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Authors (2017): Title. In: Proceedings of 15th European Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work - Exploratory Papers, Reports of the European Society for Socially Embedded Technologies (ISSN 2510-2591), DOI: 10.18420/ecscw2017-to-be-added
Reconsidering Design for Civic Engagement and Participation Teresa Cerratto Pargman, Cristian Bogdan, Somya Joshi, Hanna Hasselqvist and Karin Hansson Stockholm University, KTH Royal Institute of Technology Stockholm {tessy, somya, khansson}@dsv.su.se, {cristi, hannaha}@csc.kth.se
Abstract. What are designers, who are committed to contributing to civic participation, sensitive to? What is the designer’s agency in configuring and infrastructuring civic engagement and participation in society? How can the impact of civic technology design be sustained over time? This workshop aims at discussing these questions whilst engaging with works that illustrate, analyze and/or critically inquire innovative ways to do design for civic engagement and participation. By innovative ways, we mean ways that go beyond applying PD methods with the aim to include the user in the development of a computer system or with the goal to reach consensus among the stakeholders inherently involved. Against this backdrop, this workshop welcomes projects, studies, tools that describe and analyze socio-technological interventions that partake in the ongoing constitution of publics or/and communities and put continuously design efforts into infrastructuring present and future civic participation.
Workshop theme Issues about participation in the civic realms have these days become serious matters of concerns, worldwide. From voting in referendums, to sustained engagement in movements such the “Indignados” in Spain, the Sunflower student movement in Taiwan or the recent massive anti-corruption protests in Romania,
people’s use of Internet and open source platforms is crucial in opening up new channels for citizen expression, engagement and participation. Projects like political crowdsourcing (Hellström 2015; McCafferty, 2011; Segerberg and Bennett, 2011; Valenzuela, 2013;Wolfsfeld et al., 2013), participatory journalism (Lewis et al 2010; Rakesh 2015; Thomas 2011), patient blogging (Elg et al 2012; Hansson and Wihlborg 2015; Miller and Pole 2010; Sternberg 2014), energy and sustainability amateur collaboration (Hasselqvist et al. 2016) as well as Citizen Observatories (When and Evers, 2015) have also revealed new potentials of online tools for transformative developments in areas of citizens’ interests. Appropriated as a means for informing and representing individuals or for giving expression to and conforming a public or/and a community (Hansson and Wihlborg 2015), the design of online technologies matters for who takes part and contributes to society and, for how this participation is possible (Hansson 2016). In this context, HCI researchers have started to question what the term “participation” means nowadays (Vines, et al. 2013), how such understandings are reflected in the tools developed for participation (Hansson and Ekenberg 2017), and what designers’ practices, underpinning design for participation, look like (Halskov and Hansen, 2014, Light, 2010). Ehn (2008) has for instance introduced a distinction we believe is key to differentiate what types of design practices researchers and practitioners in HCI can engage in when taking part in participatory design projects. Ehn (2008) distinguishes “design–for-use” from “design-for-the-future-use”, suggesting that “design–for-use” entails engaging with participatory design methods to develop a practical system that is designed with the aim to support users’ activities and in response to known issues. “Design-for-the-future-use” deals instead with infrastructuring people’s participation; that is to extend design toward more openended, long-term, and continuous processes where time and resources could be allotted in a flexible manner and diverse stakeholders could innovate together (Björgvinsson et al., 2010, 2012). This more organic approach pays attention to long-term relationships in which continuous co-creation can be realized, and in which those involved turn to, and work with, the ways in which technology connects to wider systems of socio-material relationships between people, objects, and processes (Björgvinsson et al., 2010). “Design-for-the-future-use” engages also with uniting individuals in the discovery of unknown issues. We believe this distinction is of relevance as it introduces a shift from treating designed systems as fixed, finished products to treating them as ongoing unfinished infrastructure, socio-technical processes that relate to different contexts (Star & Ruhleder, 1996, Karasti, 2014). Another example of how design for participation can be reconsidered is the one provided by Di Salvo (2012). Inspired by Mouffe’s Agonistics: Thinking the
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World Politically (2013), Di Salvo distinguishes “design for politics” from “political design”. Whilst “design for politics” aims at improving the access to for instance information petitions, balloting and voting, “political design understands the political as a condition of life and entails ongoing acts of contestation” (Di Salvo, 2012 p.7). Such distinction aims to make clear that there is an important difference between using design as a means for enabling civic participation and using design as a means for infrastructuring it though the formation of publics (Dewey, 1927/1954) and/or communities (Capaccioli et al. 2016, Ludwig et al. 2016), These distinctions speak of a need in HCI/CSCW to move toward more robust and complex understandings of participation enabling us to engage with agonistic (Di Salvo, 2012), pragmatic and ethical aspects (Vine set al.2014) of participation. The HCI/CSCW communities need to put more efforts into envisioning new ways of designing for participation; ways that move beyond basic participation toward more manifold forms of inclusion (Le Dantec and Di Salvo, 2013) thereby enabling a means for engaging with power structures and marginalization (Balka, 2006; Beck, 2002; Shapiro, 2005). Against this background, the questions that motivate the workshop are: What is the designer’s agency in configuring and infrastructuring civic participation and engagement in society? How much should the designer be involved in the process of infrastructuring civic participation? • What are the kinds of dilemmas (i.e. technical but most importantly, those associated with designers’ own values, beliefs, ideologies, subjectivities) that emerge when designers develop their practices in order to contribute to citizen’s participation and political action? Designers who are committed to contributing to civic participation; what are they sensitive to? • How do designers’ practices and institutions configure and give shape to online tools for civic engagement and participation? • How can the impact of civic technology design be sustained over time? •
This workshop aims at discussing these questions whilst engaging with works that illustrate, analyze and/or critically inquire innovative ways to do design for civic engagement and participation. By innovative ways of doing design, we mean ways that go beyond applying PD methods with the aim to include the user in the development of a computer system or with the goal to reach consensus among the stakeholders inherently involved. We mean ways of doing design that envisage socio-technological interventions that partake in the ongoing constitution of publics or/and communities and put continuously design efforts into infrastructuring present and future civic participation. By infrastructuring we do not just mean the communication and collaboration tool used by the citizens
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(sometimes in cooperation with authorities) but we rather refer to “the work of creating socio-technical resources that intentionally enable adoption and appropriation beyond the initial scope of the design, a process that might include participants not present during the initial design” (Le Dantec and DiSalvo, 2013, p. 247). In the same line of thought, we are interested in how participation emerges: from frustration on the part of citizens and designers (and how they find each other) to the authorities calling for input as part of more inclusive decisionmaking processes. We are interested in how longer-term cultures of participation take shape and evolve in a democracy. The workshop will consider the following inter-related topics: 1. Research-oriented approaches as well as Design-oriented approaches focused on civic engagement and participation. We will consider both participation that aims to change the whole authority establishment (political hacking) and more narrowly-focused participation that nevertheless aims to change society (social entrepreneurship) and civic participation that focuses on improving specific aspects like voting, energy, sustainability, transport infrastructure, etc. 2. Challenges involved when doing design with the goal of infrastructuring civic participation and specific ways to deal with them in order to contribute to development of resilient participation practices within publics and/or communities. What challenges were observed, in various cases? 3. Research methods for the study of how designer’s role and design practices get entangled in tools developed for civic engagement, participation and political action. 4. Learning processes involved in design practices aimed at civic participation, and in particular how they can be scaffold within designing for infrastructuring civic participation? 5. Empirical or reflective work engaging with self-reflective design practices in HCI and CSCW, digital commons and making publics, the role of political hackers, social activists in configuring and infrastructuring civic participation, participatory policy design, and adversarial design. We invite researchers, designers, activists, technologists and artists that are exploring and/or experimenting with critical design projects, political design, design-for future-use, for and with social movements, alternative ways of living and alternative economies.
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The workshop activities and goals The goal of the workshop is to envision and generate a comprehensive program of research to investigate emergent design practices that involve both the design of the material, technical artifact and the political movement, social enterprise or grassroots communities committed to enact social change through citizen’s participation. In particular, the workshop aims at generating (1) a repertoire of emergent design practices involved in civic participation, (2) a set of conceptual tools and methods for the study of emergent design practices for civic engagement and participation (3) a research agenda and a consortium concerned with themes and studies that aims to account for emergent design practices and material conditions for civic participation (4) Selected contributions will be published in a special issue edited by the workshop’s organizers.
Workshop duration The workshop will be a whole day event consisting of two sessions and additional online activities organized both before and after the workshop.
Pre-workshop activities At least one month prior to the workshop the accepted papers will be distributed among the participants. A key discussant, identified among the workshop participants, will be assigned to each position paper, to facilitate interaction and engagement during the workshop. The participants will read in advance all accepted papers and will prepare a pecha-kucha presentation to engage discussion.
Workshop Program The papers accepted by the program committee will be clustered in themes that will, in turn, be used for scaffolding knowledge building during the workshop. The workshop will consist of three sessions: an inspiration event, a working group session and plans for the future. The inspiration event will consist of participants’ presentation of their position statements in the Pecha Kucha format. The Pecha Kucha consists of format that gives more presenters the chance to share their research. The inputs from the Pecha Kutcha session will be used to inspire discussions for the working group session. During the working group session, discussions will be facilitated by the workshop organizers utilizing the method of the “World café” which entails short round tables discussing pre-
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prepared questions identified during the inspiration event (10 min. per table), then the groups will mix up in new groups and go to another table in order to discuss a new question. The session about plans for the future will bring the groups to discuss main ideas and outline for a research agenda and consortium.
Workshop organizers Teresa Cerratto-Pargman, Stockholm University Teresa is an associate professor of HCI, she is interested in the relationship between writing, meaning and technology from socio-cultural and critical perspectives of literacy and tool use. She works with a particular focus on design and emergent participatory and collaborative practices in education and environmental sustainability sectors. She is currently studying how civic participation and democracy are being redefined within a network for political innovation in Latin-American. Cristian Bogdan, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm Cristian has explored a few grassroots communities that work for the common good in non-political domains, such as amateur radio, Romanian infrastructure activists, electric car enthusiasts and Swedish energy amateurs. He recently became interested in how such grassroots movements can improve government and policy in the respective areas, and how can they indirectly lead to better democracy and participation. Somya Joshi, E-Gov, Stockholm University Somya is a Senior Lecturer at Stockholm University with expertise in the field of e-participation, e-democracy and e-governance. Her specialisation falls within the applied context of technological innovation, particularly in how it translates into transparency in governance, education, environmental conservation and health services within the developing world. Hanna Hasselqvist, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm Hanna’s research interests are in design processes where interactive systems are created as complement to and amplifiers of other initiatives and activities that involve various stakeholders in understanding and forming sustainable practices. In her work she has explored energy and transportation practices, designed support for amateur energy management in Swedish housing cooperatives and conceptualised collaborations for sustainable transportation. Karin Hansson, PhD, is a researcher at the Department of Computer & Systems Sciences at Stockholm University and The Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm. Her research focus is participatory processes online and the social production of
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data. With a background in art and design, she is also interested in artistic and participatory research methods, engaging participants through speculative design and design fiction. Her latest research project “Work a work”, in collaboration with artists and union activists, explores the ongoing transformation of work relations.
Participants We expect to select 15-20 participants based on their submitted position papers.
Recruiting and selecting participants Recruiting and selecting activities will exploit a range of social media for the viral spread of information, including Twitter, a Facebook group, personal blogs (by the organizers), e-mail lists, social media networks and the workshop’s website. The workshop is set out to attract high quality submissions from HCI, CSCW communities, and to be a point of departure in developing a research agenda and in building an international network. This workshop builds on our successful workshop “TING:Making Publics, through provocation, conflict and appropriation” hosted at ACM PDC 2016. http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2948092&CFID=737052313&CFTOKEN=748 41179
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Ehn, P. (2008). Design Things. Challenges to design thinking in the tradition of participatory design? In Proceedings. of PDC ACM Press. Elg, M. Engstrom, J. Witell, L. and Poksinska, B. (2012). Co-creation and learning in health-care service development. Journal of Service Management, 23 (3), pp. 328-343. Halskov, K. and Hansen, N.B.(2014). The diversity of participatory design research practice at PDC 2002- 2012. In International Journal of Human-Computer Studies. Karasti, H. Infrastructuring in participatory design. In Proc. of PDC’14. (2014). ACM Press Le Dantec, C. DiSalvo, C. (2013). Infrastructuring and the formation of publics in participatory design. Social Studies of Science. 43(2) 241–264 Light, Ann (2010). The
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Segerberg, A. & Bennett, W. L. 2011. Social Media and the Organization of Collective Action: Using Twitter to Explore the Ecologies of Two Climate Change Protests. The Communication Review, 14, 197-215. Shapiro D (2005) Participatory design: The will to succeed. In: CC ’05: Proceedings of the 4th decennial conference on critical computing, Arhus, Denmark, 20–24 August 2005. New York: ACM Press, pp. 29–38. Star, S. L. & Ruhleder, K.(1996). Steps Toward an Ecology of Infrastructure: Design and Access for Large Information Spaces. Information Systems Research 7(1):111-134. Steinberg, J. (2014). Argentine´s experience in developing and implementing a blog, as a.... ECTRIMS Online Library. Steinberg J. Oct 11 2014; 64313. Multiple Sclerosis Journal, 20(1), 1352–4585. Thomas P. 2011. 9 News Makers in the Era of Citizen Journalism. International News in the Digital Age: East-West Perceptions of A New World Order, 4, 149. Valenzuela, S. 2013. Unpacking the use of social media for protest behavior: The roles of information, opinion expression, and activism. American Behavioral Scientist, 57, 920-942. Vines, J. Clarke, R., Wright. P., Mc Carthy, J. and Olivier P. (2013). Configuring participation : On how we involve people in design. Proceedings of CHI 2013. ACM, New York. Wehn, U. and Evers, J., (2015). The social innovation potential of ICT-enabled citizen observatories to increase eParticipation in local flood risk management. Technology in Society, 42, pp.187-198. Wolfsfeld, G., Segev, E. & Sheafer, T. 2013. Social Media and the Arab Spring: Politics Comes First. The International Journal of Press/Politics, 18, 115-137.
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