Course 2024 PhD Seminar on Participatory Design: Contemporary issues and concerns

This course provides an introduction to contemporary Participatory Design as a particular field of interdisciplinary research and practice. Participatory Design grew out of a concern for democracy and empowerment of users in the development and implementation of digital technology in the workplace. Today, the political values and ambitions of mutual learning through engagement and democratic innovation tunnels the field into diverse settings and challenges of society and the planet.

In the course, participants will be introduced to contemporary issues and concerns regarding user participation in the development of new digital technologies, as well as the diversification of Participatory Design to new domains and non-Western regions. During three days (and 6 modules) the participants will be introduced to diverse presentations by senior and younger researchers engaged in developing the field, including: the values and politics of participation; scaling of Participatory Design; evaluation of  Participatory Design projects and initiatives; decolonisation and co-design with marginalised communities, and design anthropological engagements with sustainable digital futures.

The interdisciplinary course is relevant for early as well as late stage PhDs from different backgrounds and fields. We will target a diverse group of PhD students working in different global contexts and geographical regions with participatory approaches and concerns. The course will be a combination of pre-course assignments, lectures, group work and participant presentations. Lecturers for this first edition of the PhD course include: Professor Heike Winschiers-Theophilus (Namibia University of Science and Technology), Assistant Professor Reem Talhouk (Newcastle University), Professor Susanne Bødker? (Aarhus University), Associate Professor Rachel Charlotte Smith (Aarhus University) and Professor Claus Bossen (Aarhus University).

Participants will be introduced to and debate contemporary issues regarding user participation in the development of new technologies, especially IT, as well as the diversification of Participatory Design to new domains and non-Western regions.

To register for participation in the course, please submit the following: 1-page motivation, research question and focus, and how it relates to or engages Participatory Design. 1 page CV and publication list.

Course leaders

Rachel C. Smith & Claus Bossen

Lecturers

Professor Heike Winschiers-Theophilus (Namibia University of Science and Technology)

Assistant Professor Reem Talhouk (Newcastle University)

Professor Susanne Bødker (Aarhus University)

Associate Professor Rachel Charlotte Smith (Aarhus University): rsmith@cc.au.dk

Professor Claus Bossen (Aarhus University): clausbossen@cc.au.dk

Professor Liesbeth Huybrecths (Hasselt University)

Venue

Course venue: 

The course will take place at the Dept. of Digital Design and Information Studies, Aarhus University.

The venue is Finlandsgade 21, Nygaard building 5335, rooms 184 and 192. from the city, you can take bus number 2A to the stop Stor Center Nord, or you can walk up the hill (30 min.)

The course starts Monday 10th at 10am, and ends at 4pm on June 12th. 

A more detailed program will follow shortly.

Course Literature

1. Saad-Sulonen, J., Eriksson, E., Halskov, K., Karasti, H., & Vines, J. (2018). Unfolding participation over time: temporal lenses in participatory design. CoDesign, 14(1), 4-16. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/15710882.2018.1426773 
2. Slingerland, G., Murray, M., Lukosch, S., McCarthy, J., & Brazier, F. (2022). Participatory design going digital: challenges and opportunities for distributed place-making. Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW), 31(4), 669-700. https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s10606-022-09438-3.pdf 
3. Kensing, F., & Greenbaum, J. (2012). Heritage: Having a say. In Routledge international handbook of participatory design (pp. 21-36). Routledge. 
4. Bødker, S., Dindler, C., Iversen, O. S., & Smith, R. C. (2022). Participatory Design. Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-02235-7 (Part I, pp. 1-46).
5. Bødker, S., & Kyng, M. (2018). Participatory design that matters—Facing the big issues. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI), 25(1), 1-31. https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3152421 
6. Di Salvo, C., Clement, A. and Pipek, V. (2013). Participatory Design for, with and by communities. In Routledge International Handbook of Participatory Design. Routledge.
7. Karasti, H. (2014). Infrastructuring in participatory design. In Proceedings of the 13th Participatory Design Conference on Research Papers - PDC ’14. the 13th Participatory Design Conference, Windhoek, Namibia: ACM Press, pp. 141–150. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1145/2661435.2661450.
8. Huybrechts, L., Benesch, H., & Geib, J. (2017). Institutioning: Participatory design, co-design and the public realm. CoDesign, 13(3), 148-159. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15710882.2017.1355006 
9. Frauenberger. C. (2019). Entanglement HCI The Next Wave? ACM Trans. Comput.-Hum. Interact. 27,1, Article 2 (2019), 27 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3364998
10. Johansen, F. B., Kjeldsen, T. K., Rosengren Jørgensen, M., Magot, S., Magot, A., Kandjengo, S.& Rodil, K. (2022). Hunting with the Ju/’hoansi in the Kalahari: A co-created VR gesture application. In Adjunct Proceedings of the 2022 Nordic Human-Computer Interaction Conference (pp. 1-2). https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3547522.3547715 
11. Smith, R. C., Schaper, M. M., Tamashiro, M. A., Van Mechelen, M., Petersen, M. G., & Iversen, O. S. (2023). A research agenda for computational empowerment for emerging technology education. International Journal of Child-Computer Interaction, 38, 100616. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2212868923000533 
12. Kambunga, A. P., Smith, R. C., Winschiers-Theophilus, H., & Otto, T. (2023). Decolonial design practices: Creating safe spaces for plural voices on contested pasts, presents, and futures. Design Studies, 86, 101170. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0142694X2300011X 
13. Clarke, R., Talhouk, R., Beshtawi, A., Barham, K., Boyle, O., Griffiths, M., & Baillie Smith, M. (2022, August). Decolonising in, by and through participatory design with political activists in Palestine. In Proceedings of the Participatory Design Conference 2022-Volume 1 (pp. 36-49). https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3536169.3537778

Course dates:

• 10 June 2024 09:00 - 16:00
• 11 June 2024 09:00 - 16:00
• 12 June 2024 09:00 - 16:00