People should have a voice in decisions that affect them; in their neighbourhoods, communities, workplaces, public services, politics, and everyday life. But participation is often hard work. People have to find out that an opportunity exists, make time for it, understand the issue, and participate in a format decided by someone else.
What if participation happened differently?
In this thesis, you will explore/design/prototype alternative ways for people to participate in issues that matter to them.
You might investigate questions such as:
- What would participation on the go look like — on public transport, at the doctor’s office, at school, at work, while in the bathroom, or somewhere else?
- Could an object, installation, service, interaction, or digital technology invite people to contribute as part of their everyday routines?
- How might people challenge, disrupt, or rebel against existing decision-making processes? Is that also equally participation?
- What happens if community members become co-researchers, rather than simply participants in someone else’s study?
You may (and are encouraged to) collaborate with a particular community or explore participation around a concrete issue that you or people you know care about. Your thesis could result in an interactive prototype, speculative object, service concept, installation, app concept, or something we have not thought of yet. Whatever you design in this thesis becomes a way of asking questions, provoking reactions, and learning about barriers and opportunities for participation.
Possible approaches
You could:
1a. Work with a community or group to explore what tensions and opportunities they might face for participation, design and develop ideas together, and explore what participation could look like for them and their context. Could be in relation to a specific, e.g., technology, product or service.
1b. Work with a service provider or organisation to explore an issue they have, and what participation could look like for their context and users.
OBS! Possibility of maybe taking part in an on-going collaborations with museums and cultural institutes
2. Explore participation by exploring, designing, trying out, failing, and iterating on your own ideas with input from a community or group. The prototypes help you learn about the topic, not just solve it.
3. Create a provocative prototype, intervention, or installation that challenges assumptions and invites people to react, discuss, or reflect on an issue.
After your thesis project
You could come out of the project with:
- a design process, intervention, prototype, service concept, or participatory format for your portfolio/CV
- potentially, a collaboration with a service, organisation, or community.
Relevant courses
IN5510 – Participatory experimental design
IN5120 – Tangible interaction
IN5480 – Specialization in Research in Design of IT
Inspirational readings
Erling Björgvinsson, Pelle Ehn, Per-Anders Hillgren; Design Things and Design Thinking: Contemporary Participatory Design Challenges. Design Issues 2012; 28 (3): 101–116. doi: https://doi.org/10.1162/DESI_a_00165