research. The findings of such surveys might not reflect the user needs and produce the best design solutions. This project aimed to use PD to introduce the design curriculum to break through the previous user-centered design thinking, as the designer and the user design together, with the user given the right to lead the entire design process. The theme of this research design is tableware;55 students and 11 elderly (over the age of 65) were invited to participate in this study. Questionnaires divided into the beginning, middle and final stages tested the teaching effectiveness of PD. The results showed that PD effectively improves five points: (1) design concepts and attitudes, (2) design methods, (3) problem solving and communication skills, (4) implementing design concepts, and (5) responding to the variety of user needs. This PD teaching model employs a well-established practical process to form an effective teaching routine, which is expected to be universally applied to other related design courses.

Democratic Design Through Play

Abstract The theoretical paper explores the question how designers and children can interact as peer citizens in participatory design (PD) processes. By discussing and integrating Mouritsen’s (2002) concept of child culture, approaches to child-citizenship and concepts of free play, we discuss how participatory design practices could stimulate child and adult cultures to permeate each other and by doing so, enable democratic interactions. Both children and adults are required to step away from their internalized normative ways of interaction. Adult designers are invited to also play and improvise whereas children are encouraged to play, but also to share responsibility for the process and outcome of PD sessions. The Ambiguity Approach (Vaneycken, 2020) is introduced as a methodological basis for more democratic PD practice with children. Two snapshots of PD processes illustrate the implementation of ambiguity of roles and ambiguity of materials respectively.

Receipts

Videos from mobile phones and security cameras are one form of proof of the aggressions experienced by victims and witnesses of various forms of discrimination against equity-seeking individuals and groups in public spaces. At the same time, people do not always feel that they can safely record an incident or easily gain access to archived data. They may also need time and space to process what they have experienced. Furthermore, official channels to lodge complaints are often exclusionary, byzantine, isolating, individuating, demoralizing cul-de-sacs. The result is that the experiences and voices of victims and witnesses of hate and discrimination in public spaces are often diluted or silenced. Computer vision and artificial intelligence tools increasingly deployed as part of “smart city” infrastructures have been proposed as a means to address these issues in real time by predicting, identifying, and aggregating transgressions. Yet, in practice, these tools lack nuance, approximate and automate-out the importance of relationship building with communities, and have generally been used to identify patterns and build predictive surveillance that disproportionately disadvantages already discriminated-against groups. This paper will report on two iterations of our ongoing Receipts project. The project serves as a means to experiment with and propose processes that use social practice and machine learning technologies to prepare testimonies and listeners to more clearly and impactfully speak, hear, and feel what it is like to respond to mimetic trauma and be part of an equity-deserving group in public space. The work is guided by the following question: How can the process of facilitating the preparation and presention of anonymized testimonies of discriminatory aggression in public spaces with the witnesses and victims of said agressions create structures of accountability, solidarity, healing, and community? The first project, Receipts (2020) — https://receipts.publicvisualizationstudio.co/ — was presented as part of The Bentway’s Safe in Public Space program in Toronto, and addressed anti-Asian aggression in public spaces. The second project, Receipts NB, in collaboration with ArtFix, an organization that works with artists with substance abuse and mental health lived experience in North Bay, will address the stigmatization and isolation of this community during the pandemic. It will be presented as part of IceFollies 2023, a week-long public art festival on frozen Lake Nipissing. These explorations emerge from, and reflect upon a theoretical framework that connects visual culture, data creation, visual perception, cognition, machine learning processes, human-computer interaction, social practice and a practice-based framework for research-creation. The work is also informed by an approach to technoscience that uses a critical race, feminist , and decolonial lens. A necessary component of this framework is to prioritize equity through an emphasis on critical pedagogy, co-creation , and participatory art and design practice. The critical media art practices and processes of Receipts do not aim to replace identifying video as an important means of holding people accountable. Instead, we hope that the project can shape technical, social, cultural practices of testimony and listening and make collectivized community resistance resonate more deeply.

Designing for Plurality in Democracy by Building Reflexivity

Designing for Plurality in Democracy by Building Reflexivity

Qi2He: A co-design framework inspired by eastern epistemology

The rapid development of rural societies mixed with the infrastructural transformation of emerging economies bring both challenges and opportunities to Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) design as illustrated through the emergence of the field of HCI for Development (HCI4D). A key challenge for HCI4D is how local knowledge, expertise, and culture can be constructively combined with global trends in digital innovation and socioeconomic development. Co-design and participatory design practices in HCI offer opportunities to engage diverse communities in design activities which embrace both transition and tradition in constructive ways. We present our co-design framework, Qi2He, which supports designers and local communities engaging in co-design activities. Qi2He is inspired by traditional Chinese epistemology and contributes (i) methods to support cross-cultural co-design engagement, and (ii) post-hoc critique of co-design participation. We illustrate the use of Qi2He through three case studies of HCI design over four years in rural China where local culture and traditions are in a state of flux from waves of migration to cities whilst also being an integral part of the broader national and global transformation. The first case study examines how local rural knowledge can be shared and acquired to create a design system for ethnic brocade production. The second case study explores how the creation of an interactive drama can be used as a driver for rural community engagement. The third case study focusses on the iterative design of cross-cultural interactive product innovation. We conclude by reflecting on lessons we learnt when structuring and restructuring our co-design process and offer suggestions for how our Qi2He framework could be used by others and in different cultural settings.

Using participatory design to inform cyber/bullying prevention and intervention practices: Evidence-Informed insights and strategies

Bullying and cyberbullying are global phenomena negatively impacting on children’s and young people’s (CYP’s) mental health and wellbeing and affecting their school social experiences and learning outcomes. Many interventions and prevention approaches have been employed over the decades, most impacting differentially, with some success in certain contexts and situations but not universally, suggesting the need for more contextualised, nuanced approaches at the whole school, community, individual and peer-group levels. The recognition of the importance of student and teacher voice in recent years has heralded interest in co-design practices to deliver more context-relevant interventions and prevention strategies. This article considers how participatory design and co-design practices can form part of the prevention and intervention repertoire for schools, teachers, counsellors and psychologists in their quest to understand and reduce cyberbullying and/or bullying (C/B) behaviours. Two case-study exemplars are provided that reflect the importance of context and student-centred relevancy to inform practice.

Design Seen from the Outside: An Ethnography of Institutional Participatory Design for the City-Making

OVERVIEW This article is situated in the intersection between anthropological and design knowledge, seeking to understand from an anthropological perspective the practice of participatory design (PD) in city-making projects. The research focuses on an urban redevelopment process in Sydney, critically analysing the cultural and socio-political frameworks where PD operates. In doing so, it highlights the challenges to the democratic ideals of participation while working inside democratic institutions. This study expects to support the need for a deeper understanding of the interconnectedness of the social, economic, cultural, and environment dimensions that shape the design practice in an increasingly complex world. Moreover, it builds on the acknowledgement that institutions are challenging arenas of work, but also potential sites for change. As a result, this report offers an exploratory framework to analyse participatory design projects from a cultural and political perspective. It suggests four exploratory areas: the social productions of neighbourhood; urban imaginaries; actors and governance; and everyday life authoritarianism.

Generative repair: everyday infrastructuring between DIY citizen initiatives and institutional arrangements

ABSTRACT DIY citizen initiatives exploring everyday-life practices such as collective making or repair are on the rise. These are characterised by the resources, local knowledge, and volunteer labour they mobilise but also by fragility of long-term sustainment. To understand what is at stake in sustaining them, the authors conducted a case study of a longstanding DIY citizen initiative in Berlin, cross-checking the findings by interviewing employees of two supporting institutional arrangements and organisers of three further DIY initiatives nearby. The study revealed how the DIY initiatives tie together roles and resources to provide concrete everyday infrastructure for citizens while dependent on resources such as space, insurance, legitimacy, and knowledge to navigate surrounding bureaucracy, provided largely via various institutional arrangements. Conversely, these established institutional arrangements benefit from DIY initiatives’ local knowledge, authenticity, and expertise. Finally, both sides wish to gain fuller mutual understanding and dialogue-related competencies. The findings highlight the generative repair, performed by both citizen initiatives and the institutional arrangements, that makes their change agendas relevant and lasting. They also point to potential value from considering some of these attempts as forms of infrastructuring with relevance for contemporary participatory design practices.

Saint Petersburg Experience of Participatory Budgeting

The article is devoted to summarizing the experience of implementing participatory budgeting practices
 in Saint Petersburg over a five-year period as well as the role and forms of citizen involvement in
 budget decision-making. An innovative form of public discussion, through the participation of citizens
 in the work of the budget commission, allowed one not only to attract a significant number of citizens
 to solve the problems of the metropolis, but also to increase the efficiency of budget fund spending.
 Special attention is paid to the testing of a new type of public participation in the development of
 the urban environment, namely participatory design, one of the effects of which is the possibility
 of attracting extra-budgetary sources of funding. The practice of participatory design is already in
 demand among potential investors and has shown good results in projects aimed at the development
 and improvement of newly built-up areas.
 School participatory budgeting practices were successful as well, in which high school students were
 asked to work out projects not only for the development of school infrastructure, but also that of
 the territory of Saint Petersburg’s districts. The experience gained allowed us to identify the main
 disadvantages and advantages of different practices, which will be taken into account when scaling
 them.

Соучаствующее проектирование как форма партисипаторной демократии на местном уровне

In the system of local self-government, various forms of exercise of power by the population are possible. And one of the other forms of participation of the population in solving local issues can be called various forms of participatory democracy. The article reveals one of the forms of participatory democracy as co-participating design. The author notes that co-participating design refers to the design process involving residents of a particular municipality. It manifests itself in the participation of residents in improvement activities aimed at changing the urban environment, as well as participation in the planning of territories of municipalities. It is gratifying that in a number of subjects of the Russian Federation the practice of participatory design is actively used in the formation of a comfortable urban environment.