General Info
Date: Sunday, 4 October
Time: 9:30 - 17:30
Max number of participants: 25
Goals and Activities
The workshop supports collaborative exploration across multiple perspectives and themes. Through activities such as collective mapping, speculative ideation, low-fidelity prototyping, and reflective discussion, participants will critically examine how technologies, democratic values, and power relations are entangled, and explore alternative approaches to technology design that support deeper, more inclusive democratic practices.
Participants will engage in collaborative group activities centred around the workshop themes. The workshop is designed as an experimental and reflective space for exploring tensions, disagreements, and possibilities in the design of democratic technology while fostering dialogue across disciplinary and professional boundaries.
Participation
Participants can apply in one of two ways. By submitting:
- A position paper (2-4 pages, including references) reflecting on ongoing or future research, design methods, theoretical perspectives, or case studies relevant to democratic technology design, participation, civic engagement, friction, silence, storytelling, or related themes.
- A declaration of interest (up to 250 words) describing your background, experience, and motivation to participate in the workshop.
At least one author of each accepted position paper must register for and attend the workshop.
Submission
Submissions should be sent in non-anonymised PDF format via email to design4dem-nordichi2026@ifi.uio.no.
Position papers should comply with the template available at https://ecscw.eusset.eu/2026/submissions/template/.
Two submission rounds have been planned for the workshop, aiming at giving people some flexibility as of when to submit and to avail of the early registration deadline.
However, the second submission round will only happen providing the workshop still have capacity to accept additional participants after the first submission round.
The accepted position papers and workshop materials will be shared with the participants before the workshop to support discussion, networking, and collaborative reflection.
The organisers are currently negotiating the publication of the accepted papers in the EUSSET Digital Library. Authors will be able to choose if they want their papers published or not.
Following the workshop, the organisers intend to further develop the outcomes through collaborative dissemination activities, including possible publications and community-oriented output related to democratic technology design and participation.
Important Dates
First submission round (decision notification before Early Bird registration)
Submission deadline: Wednesday, August 5
Decision notification: Wednesday, August 12
Second submission round (providing availability)
Submission deadline: Wednesday, September 16
Decision notification: Wednesday, September 23
Organisers
Fabiano Pinatti, University of Oslo
Alma Culén, University of Oslo
Nicholas Stevens, University of Oslo
Tone Bratteteig, University of Oslo
Matti Nelimarkka, University of Helsink and Aalto University