Christina Mörtberg

Whose participation? whose knowledge?: exploring PD in Tanzania-Zanzibar and Sweden

In this paper we discuss two Participatory Design (PD) projects, one in Tanzania-Zanzibar and the other one in Sweden. In both countries the design process was done through the analysis of work practices involving both designers and users. The discussion focuses on a number of factors such as location, time and scene. We also ask how different projects can be that it is still possible to talk about PD as an overall participation and design approach. If PD is not a singular, definite, closed and fixed approach on the explicit layers, so how do these projects relate to each other when focusing on methods embracing the ambiguities of participation? The paper ends with a discussion of differences and similarities considering participation in the projects.

Compulsive sensitivity - a consequence of caring : a qualitative investigation into women carer's difficulties in limiting their labours

Women are expected to care, both in public and private life, for the sick as well as the healthy. Some women have difficulties in limiting their caring, despite being deeply careworn. In this life-course study, based on in-depth interviews with elderly women in Sweden, the concept “compulsive sensitivity” presents a way toward understanding their difficulties. Compulsive sensitivity denotes the compulsion to see and respond to other peoples needs, whatever ones own situation.

Silences and sensibilities: increasing participation in IT design

This paper focuses on challenges of heterogeneous knowledges in participatory design. How are different experiences and knowledge negotiated in participatory design processes and how can the design process maintain sensitivity towards the subtle aspects of negotiation of knowledges? The paper reports from two design projects, the first related to design of ICT-based learning environments for workplaces in Norway and the second a research project with middle managers and care assistants from social services departments in the public sector in Sweden. As a main argument the paper focuses on the role of silence in the negotiation of knowledge. Sensitivity in design should then as well be directed towards the silent and invisible aspects of the design process, because they can be as important for the participation and design outcome.

Emphasizing technology: socio‐technical implications

Purpose – This article aims to focus attention on users of information technology (IT), especially mobile telephony. It focuses on what people actually say about mobile technology but also aims to pay attention to what they do not talk about, what is found in the silence, especially with new technology when much can be taken for granted. This latter is, according to Foucault, even more important to understand.Design/methodology/approach – The research draws on empirical research through 11 semi‐structured interviews and interviews with five focus groups, comprising between four and eight care assistants in each group. The interviews were with three women and three men between 25‐70 years old, five female public sector middle managers and care assistants from five focus groups at social services departments in the north of Sweden. A Foucauldian approach is adopted to interpret the findings and explore how their locations within the circuits of socio‐technical networks engender uncertainty with mobile techn...

Methods That Matter in Digital Design Research

Theories and analytical perspectives are linked to methods. The discussion of the methods used to capture the complexities of practices with a focus on social, cultural and economic layers (Jordan and Henderson 1994; Wagner 1994; Sjoberg 1996; Newman 1998) represents an important resource for a discussion of designers’ interpretative work with both traditional and new experimental methods. In previous chapters we have described our collaborative and multidisciplinary perspectives that are also mirrored in the methods we use in the exploration of practices. These practices are technical, organizational, knowledge-based and socio-cultural. Our aim is to explore and maintain the complexity in design as a mix of all of these.

Between Need and Desire Exploring Strategies for Gendering Design

Script analysis is often used in research that focuses on gender and technology design. It is applied as a method to describe problematic inscriptions of gender in technology and as a tool for advancing more acceptable inscriptions of gender in technology. These analyses are based on the assumption that we can design technologies that do justice to gender. One critique on script analysis is that it does not engage with the emergent effects of design. The authors explore this critique with the help of two vignettes taken from their design research. In this article they ask: How to design for gender if gender and design are emergent? The authors present two design strategies, degendering design and undesigning design and propose a new approach to doing justice to gender in design. This perspective foregrounds ethics in the design process, in particular the accountability of technology designers.

Research Practices in Digital Design

In the twenty-first century, we are literally surrounded by digital things and things that turn out to be digital – or have some digital parts or are parts of a larger system in which there are digital elements. We carry around mobile phones and watches; many also have additional music players, PDAs or PCs. We live in houses filled with digital networks and artefacts; we depend on infrastructures that are partly digital and have digital systems attached to them; we use public and private services that are digital, are based on digital infrastructures and have other digital systems attached to them; and we experience embedded, ubiquitous computing as we live in digitally enhanced environments that support our activities with or without our conscious control. The digital layer(s) in the world constitute a real world.

Participation in e-home healthcare @ North Calotte

Participation and the contribution of participatory design methods and techniques are explored in the context of a Scandinavian Home Healthcare project. The project was undertaken during 2004--2005. Its aim was to introduce mobile ICT equipment to health care workers in order to improve planning, including quality and precision of information exchange. The study was designed according to Participatory Action Research and Participatory Design principles. Methods employed in the project were observations, interviews, future workshops, and story boards to actively involve different stakeholders. The experience of the project indicates that, although the rhetoric was that of a participatory design and research project, participants are not equally regarded in terms of experiences and knowledge of the actual practice. Assumptions about technology influence development and implementation at the expense of the actual care activity. Further, participation and participatory design techniques used in the project demonstrate the complexity of home healthcare and the necessity to involve all the different occupational groups involved in the care of the client. However, organisational boundaries reinforced shortcomings in crossfunctional and cross organisational cooperation. A final conclusion is that time for collaborative and collegial reflections is a necessity to support the learning process.

Carthographic mappings: participative methods

In this paper we discuss and reflect on participative methods used in a research project conducted in a southeastern part of Sweden. With participatory design and feminist science and technology studies as the frame of reference we explore diverse and multiple experiences and knowledge created in work practices. We conclude the article by telling about the method we worked with, which we chose to call cartographies and how the method made visible everyday performances and practices in a municipal administrative office.

Researching Digital Design

The emerging field of digital design research is heterogeneous, encompassing a multiplicity of practices, theories and methods. One source of this heterogeneity is that design as a concept takes different meanings in the context of different design practices, be it the design of software, urban spaces, web pages or industrial products; as does ‘the digital’ when integrated within different types of design. Another source of heterogeneity is the variety of research traditions, theories and methodologies that meet in digital design research. This book explores the multiplicity and heterogeneity of ‘digital things’, design practices, and (inter) disciplinary approaches.