Maker Movements, Do-It-Yourself Cultures and Participatory Design: Implications for HCI Research

Falling costs and the wider availability of computational components, platforms and ecosystems have enabled the expansion of maker movements and DIY cultures. This can be considered as a form of democratization of technology systems design, in alignment with the aims of Participatory Design approaches. However, this landscape is constantly evolving, and long-term implications for the HCI community are far from clear. The organizers of this one-day workshop invite participants to present their case studies, experiences and perspectives on the topic with the goal of increasing understanding within this area of research. The outcomes of the workshop will include the articulation of future research directions with the purpose of informing a research agenda, as well as the establishment of new collaborations and networks

Design in the new Do-It-Yourself age: trialing workshops for repairing

Traces of a renovated interest in Do-It-Yourself (DIY) have been observed in relation to technological advances and lowered prices facilitating the access to the practice at different levels of skills. This research envisaged the DIY trend as an opportunity to foster sustainable impact in a society where everyone can and does design. In this paper the role of Design in this ‘new’ DIY age is addressed. In particular professional designer as facilitator in investigated when supporting the DIY practitioners in repairing, reusing and in general practices prolonging product lifespan (RE-DIY). The facilitator role is studied through action research approach by setting four workshops in Italy in which designers supported practitioners in repairing and repurposing in ideal workspaces. The repairing workshops validated the hypothesis of a positive contribution by design in supporting the development of RE-DIY practice by optimizing resources (e.g. saving materials), informing on processing (e.g. 3D printing), increasing quality (e.g. refining the aesthetics). Critical components of the workshops have been identified such as the relevance of facilities, availability of time, emotional attachment to the item. These can be overtaken through the use of professional Design expertise based on abductive approach, finding an ordering principle and reasoning on multiple levels

Open-ended design : local re-appropriations through imperfection

Design for Sustainability (DfS) focuses on wicked problems that cannot be modelled in reductionist ways. Furthermore, when bottom-up local interventions prove to have positive effects in their context, they remain hard to spread and might face failure if transferred the other contexts. Here, a research through-design approach is present-ed for highlighting a new paradigm, that questions the very nature of both design process and outcomes. Specifically, Open-ended Design (OeD) is introduced pursuing the creation of unfinished and ever-evolving outcomes (im-perfect by intention), embracing the out-of control local instances. In this approach balance between openness and over-design is sought, to facilitate both the global diffusion of design outcomes and their local re-appropriation. The aim of the research is to highlight existing connections between OeD and DfS, listing its values and limitations through some reported cases. In conclusion, designers might start designing for emergent aspects of the designed solutions, supporting multiple local re-appropriations

Co-designing for common values:creating hybrid spaces to nurture autonomous cooperation

This paper concerns the development of digitally-mediated technologies that value social cooperation as a common good rather than as a source of revenue and accumulation. The paper discusses the activities that shaped a European participatory design project which aims to develop a digital space that promotes and facilitates the ‘Commonfare’, a complementary approach to social welfare. The paper provides and discusses concrete examples of design artifacts to address a key question about the role of co- and participatory design in developing hybrid spaces that nurture sharing and autonomous cooperation: how can co-design practices promote alternatives to the commodification of digitally-mediated cooperation? The paper argues for a need to focus on relational, social, political and ethical values, and highlights the potential power of co- and participatory design processes to achieve this. In summary, the paper proposes that only by re-asserting the centrality of shared values and capacities, rather than individual needs or problems, co-design can reposition itself thereby encouraging autonomous cooperation

Anticipating user eXperience with a desired product: The AUX framework

Positive user experience (UX) has become a key factor in designing interactive products. It acts as a differentiator which can determine a product’s success on the mature market. However, current UX frameworks and methods do not fully support the early stages of product design and development. During these phases, assessment of UX is challenging as no actual user-product interaction can be tested. This qualitative study investigated anticipated user experience (AUX) to address this problem. Using the co-discovery method, participants were asked to imagine a desired product, anticipate experiences with it, and discuss their views with another participant. Fourteen sub-categories emerged from the data, and relationships among them were defined through co-occurrence analysis. These data formed the basis of the AUX framework which consists of two networks which elucidate 1) how users imagine a desired product and 2) how they anticipate positive experiences with that product. Through this AUX framework, important factors in the process of imagining future products and experiences were learnt, including the way in which these factors interrelate. Focusing on and exploring each component of the two networks in the framework will allow designers to obtain a deeper understanding of the required pragmatic and hedonic qualities of product, intended uses of product, user characteristics, potential contexts of experience, and anticipated emotions embedded within the experience. This understanding, in turn, will help designers to better foresee users’ underlying needs and to focus on the most important aspects of their positive experience. Therefore, the use of the AUX framework in the early stages of product development will contribute to the design for pleasurable UX

Learning by gaming:ANT and critical making

Relationships among theory, gaming, learning and socio-technical design are explored in the two contributions which compose the section. The theory in question is ANT, re-interpreted through critical making - an umbrella term for various distinctive practices that link traditional scholarship in the humanities and social sciences to forms of material engagement. Sergio Minniti describes an ongoing project called Game of ANT, which draws upon the critical making approach to design an interactive technology and a workshop experience through which scholars and students can conceptually-materially engage with ANT, hence exploring and approaching it from novel points of view. Game of ANT adopts the Latourian vision of technoscience as war and physically embodies this idea by proposing a sort of war game during which participants play the roles of human or non-human actors engaging with the competitive dynamics of socio-technical life. The commentary by Stefano De Paoli proposes new directions to develop the project, by deepening the concept of game and its value for design and learning processes.</p

Troubling futures: can participatory design research provide a generative anthropology for the 21st century?

This essay argues there is value in considering participatory design as a form of generative anthropology at a time when we recognise that we need not only to understand cultures but to change them towards sustainable living. Holding up the democratically-oriented practices of some participatory design research to definitions of anthropology allows the essay to explore the role of intervention in social process. And, challenging definitional boundaries, the essay examines design as a participatory tool for cultural change, creating and interogating futures (and the idea of futures). In analysing how designing moves towards change in the world, the essay brings together design research and concepts from anthropology to help us better understand and operationalise our interventions and pursue them in a fair and sustainable manner

Social Sustainability: A design research approach to sustainable development

While issues such as clean production and energy efficiency are still central in sustainable development discourse, attention is increasingly on patterns of consumption at multiple levels in society. This opens new opportunities and responsibilities for design research, as we shift from a focus on product lifecycles to people’s lifestyles. It also requires further understanding the ‘social sustainability’ aspects of the environment and development, including the complexity of problematics characterized by uncertainties, contradictions and controversies. In response, we propose a programmatic approach, in which a tentative assemblage of theoretical and experimental strategies frame a common ground for a collaborative and practice-led inquiry. We present a design research program based on two propositions: socio-cultural practices are the basic unit for design, and; transitions, and transition management, are the basic points of design intervention. Rather than affirming the status quo or the prevailing discourse, we argue for design research as a ‘critical practice’, in which cultural diversity, non-humans and multiple futures are considered

Inclusive design and making in practice: Bringing bodily experience into closer contact with making

This paper develops our understanding of the nature of inclusive design, first through critique of controversies that to some degree downplay inclusive design as a distinct design movement. Attentive of these criticisms we then observe designer-making practices in two cases, which respect individual difference and encourage a more material mode of participation. By bringing the bodily experience of people with (dis)abilities more closely into their own design processes we see positive characteristics and advantage in inclusive design’s closer connections with making. This research advocates the expansion of inclusive design into a more material, inclusive designer-making movement, to acknowledge the universal problem of designing for everyone’s unique difference