Artistic participatory video-making for science engagement

This paper uses theatre to frame reflexive discussions on the use of participatory video making for science engagement. The ‘JuxtaLearn’ research project is presented as a case-study that focuses on performance concepts such as audience, purpose, improvisation or final production as a lens for supporting technology-enabled creative exploration. Three different approaches were taken to creative participatory video making processes: co-creation by learners, as a communication tool for researchers and as a public engagement tool. Differing expectations about the timing and aim of the research process created considerable debate among the research team regarding the control of and purpose of filmmaking. It was not the topic of debate within the film that was deemed controversial, but more who, when and in what ways these debates occurred. Theatrical and HCI concepts of audience, performance ownership, improvisation and storyboarding, boundary object creation, participation and boundary creatures are foci of debate within the project

Situated encounters with socially engaged art in community-based design

With the increased relevance of digital technologies in civil life comes the challenge of how to design research for citizen engagement. Drawing from three reflexive case studies presenting socially engaged arts (SEA) projects, we describe how, as artists, collaborators and researchers, we engaged in socially inclusive community-based projects. We argue that our roles required us to be both flexible and to adopt critical openness in practices of collaborative social facilitation. We conclude with insights to inform community-based research and enable nurturing and inclusive engagement in research design for the exploration of near-future digital technologies

Artful social engagement :long-term interaction design within an international women's community

PhD ThesisLong-term commitments, a rich understanding of- and sensitivity towards identities are considered of value for researchers working within technology design to support community participation. However, few studies have explicitly discussed how researcher relationships are built and how communities negotiate their technology use around identities over time. This thesis presents the findings and insights from a three-year long, in-depth participatory project at an international women’s centre in Newcastle upon Tyne, UK. The thesis contributes to interaction design research, and experience-centred design more specifically within social care communities. The research demonstrates how interdisciplinary approaches, combining critical methodological perspectives from feminist postcolonial studies with narrative inquiry and speculative design, can be used constructively in complex and sensitive community contexts. The thesis outlines how such approaches contribute opportunities for the negotiation and celebration of diverse community identities using technology. This is achieved through exploring how ‘dialogical aesthetics’, as articulated through socially engaged arts, can sustain conceptual resources and practical approaches to reflexively inquire into personal identities within communities. Through ‘space-making’ workshops, involving digital portraits and digital story making and through the design and use of a speculative photo-sharing device, the thesis provides insights into exploring and responding to identities, while engendering inspiration and resonance for sustainable future technical practices within a culturally diverse social care community

Investigating situated cultural practices through cross-sectoral digital collaborations: policies, processes, insights

The (Belfast) Good Friday Agreement represents a major milestone in Northern Ireland's recent political history, with complex conditions allowing for formation of a ‘cross-community’ system of government enabling power sharing between parties representing Protestant/loyalist and Catholic/nationalist constituencies. This article examines the apparent flourishing of community-focused digital practices over the subsequent ‘post-conflict’ decade, galvanised by Northern Irish and EU policy initiatives armed with consolidating the peace process. Numerous digital heritage and storytelling projects have been catalysed within programmes aiming to foster social processes, community cohesion and cross-community exchange. The article outlines two projects—‘digital memory boxes’ and ‘interactive galleon’—developed during 2007–2008 within practice-led PhD enquiry conducted in collaboration with the Nerve Centre, a third-sector media education organisation. The article goes on to critically examine the processes involved in practically realising, and creatively and theoretically reconciling, community-engaged digital production in a particular socio-political context of academic-community collaboration

Troubling Vulnerability: Designing with LGBT Young People's Ambivalence Towards Hate Crime Reporting

HCI is increasingly working with ?vulnerable? people yet there is a danger that the label of vulnerability can alienate and stigmatize the people such work aims to support. We report our study investigating the application of interaction design to increase rates of hate crime reporting amongst Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender young people. During design-led workshops participants expressed ambivalence towards reporting. While recognizing their exposure to hate crime they simultaneously rejected ascription as victim as implied in the act of reporting. We used visual communication design to depict the young people?s ambivalent identities and contribute insights on how these fail and succeed to account for the intersectional, fluid and emergent nature of LGBT identities through the design research process. We argue that by producing ambiguous designed texts, alongside conventional qualitative data, we ?trouble? our design research narratives as a tactic to disrupt static and reductive understandings of vulnerability within HCI

The Right to the Sustainable Smart City

Environmental concerns have driven an interest in sustainable smart cities, through the monitoring and optimisation of networked infrastructures. At the same time, there are concerns about who these interventions and services are for, and who benefits. HCI researchers and designers interested in civic life have started to call for the democratisation of urban space through resistance and political action to challenge state and corporate claims. This paper contributes to an emerging body of work that seeks to involve citizens in the design of sustainable smart cities, particularly in the context of marginalised and culturally diverse urban communities. We present a study involving co- designing Internet of Things with urban agricultural communities and discuss three ways in which design can participate in the right to the sustainable smart city through designing for the commons, care, and biocultural diversity

Beyond representations: towards an action-centric perspective on tangible interaction

In the light of theoretical as well as concrete technical development, we discuss a conceptual shift from an information-centric to an action-centric perspective on tangible interactive technology. We explicitly emphasise the qualities of shareable use, and the importance of designing tangibles that allow for meaningful manipulation and control of the digital material. This involves a broadened focus from studying properties of the interface, to instead aim for qualities of the activity of using a system, a general tendency towards designing for social and sharable use settings and an increased openness towards multiple and subjective interpretations. An effect of this is that tangibles are not designed as representations of data, but as resources for action. We discuss four ways that tangible artefacts work as resources for action: (1) for physical manipulation; (2) for referential, social and contextually oriented action; (3) for perception and sensory experience; (4) for digitally mediated action

The ethical implications of HCI’s turn to the cultural

We explore the ethical implications of HCI’s turn to the ‘cultural’. This is motivated by an awareness of how cultural applications, in our case interactive performances, raise ethical issues that may challenge established research ethics processes. We review research ethics, HCI’s engagement with ethics and the ethics of theatrical performance. Following an approach grounded in Responsible Research Innovation, we present the findings from a workshop in which artists, curators, commissioners, and researchers explored ethical challenges revealed by four case studies. We identify six ethical challenges for HCI’s engagement with cultural applications: transgression, boundaries, consent, withdrawal, data, and integrity. We discuss two broader implications of these: managing tensions between multiple overlapping ethical frames; and the importance of managing ethical challenges during and after an experience as well as beforehand. Finally, we discuss how our findings extend previous discussions of Value Sensitive Design in HCI

The impact of an in-service professional development course on writing teacher attitudes and pedagogy

In education, it is commonly believed that the quality of teachers' learning experiences directly affects the quality of their students' learning experiences. Specifically, teachers' continuing learning may bring about positive effects on student learning. For the past ten years or so, research has emphasized the effects of professional development courses on teachers in hard science disciplines. Little attention has been paid to study the influences of those courses on teachers in the 'soft' sciences, such as English language, especially in the area of teaching of writing. Against this background, I undertook a study to investigate how an in-service professional development course influences the teaching attitudes of writing teachers who enrolled on the course and their teaching practice. I argue that the professional development course empowered the teachers with skills useful for the teaching of writing. I also argue that the course positively changed the attitudes of the teachers towards their practice in the teaching of writing. It is suggested that teachers need to engage in continuing professional development to improve the quality of their teaching