It is well known that most of the positive environmental changes we see today are the results of other people’s
participation and civic engagement. Example is communal labour organizational activities like greening the environment. People in such participation/engagement share ideas and acquire new lifestyle, in line with their societal norms/value. Design is exceedingly making progress in identifying and finding solutions to human problems for our better living. That is making life meaningful through the development of a common language, where all stakeholders are attached to the focus of the group, based on common imaginary in a collaborative way. This article seeks to highlight on some designed interventions capable of emphasizing on emotional designs that spell-out the user’s inner feelings on products and values on products and services (e.g. Droog Designs and the invention of Vespa Piagio scooters). It also goes on supporting the view, that the user’s appetite is his/her emotions towards products. The paper also reviews and eradicates some misconception on how difficult tasks (curves) could be made simpler to the pessimist, in a way of using civic engagement practices to create value, and motivating all involve participants, touching their emotional feelings to fully contributing to participatory design and civic engagement activities for
a change in behavior

Gong

GORETTI G

Kwasi Frempah: R. S.

Qian

English

Archivio della Ricerca - Università di Pisa

International Journal of Management and Applied Science, ISSN: 2394-7926                          Volume-7, Issue-12, Dec.-2021  http://iraj.in   Participatory Design for Civic Engagement through Emotions  86 PARTICIPATORY DESIGN FOR CIVIC ENGAGEMENT THROUGH EMOTIONS  1RAS STEPHEN KWASI FREMPAH, 2GABRIELE GORETTI, 3QIAN XIAOBO, 4GONG MIAOSEN  1Degree, Master student, School of Design, Jiangnan University, China 2PhD, Associate Professor, School of Design, Jiangnan University, China 3PhD, Associate Professor, School of Design, Jiangnan University, China 4PhD, Associate Professor, School of Design, Jiangnan University, China E-mail: 16190306904@stu.jisngnan.edu, 28202001218@jiangnan.edu.cn, 3Qian.Xiaobo@jiangnan.edu.cn, 4miaosen.gong@jiangnan.edu.cn   Abstract - It is well known that most of the positive environmental changes we see today are the results of other people’s participation and civic engagement. Example is communal labour organizational activities like greening the environment. People in such participation/engagement share ideas and acquire new lifestyle, in line with their societal norms/value. Design is exceedingly making progress in identifying and finding solutions to human problems for our better living. That is making life meaningful through the development of a common language, where all stakeholders are attached to the focus of the group, based on common imaginary in a collaborative way. This article seeks to highlight on some designed interventions capable of emphasizing on emotional designs that spell-out the user’s inner feelings on products and values on products and services (e.g. Droog Designs and the invention of Vespa Piagio scooters). It also goes on supporting the view, that the user’s appetite is his/her emotions towards products. The paper also reviews and eradicates some misconception on how difficult tasks (curves) could be made simpler to the pessimist, in a way of using civic engagement practices to create value, and motivating all involve participants, touching their emotional feelings to fully contributing to participatory design and civic engagement activities for a change in behavior.  Keywords - Participatory design, Emotional design, Civic engagement, Behaviour change.  I. INTRODUCTION: ART AND DESIGN AS PARTICIPATORY VALUE LAB  Participatory art could be described as a form of art that engages directly all the audience and recognize them both as the participants and as agents of creative processes in an organized setup. Allan Kaprow (2018), a performance artist in the 1950s, devised happenings, in which he coerces the audience into engaging in the experience (Heddon & Dierdre 2015). The audience in participatory art is directly engaged in the making process throughout the execution of the form of a particular artefact. While singing, writing, storytelling, etc. are participations in public art-making. These creative activities could involve in common sessions or in different workshops including experts/designers, stakeholders, researchers,consumers/users. Among several experiences that are derived from activeinvolvement are social network building, leadership skills and encouragement, broadening new scope of learning, enhancing people’s lives for a better future.  Civic engagement has been a new venture resulting from these participatory works to open a holistic approach in 21st century. Its core defines the commitment to be part and contribute to the improvement of one’s community or society for a better living (Clover et al. 2013). Civic engagement is getting more global attention. This is because many organizations sought to use collaborative programs to increase and also to achieve their results. A typical example is “The Write of Your Life” in California, where participatory art is used to heal people of mental trauma (Baird et al. 2011). Their social inclusion freed them from boredomness, anxiety, sadness, isolation and insecurity. Participatory art-making comes out with projects/ideas of repairing the bonds of social cohesion through collaboration. On the other hand, participatory design gives room for tolerance, between stakeholders, experts and planners who are also the users and beneficiaries of the end results. In difference, while participatory art debates on the ideas of artwork, participatory design brings into real life the designed product or service to render solutions to users’ challenges within a particular scenario (Gregory 2003). The focus on today’s design is on feelings created by materials, meanings of shapes and user interactions. Artists do creative works to express themselves while designers develop concepts for users’ lifestyle. Comparatively, we see clearly that both art and design have communicational results in relations. However, as art seeks to come out with self-expressions, Design is based on “solving the curves” in human relationship with things (Bernard 1998). Not only useful products and images are created by designers, also some cultural meanings are learnt through those products and images. Within the social context, design can also give a clue, make/advance innovative ideas in the market aiming at meeting human needs. It is probable that only through understanding social and cultural contexts designers could comprehend fully their own roles in society. International Journal of Management and Applied Science, ISSN: 2394-7926                          Volume-7, Issue-12, Dec.-2021  http://iraj.in   Participatory Design for Civic Engagement through Emotions  87 II. CONTEMPORARY DESIGN: EMOTIONAL EMPHATIC VALUES OF PRODUCT  From the late 19th century to the middle of 20th century, modernization and functionalism became the core of design. This is because of industrial innovations and new achievements in productions. The machines and new supply chains became the centre of design research. The breakthrough gives a clue of how this period fostered the flow of experimentation in design in late 19th to first 20th century. This movement drove to the phenomenon called Modernism, the foundation of modern industrial design. Western society began to develop new ways to shape human culture in respect of touching human emotions and improve the constructed environment (Hughes & Hughes 2004). The new invention and power of machines encouraged designers to strategically reconsider their ways of manipulations and executions as a whole. That is making design seemingly an interpretation of daily life values and dynamic in behaviours. Emotional design is a personal practice approach that focuses on emphatic feelings. The customer becomes the focal point of the entire product execution process. Via their interactive stimulation, emotional emphatic values discuss the inward emotions of both the creator and the recipient. The concept of Emotional Design has been presented in “Emotional Design” book of Norman (2004) as a design field aiming at building an emotional link between people and products. Moreover, according to Walter (2011) “Emotion is a fundamental part of who we are as people, and it plays a fundamental role in successful design”. In his book "Designing for Emotion” the author claims that the primary objective of Emotional Design is to promote human contact with the product (Walter 2011). Norman’s approach to attitudes is based on the classic ABC paradigm. He described these as three dimensions of emotions as visceral, behavioural and reflective. Adding that, the visceral level is concerned with an object’s aesthetic or attractiveness. The product’s purpose and usability are considered at the behavioural level while the reflective degree considers reputation and meaning, which is also affected by a product’s branding. Considering Droog Design as (The feeling of emotional reflections) the exposures are been judged by our reflective intelligence. Droog design tested the intrinsic feeling of the viewers such that their emotions could be told either by their facial expressions or outward actions. To buttress this point, it is possible to critically consider the juxtaposed drawers “Droog at home” (2009), with human figures as presented with a performance held in Milan Design Week (2009), “You can’t lay down your memory” as captioned by that in the exhibition. In fact, the artefact and the show were seemingly to explore on the working of the memory. Retrieved from https://nuvomagazine.com/product/winter-2009 III. PARTICIPATORY DESIGN FOR CIVIC ENGAGEMENT  There is now an emerging number of creative people who invent and enhance new and more sustainable ways of living and producing. Looking attentively, these group of people are creating conducive environment especially for children where could be termed as care sharing (Meroni 2007). Until a good participatory designed measures and methods were put in place for the people to come together with a common goal of enriching their way of living. The list of instances could go on and on, demonstrating both their diversity and their common denominators. Indeed, these encouraging examples demonstrate that there are people who can work together to produce tangible, positive outcomes. We'll use the term "creative communities" to describe them. People joining together to discover new ways of living that are sustainable. Individuals and communities create system innovation by combining existing or available resources in novel ways. As a result they are able to tabulate their demands for products, services and the solutions that they express, draft distributional lines that could be used for the improvement of efficiency, accessibility and diffusion (Manzini 2007).  Generally, there are also others who cannot cope with other people for one common task due to their identity, culture or any related issue that has to do with their background. Perhaps, most of these individuals are entangled with the impression “I can’t”, “looks scary”, “higher possibility of failure”, “no resources” etc. so do not take any risk at all. Ideally, these people perceptively see everything blurry and as curves, living them at a square of impediment. When design concepts are arranged with activities and performances thus engaging these people to participate, there is a higher possibility that the erroneous concept of these individuals would directly and indirectly diminish. Working to make a difference in one's community's civic life and gaining the knowledge, skills, beliefs, and motivation to make that difference is what civic engagement entails.  Calligraphy writing in China Town Festival could be seen as a typical example. This is because, many including foreigners are of the view that writing in Chinese characters are hard knot to crack. However, when good designed participatory engagement was put in place, people developed interest and participated to write the characters with ease as we see below: Retrieved from http://goodcharacters.com/newsletters/chinese-alphabet-event.html International Journal of Management and Applied Science, ISSN: 2394-7926                          Volume-7, Issue-12, Dec.-2021  http://iraj.in   Participatory Design for Civic Engagement through Emotions  88  Figure 1. About Chinatown festival (Calligraphy Writing), California, Canada.  A second case addressed how to hold a society united by being all inclusive and nonviolent in keeping individuals and families together. All ideas are valued and encouraged here, resulting in a vibrant and resilient culture. The author Stuart (2013), claims that, he desired to create a peaceful and environmentally sustainable society in which the world's wealth and resources will be distributed fairly. Even if certain people can feel mistreated when looking at what needs to be done, improvement is possible when people come together, and that alone is important because it contributes to a better world. See Figure 2 below   Figure 2. Sustaining Community: Families, Communities and the Environment.  Stuart (2013) explored strength-based approaches to working with families and communities in general. He focused on environmental concerns. Sharing an occasional song/writing about topics of interest to the public are two examples. These people are simply a group of people from a single location (cottage, village, etc.). He used public meetings aside an exhibition to get people participation, discussion/showing pictures of how other people in different environment have been able to engage themselves in such activities to make living better.  IV. DISCUSSIONS: EMOTIONS AS A “BOOSTER” IN PARTICIPATORY DESIGN  According to Strayhorn (2019) and the College Students’ “Sense of Belonging” workshop, all human beings need a sense of belonging. When this is achieved, one feels as being a person belonging to a/the place such that he/she feels confident to interact with all the products within the environment. Therefore, the person develops some sort of encouragement since his identity is being recognized in that place. He then develops positive emotions functioning to be engaged with the people at many levels. In this context, emotions are useful because they define our position in relation to our surroundings, drawing us toward particular people, objects, behaviours, and ideas (Frijda1986). There is a reflection/feedback response from identity, real affection, culture and meaning of whatever happenings that goes on during participation. As time goes on, it is probable that the person begins to respect the culture of the people, in an aspect of (religion, tradition, culture, history, value and symbols) which all appears tangibly in the form of artefacts or design products. Meaning and existence of the culture, the cultural practices are more opened and known to him, being intrinsically motivated. That is (Love/Care) shown towards him for the happiness enjoyed within. As quoted from Kendra Cherry “In order to avoid problems such as loneliness, depression, and anxiety, it is important for people to feel loved and accepted by other people”.  V. CONCLUSION  The core expression of this article makes it possible for designers to consider emotional factors of participatory designs. This is because- it is probable that emotions are the grounds of value creation in products and services. People’s participation creates a strong emotional attachment between themselves and the product in order to transform their behaviours. Further, varieties of creative skills and adaptation of opportunities are derived from products that we interact with during participation, helping us to shape our relationship with the products. These feelings can serve as the foundation for a healthy and long-term person-product relationship, (Manzini 2014). He added that we need to create value towards the things we already own and gain skills to evolve and change the things so they will alter with us. Meaning our skills of manipulation is also important in our grouping activities such that our interactions with products may create bonds not only between the user and the product, but also person to person, in the group or the environment. We see clearly from the studied cases that participatory design and civic engagement are dynamic approaches to detect individual emotional feelings. This article is intended to encourage exactly that type of design innovation and to explore the many ways in which participatory design processes work on emotions and generate emotional design outputs. Such that these emotional design outputs are use to make engagements while generating meaningful products.  REFERENCE  [1] Allan, K 2018, Essays on the Blurring of Art and Life with Impurity, Experimental Art The Meaning of Life missing, Lannan Foundation. [2] Baird, C & Gautam, H. P. 2011, From social customer relationship management, Strategy & leadership. [3] Bernard, M 1998, Art, design and visual culture: An Introduction, Macmillan International Higher Education International Journal of Management and Applied Science, ISSN: 2394-7926                          Volume-7, Issue-12, Dec.-2021  http://iraj.in   Participatory Design for Civic Engagement through Emotions  89 [4] Chest drawers 2009, Droog exhibiton, https://nuvomagazine.com/magazine/winter-2009/droog-designs. [5] Clover, D. E., Bruno, de, O. J., Budd, L. H & Shirley, F 2013, The nature of transformation: Environmental adult education, Spring Science & Business Media. [6] Frijda, N. H 1986, The emotions, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. [7] Gregory, J 2003, Scandinavian approaches to participatory design, Int, J, Eng, Educ, 19(1):62–74. [8] Heddon, D & Jan, M 2015, Devising performance: a critical history, Macmillan International Higher Education. [9] Hughes, T. P & Hughes, T. P 2004, Human built world: How to think about technology and culture: University of Chicago Press. [10] Manzini, E 2014, Making things happen: Social innovation and design, Design issues, 30(1), 57-66. [11] Manzini, E 2007, Emerging user demands for sustainable solutions, EMUDE Design Research Now (pp. 157-179): Springer. [12] Meroni, A 2007, Creative Communities, People inventing sustainable ways of living: Edizioni Polidesign. [13] Norman, D. A 2004, Emotional design: Why we love (or hate) everyday things, New York NY: Basic Books. [14] Good Characters, 2008; http://goodcharacters.com/newsletters/chinese-alphabet-event.html [15] Strayhorn, T. L 2019, College students’ sense of belonging: A key to educational success for all students, Routledge. [16] Stuart, G, Hazelwood, E, Sinclair, E & Bourne, K 2013, Service-Learning at retreats for children with special needs and their families, Australasian Journal of University-Community Engagement Vol. 8(1), 64. Sustaining Community: Communities, Family and the Environment, https://sustainingcommunity.wordpress.com/ [17] Walter, A 2011, Designing for emotion: A Book Apart News RSS.           

Participatory Design for Civic Engagement through Emotions

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Participatory Design for Civic Engagement through Emotions

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