PARTICIPATE Tweedledum and Tweedledee
“And here the two brothers gave each other a hug, and then they held out the two hands that were free, to shake hands with her.”
participating means to be actively involved in a situation. I used participation in my process to understand the needs of the people playing the game or exploring the interaction as well as how these processes work in themselves. Some attributes of projects where participation is key are: sharing (knowledge, information), ownership (feeling you contribute and that it matters in building the whole) and the sense of belonging that a community provides which drive people to contribute (Armstrong & Stojmirovic 2011: 17). In participatory projects we, as designers, involve people in the process and in the final outcome. This “final” stage can be not final at all, since people can contribute again and again, changing the look, feel or situation. This happens because in projects like these, designers create a system, a platform, rather than a narrative. People bring their own narratives and make their own story: “The designer as author, as craTsperson bringing together beginning, middle, and end, becomes redundant in a space in which every participant forges his or her own beginning, middle, and end.” (Vinh in Antonelli 2011: 129). Participation leads to experiencing something together. When we create with others freely, we can have unpredictable results that lead to enchantment. This has been the reason for having participation as an element in my design process and final piece. Participatory design projects have existed in the past, but they have increased considerably due to the internet: “The net’s bias toward collaboration has also yielded some terrific mass participatory projects, from technologies such as the Firefox browser and Linux operating system to resources like Wikipedia.” (Rushkoff 2012: 122). We can see how through the internet, the computer has become a tool for collaboration.
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PARTICIPATORY DESIGN
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The qualities that participatory projects have, like modularity (using modules or units that make up the whole) and flexibility (allowing for rearrangements within the platform), are essential to allow contributions to happen. These qualities are shown in projects like The Sketchbook Project (where people around the world submit sketchbooks around a certain theme to the Brooklyn Art Library to be exhibited and toured) and in digital communities like the one surrounding open source soTware. This makes it easier to contribute and to use other’s contributions as well, both online and ofline.
By participating in The Sketchbook Project, I found a way to go back to sketching as a tool for myself as a designer. It helped to have a fixed deadline for delivery to complete all the pages in the sketchbook.
115 participate I explored themes that I have been researching in this MA, as well as things that come from the back of my mind.
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When we allow people to participate in the creative process, we allow them to co-design. Diferent stakeholders contribute to bring ideas together: designers and participants can generate a solution to a problem. Co-design “flattens hierarchical orders, as participants both within and outside companies join in problem solving. Ownership is often distributed across the project to everyone involved.” (Armstrong & Stojmirovic 2011: 43) Like Battarbee notes, in co-design: “People are involved and present in a usercentered process to overcome studio-based contemplation of irrelevant issues. More than one person is involved in a unit of study, to create the conditions for co-experience in a manner that is appropriate for the design context.” (Battarbee 2008: 92). This allows for the design decisions to be placed in a real context.
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CO-DESIGN
Building Blocks Workshop I conducted Building Blocks workshop to explore co-design and delve into the creative process with others. I gathered with my classmates and in teams, we sketched out situations that deal with trying to find the “extraordinary� in the ordinary. I ran this workshop because by exploring co-design and iterating in this part of the process I could strengthen my working method. Another reason was for me to participate and see peoples behavior as co-creators at different stages of the process.
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In the workshop we started to generate ideas using meta design tools, having three words to make up a situation. We would create a design around this situation and we would sketch it out, role-play it with paper prototypes or models and at the end act it out (gestures). ATer this process we explored the open source applications that could give insight in creating these ideas, and it helped me test out interactive systems in full scale and see the participation of many people experiencing the same thing simultaneously.
I learned about Meta Design during this MA. We had a project on socially responsive design, and part of the course included a week of lectures and workshops with Annete Lundebye and Hannah Jones, from Goldsmith’s College. They both have been researching MetaDesign and how this way of being aware of our own design process can help create better choices for the situations we are designing for.
123 participate One of the meta design tools is bisociation cards: put together seemingly unrelated concepts in order to spark ideas. I did my own take of this tool, by creating a board where the participants would choose one item from each category. To make it random, they had to choose blind-folded.
After choosing their keywords, participants then went on to discuss and sketch out scenarios.
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I participated in the workshop as well, and my team came up with an idea of paralell universe binoculars. They would show you different sides or angles from where you are standing (supposed to be the different editions of yourself in these paralell universes).
After sketching this idea out, my teammate Qi and I made a model of where the binoculars would be.
125 participate When it came time to make gestures for it, Qi demonstrated how he would feel like discovering “another� him.
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Another team had the following words as keywords for their scenario. It was intersting to see how they came up with stories trying to relate such disparate concepts.
They sketched out their flying horse that serves as a bridge too.
The sketch alone was not enough, the participants needed to explain how it would function using gestures.
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This team didn’t make a model, and were explaining their sketch and how their design would work.
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Acting it out was the best part of this team’s scenario because it truly demonstrated how the flying horse would be like.
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133 participate We tested out the open source application Somantics, designed as a tool for expression for children on the autistic spectrum.
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CO-ACTION
Through the Building Blocks workshop, I realized that participants are not only involved in the co-design stage. In co-design, we take participants input and collaborate in creating a solution for a given situation. I realized that co-design had turned into co-action; the collaboration and contribution in the moment of execution of the design situation, not only in the early stages of a design process. This insight made me realize that the work is not complete without the participants’ movement, exploration and discovery. I found that the beauty of participatory projects when they meet with interactive systems is moving from co-design (at the decision making stage) to co-action (execution stage). This moment of execution, the inter-acting with the system goes on and on and you never get exactly the same output: each image projected or reflected is unique, each position varies, each movement the participants make is different (within the parameters and constraints of the design decisions when creating the system).Through co-action we gain unpredictability and multiplicity: this leads to surprise, enchantment and creativity. At this stage of my research I have learned that creating a game like AR Hockey was one way of blending the digital with the virtual, but that I was more interested in developing a playful situation that invited people’s participation and exploration. I thought about how to create this experience and still use our bodies and physical space instead of the window of our digital screens. As part of my process I then proceeded to research approaches to the blending of the digital and the physical through augmented reality in interaction design. n
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–Paola Antonelli
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“The designer as author, as craftsperson bringing together beginning, middle, and end, becomes redundant in a space in which every participant forges his or her own beginning, middle, and end.�