The messy complexities of democratic engagement and empowerment in participatory design – an illustrative case with a community-based organisation

ABSTRACT

Participatory design has as both its purpose and means, the democratic engagement and empowerment of end-users in design processes. The situation of participatory design, as a unit of analysis, is however, laden with complex power dynamics and interactions amongst participating actants; this contributes to advancing as well as inhibiting both the employment of the means and the achievement of the goals of democratic engagement and empowerment. This paper presents the case of participatory design with a community-based organisation, in the design of technology artefacts for one of their service centres. Using Situational Analysis, a critical qualitative inquiry methodology, the paper unpacks the complex interactions and surfaces the hidden power mechanisms and hegemonic dynamics in the participatory design situation. Further, on the premise that reflection and reflexivity can facilitate critical review, empowerment of users, and self-development in design teams, the paper presents an analysis of the extent to which reflexivity was achieved in the participatory design sessions, and discusses the mechanisms that were employed in this situation to mitigate the identified barriers against democratic engagement and empowerment.     

A systematic validation of the Empathic Handover approach guided by five factors that foster empathy in design

Abstract

This study aims at validating the transferability of the Empathic Handover approach, which we originally developed for the co-design process of a dementia simulator. We argue that empathy in design is operationalised using five factors: emotional interest, sensitivity, self-awareness, personal experience, and mixed perspectives. This heuristic proved useful in systematically comparing the empathic capacity of design students using the Empathic Handover and traditional user research approaches. Our comparative study indicates that the Empathic Handover approach enables designers to develop empathy with vulnerable users they did not meet in person (both people with dementia and people who mourn). Additionally, the study enables us to develop an elaborate notion of the working mechanisms of empathy in design as well as practical improvements to the Empathic Handover approach.     

Towards participatory design in craft and design education

The purpose of the present study was to analyze the differences and effects of user participation in university level students' collaborative design processes. The study focused on how intended users (i.e., frequent conference-goers) participated in a product design process (designing conference bags) and how much influence these conference-goers had on students' design solutions. The data were derived from a collaborative learning environment (Future Learning Environment, FLE2), which provided a distributed database for students' and users' dialogue. The study employed qualitative content analysis of users' written messages posted on the database. The analysis indicated users' contributions to the functional, expressive and aesthetic design solutions. From the students' standpoint, it was challenging to treat contradictory information produced by users and to find optimal design solutions.     

In the details: the micro-ethics of negotiations and in-situ judgements in participatory design with marginalised children

ABSTRACT

Engaging marginalised children, such as disabled children, in Participatory Design (PD) entails particular challenges. The processes can effect social changes by decidedly attending to their lived experience as expertise. However, involving marginalised children in research also requires maintaining a delicate balance between ensuring their right to participation as well as their protection from harm. The resulting tensions are politically charged, affected by myriads of power differences and create moral dilemmas. We present seven case studies, drawing from two participatory design research projects. They illustrate the in-situ judgements taken to address specific dilemmas and provide nuanced insights into the trade-offs required by child-led participatory design processes. Subsequently, we identify three challenges: positioning our work to the children’s carers’ values, protecting ourselves, and enabling the (relative) risk-taking associated with participation for children. We call for this micro-ethical approach to be used when reporting research ethics in practice, and as a guidance for the training of researchers and practitioners.     

门式刚架含缺陷外伸式端板梁柱节点有限元分析与试验研究

对1个符合规范要求(无缺陷)和3个不符合规范要求(含缺陷)的门式刚架外伸式端板连接节点进行了承载力试验及相应的有限元分析,以了解实际工程中存在的含缺陷节点的力学性能,并对该类节点在正负弯矩作用下的性能进行了有限元分析。研究结果表明:在节点域屈曲起控制的节点中,节点域设置加劲肋对提高节点的承载力作用相当显著;相对于梁端板和柱翼缘同时加厚的无缺陷节点,含缺陷节点的极限承载力基本接近,但其弹性抗弯能力下降、初始转动刚度有所下降,其性能分析适合采用半刚性理论。所采用的有限元分析方法结果可靠,可为含缺陷节点的门式刚架结构的整体受力分析或后续加固提供依据。     

Collaborative sketching—co-authoring future scenarios with bits and pieces of ethnography

Sketching is a most central activity within most design projects. But what happens if we adopt the ideas of collaborative design and invite participants that are not trained to sketch in to the design process, how can they participate in this central activity? This paper offers an introduction to how design material based on ethnography can be understood as sketching material. It suggests a process where the sketching tools are constructed within the scope of the project. Some practical details of how the design material has been co-authored will be explored. Finally, this paper shows how the design material has been used to co-author possible futures within the scope of design sessions.     

Challenging industry conceptions with provotypes

Design researchers have an important role to play when engaged with user-driven design projects in industry. Design researchers can craft ethnographic material to facilitate transfers of user-knowledge to industry, and demonstrate how this material can be used in the design of new products and services. However, ethnographic findings can reveal issues that are in tension with conceptions of the project members from industry. Instead of brushing these tensions aside, we propose provotyping (provocative prototyping) as an approach to constructively build on them as a resource for change. Provotypes are ethnographically rooted, technically working, robust artefacts that deliberately challenge stakeholder conceptions by reifying and exposing tensions that surround a field of organisational interest. The daily and local experience of provotypes aims to stir dialectical processes of reflection on how conceptions currently are, and fuel the front end of a development process by speculating how conceptions could be different. In this article we start by making explicit the relation between provotypes, practices of critical design and organisational sense-making. We then illustrate, through a multi-stakeholder project concerning the field of indoor climate, how provotypes facilitate transfers of user knowledge to industry, and how they contribute to the development of new products and services. We end by framing the role of the design researcher and discuss the politics that are inherent to design provocations.     

N型方圆钢管相贯节点足尺试验研究

对两个承受支管轴力和主管轴力的搭接N型方圆钢管相贯节点进行了足尺试验研究。试验表明,试件N1的破坏模式为受压支管在节点处的局部屈曲破坏,试件N2的破坏模式为主管侧壁鼓曲破坏和支主管交接面主管壁压溃破坏的联合破坏模式。计算表明,试件N1的试验值与《钢结构设计规范》(GB 50017—2003)公式承载力计算结果的比值为0.73,与有限元计算结果的比值为1.11;试件N2的试验值与规范公式承载力计算结果的比值为0.99,与有限元计算结果的比值为1.02。研究表明,主管轴力对节点极限承载力影响较大,规范公式因未考虑主管轴力的影响,其计算结果偏不安全,还有待进一步的研究。     

Analysing design suggestions and use of resources in co-design of educational software: A case study

This naturalistic study focuses on how the co-design of educational software is an activity mediated by and through communicative resources. The aim is to identify how design suggestions and the use of resources emerge in co-design. This study contributes to the growing interest in understanding aspects of collaboration in design. To understand the phenomenon of collaboration in design, we apply interaction analysis, dialogism and the sociocultural perspective to show which resources the participants use and how they negotiate design suggestions. We argue that such understanding is only visible through detailed analysis of naturally occurring co-design activities. We find that the design trajectory varies in how the participants orient themselves to each other and in relation to the design artefacts. Tensions make visible which communicative resources are sensitive to what the participants interpret as relevant in the context of their institutional norms and values. Their different positions must be negotiated. Together, these aspects orient the design and mediate the emerging consensus and design artefact.     

试析建成环境评价课的意义

在本科三年级的建筑设计教学中,引入了建成环境评价课程环节,评价以学生日常接触的校园建筑为对象,首先根据日常的使用经验确定评价内容,然后通过问卷、访谈等调查方式,以客观的数据、表格反映使用者回应建成环境刺激时的思考和反应,由此对建成环境的建造意图与使用成效之间的关系做进一步的探讨,培养学生对建筑设计较为全面的理解能力和发现问题、解决问题的能力。     

War and peace in codesign

This paper argues that codesign should look into how codesign comes into being in practice, what I call design before design, and the pragmatic and political questions that arise in this context. Using the example of the work that goes into creating and sustaining interest in codesign among prospective participants the pragmatics and politics of codesign itself is questioned. It is argued that codesign is not necessarily in the interest of the people it is ostensibly ‘for’, and that codesign in its implementation of its particular ideals of participation and democracy is following a ‘logic of war’ where winning, losing or making a tactical retreat are the only possibilities. However, as code signers it is suggested that we exchange this logic with a more diplomatic and designerly approach to allow for both creativity and concession out of a concern for improving codesign.     

建筑设计创新与可拓思维模式

建筑设计创新是对建筑设计学理论和方法新的升华和研究,建筑的设计需要创新思维的加入。本文就建筑设计创新与可拓思维模式进行了相关的研究,希望能有效推动建设设计学的不断发展。     

建筑设计创新与可拓思维模式

建筑设计创新是对建筑设计学理论和方法新的升华和研究,建筑的设计需要创新思维的加入。本文就建筑设计创新与可拓思维模式进行了相关的研究,希望能有效推动建设设计学的不断发展。     

Integrating community engagement and children's voices into design and planning education

This article shares outcomes from a year-long participatory planning process – one that brought together children and youth engagement, city planning, campus planning, and a university environmental design course to explore child-friendly, dense and affordable housing for a city of approximately 100,000 residents. This process of engagement asked design students to include youth participation and child-friendly cities as an integrated component of sustainable cities. The article shows varying degrees of transformation, views of children as credible participants, and values gained from the project. Many undergraduates changed their thinking about the role of young people in design processes and outcomes.     

建筑协同设计与Internet的潜力

建筑项目涉及众多复杂的事物．协同设计作为有效应对信息时代的工作方式．应当引起重视。通过分析Internet信息传播的特点并介绍相关应用技术．探讨利用Internet等现有资源以及低成本技术构建建筑项目协同设计环境的可能性。     

Priority water research questions as determined by UK practitioners and policy makers

Several recent studies have emphasised the need for a more integrated process in which researchers, policy makers and practitioners interact to identify research priorities. This paper discusses such a process with respect to the UK water sector, detailing how questions were developed through inter-disciplinary collaboration using online questionnaires and a stakeholder workshop. The paper details the 94 key questions arising, and provides commentary on their scale and scope. Prioritisation voting divided the nine research themes into three categories: (1) extreme events (primarily flooding), valuing freshwater services, and water supply, treatment and distribution [each > 150/1109 votes]; (2) freshwater pollution and integrated catchment management [100-150 votes] and; (3) freshwater biodiversity, water industry governance, understanding and managing demand and communicating water research [50-100 votes]. The biggest demand was for research to improve understanding of intervention impacts in the water environment, while a need for improved understanding of basic processes was also clearly expressed, particularly with respect to impacts of pollution and aquatic ecosystems. Questions that addressed aspects of appraisal, particularly incorporation of ecological service values into decision making, were also strongly represented. The findings revealed that sustainability has entered the lexicon of the UK water sector, but much remains to be done to embed the concept operationally, with key sustainability issues such as resilience and interaction with related key sectors, such as energy and agriculture, relatively poorly addressed. However, the exercise also revealed that a necessary condition for sustainable development, effective communication between scientists, practitioners and policy makers, already appears to be relatively well established in the UK water sector.     

Notes on ANT for designers: ontological,methodological and epistemological turn in collaborative design

This article aims to explore how ANT might help us to rethink collaborative and participatory design (C&PD) practices through converting Bruno Latour's call for risky accounts to a call for design things together. What if ANT starts to be in the business of designing new pieces of technology and not just actor-network accounts of them? What would the design process and its outcomes look like? In response to these questions and to the challenge of co-habitation as vital condition for our technical democracy, I propose three turns in C&PDs. The first is ontological and suggests to design actor networks and to look for ways to make these networks visible. The second is methodological and suggests reimagining co-design as actor networking in public, aided by a much-needed cartography of design. The last is epistemological: it is concerned with what knowledge should inform action in the design process, and it proposes to the idea of the designer as an agnostic Prometheus.     

Assessment of daylight in rooms with different architectural features

Results are presented from a parametric study that assessed the amount of daylight in rooms with different architectural features: the orientation, window size and visible glazing transmittance, room depth, external obstruction angle and site. Annual lighting simulations were run in order to understand how the daylight availability within a space changes as a function of the architectural features. A sub-dataset of the full result database is examined in detail for north- and south-facing rooms in Turin, north-west Italy, with a visible glazing transmittance of 70%. Each feature is analysed for its influence on the daylighting conditions. A simple graphical tool is presented to promote an easier reading of the results. This was developed to provide a synthesis of information to the design team. It shows the influence of preliminary design solutions on the amount of indoor daylight. This allows a design team to assess indoor daylighting from the earliest design phases onwards and to determine which combinations of architectural features are able to provide high, acceptable or low daylight levels within a room.     

Autozoner: an algorithm for automatic thermal zoning of buildings with unknown interior space definitions

In this paper, we present a general algorithm to automatically convert arbitrary building massing models into multi-zone building energy models (BEM). The algorithm follows current guidelines for thermal zone discretization of BEMs when actual interior space boundaries are yet undefined. Envisioned applications are for rapid model generation during schematic building design as well as for urban massing studies. We present an argument that current recommendations for separating core from perimeter zones effectively follow a straight-skeleton subdivision. Following a step-by-step explanation of the procedure, a number of example building shapes of varying complexity are shown to demonstrate the algorithm's robustness and suitability for automated multi-zone BEM generation. Going forward, it is recommended that the algorithm is adopted by software developers to ensure more consistent thermal model production within the building simulation community.     

Replacing international temperature–time curves with BFD curve

From The World Trade Centre Investigation Draft Report by NIST [National Institute of Standards and Technology. World Trade Centre performance study: data collection, preliminary observations and recommendations. FEMA (Federal Energy Management Association), 2002.], one of the recommendations was to “improve the century-old standard for the testing of building components, assembles and systems”. NIST believes that it is essential to complete a comprehensive review that will establish a firm technical basis for future fire-rating requirements.