Context
Participatory Design Course
Duration
Two Months
My Role
Organizer & Facilitator
Team
Four Students
About Participatory Design
Participatory Design, also known as co-design, is a collaborative design approach that involves end-users in the design process.
Its aim is to create products and services that better meet the needs and expectations of users by applying their knowledge and experiences.
(Interaction Design Foundation, 2023).
Future of Transport Workshop
As part of a university course in participatory design, my team and I organized a workshop called "Future of Transport", related to my research project on Buses and Autonomous Transport, and aimed at idea generation and insight gathering.
For this workshop, we brought together a sample of potential users and guided them through a series of activities aimed at exploring their ideas and empowering them to be part of the design process.
We structured the workshop using the Make-Tell-Enact framework from Eva Brandt et al.
Icebreaker
The workshop started with an "icebreaker" activity that allowed participants to warm up and get acquainted with each other.
They were given blank bus cards and tools to personalize them. Then, they presented themselves to others using their cards.
Bus card created by one of the participants
The cards created in this exercise were also used later in the workshop, and participants brought them home as souvenirs. These cards, in a way, represented them (Ahuvia et al., 2005) and since they were made by participants with their own hands, gave life to a sort of IKEA effect (Norton et al., 2012), as participants grew particularly fond of them.
Participants exchanging cards and presenting themselves
Cards created by the participants
Tell Activity
In the "Tell" activity, participants had to choose between two buses that were identical except for one feature, which changed each round.
Participants made their choice by figuratively entering a bus drawn on the ground and had post-it notes where they could write the motivation for their choice.
Images from the activity
Example questions asked to participants
Make Activity
In the "Make" activity, participants were given paper "bus prototyping kits" that they could cut out and use as pieces to design their own autonomous bus.
Bus Prototyping Kit
Prototype created by the participants
Result from the exercise
Enact Activity
For the "Enact" activity, participants took on different roles and played as characters in imaginary scenarios crafted by the facilitators inside an imaginary bus.
Some participants acted as passengers, and some as "parts of the bus" such as automatic doors, vocal assistants, or AI-enabled ticket machines.
Participants playing as "the bus"
Scenes created during the exercise
This two-hour workshop was focused not on creating a final design, but on exploring ideas and opinions from the participants.
Workshop Timeline
References:
1. Tools and techniques: Ways to engage telling, making and enacting - E Brandt, T Binder, E Sanders
2. What is Participatory Design? - Interaction Design Foundation
3. Beyond the Extended Self: Loved Objects and Consumers' Identity Narratives - A. C. Ahuvia
4. The IKEA effect: When labor leads to love - M. I. Norton, D. Mochon, D. Ariely
