Women with young children are a growing population experiencing homelessness. Transitional housing services provide shelter and educational programming aimed at fostering the development of skills necessary to attain and maintain basic needs. Adagio Health’s transitional home, Healthy Start House (HSH) served as a case study in which to explore the intersection of design, service and social innovation. The metrics of success outlined by the county for HSH include attaining permanent housing and employment or education. Using a co-creative process, exploratory and generative research uncovered that the service had no clear route to assist the women to develop core competencies to meet the county’s metrics of success. Rather than create a new extension of the current service, this design solution focuses on amplifying the resources and infrastructure already in place to improve the current service delivery. The solution includes an ideal plan for the HSH staff to work with the clients to comprehensively develop their core competencies, and an expanded view of how a money management system helps the clients meet the county’s metrics. We hypothesize, through this system, clients will re-enter society smoothly, armed with the skills and knowledge needed to provide for themselves and their children. While the design generated much enthusiasm from all stakeholders, the concept would benefit from further testing and iterations over a longer length of time to understand if it can, indeed, improve learning and performance outcomes and create sustained behavior change.

The Place of Narrative is an exploration of the implications, opportunities and processes posed by participatory design methods in Landscape Architecture. The thesis has been structured within a narrative inquiry framework that is situated within the larger field of qualitative research. The work aspires to assess if the combination of community engagement and narrative inquiry methods can contribute to a richer understanding of place and inspire more contextually appropriate design responses. In landscape architecture, a deep understanding of the places that we design requires knowledge of local culture and the experiences and connections that people cultivate towards their environment over time. Being in place as designer, visitor and inhabitant helps to establish a level of trust. These stories of the residents—past and present, of designer, and of the landscape itself interweave and manifest in site-specific solutions. The ambition of this research is to capture the complexity of this process and to provide a primer for landscape architecture students interested in the integration of narrative theory, place, people and practice in community participatory design.

Interruptions in time-critical, dynamic, and collaborative environments, such as air traffic control (ATC), can provide valuable, task-relevant information. However, they also negatively impact task performance by distracting the operator from on-going tasks and consuming attention resources. This thesis develops and assesses a tool to assist radar air traffic controllers in managing interruptions. Field observations and interviews with air traffic controllers were utilized to develop an understanding of how interruptions occur in real ATC environments, and to identify where opportunities exist to use technology to support the interruption management process. It was identified that operators in these environments could better manage the effects of interruptions if there were indications to one operator of the availability of a collaborator and the urgency of an interruption from a collaborator. Present communication systems do not facilitate the awareness of these functionalities. An initial prototype for providing these functionalities in operational ATC displays was designed. Feedback on the prototypes was solicited through Participatory Design (PD) sessions with air traffic controllers. Based on the refinement of these prototypes, the Working Awareness Interruption Tool (WAIT) was developed to support more efficient and appropriate interruption timing in the context of complex, real-time, distributed, human operator interactions. Variations of the tool demonstrated several ways of showing the availability of the controller to be interrupted (either through manual settings or automatic detection) as well as incorporating a means of conveying the urgency level of the interruption. In order to examine the utility of the tool and to assess the importance and validity of its features, an experiment was conducted in a laboratory-based setting. The results of the experiment show the potential of this tool in an environment representative of air traffic control tasks and communication. Although the sample size was limited, the WAIT facilitated improved performance on both objective measures and self-reported measures, and reduced the distraction effects of interruptions from other operators. These improvements occurred without affecting perceptions of the effectiveness of communications. Questionnaire and interview results showed that participants appear to prefer an automated setting of availability to be shown to other collaborators. Identifying two examples of key features supporting interruption management (communicating availability and urgency) in air traffic control is one of the key contributions of this work. The work also makes a contribution by demonstrating that providing a tool incorporating these features can improve performance in an environment representative of ATC, albeit with naïve participants. Finally, the research makes a contribution by presenting the challenges associated with evaluating interruption management tools that require collaboration between operators in a system.

This study began with questions about of the impact of co-design on my professional identity as a designer and researcher as well as the impact of this dual role on the research and its implications for innovations in design practice and education. My study conceptualized a new approach to participatory research, by combining design, participation and research in a co-design based methodology aimed to assist the members of the Street Transformation Group to collectively develop a visual communication strategy for their facilitation of co-design, providing a space for reflection about group process and project development as well as the impact The Street Transformation Group was formed in 2011 by three Vancouverites: Maya McDonald, Adam Kebede and Julien Thomas. Inspired by the City of Vancouver’s Neighbourhood’s Greenway initiative (City of Vancouver, 2011), a city policy that looks to turn streets into parks, the group created an educational and planning tool: The Green Streets Game, a board game that allows participants to discuss their ideas for a preferred community design in a collaborative, role-play scenario, leading them through a process of reflection, dialogue, and design, in order to produce a shared vision for the future of their neighbourhood. My study conceptualized a new approach to participatory research, by combining design, participation and research in a co-design based methodology aimed to assist the members of the Street Transformation Group to collectively develop a visual communication strategy for their facilitation of co-design, providing a space for reflection about group process and project development, as well as the impact of these findings on my professional identity as a designer and researcher and the implications of this dual role design practice, research and education. My conclusions focus on collaboration as a classroom strategy and the importance of personality balance and conflict management, as well as the role of designers as reflective researchers. I introduce a new model for co-design that combines elements from action research and other participatory practices with traditional design stages and conceptualizes design as a complex, multi-layered process in a state of constant transformation. The model emphasizes flexibility, allowing the process to develop and change over time and looks to provide a deeper understanding and appreciation for elements like intuition, improvisation, emotion and tacit knowledge within the design process. / Graduate

How are we moving, or how much physical activities are present in societal settingssuch as eldercare units, schools, universities and offices? This general question was explored using different design-oriented approaches in four cases, with children,elderly, students and office workers. The results unveil a complexity of the problemarea that initially seemed quite straightforward. In many of the explored settings and situations, and for many of the participants, the activities they are engaged with do not include or encourage their abilities for physical movements to any great extent and this is not in line with the extent of movement that they actually desire. Physical activity can be defined as an activity performed through movement that expends energy. Research results from the public health domains and related areas show a major concern for the negative effects related to low levels of physical activity and prolonged sedentary postures found in many of the above-mentioned settings. In general, physical activities of today seem mainly related to sports, and specific activities designed for improving health and well-being. The participants in the four explorative case studies in this thesis demonstrated how they would like their physical activities to be integrated in the everyday activities of the different settings explored and not mainly as a separate activity specifically dedicated for health and well-being. How can knowledge of physical activity inform the design and development of interactive products and systems in these settings? New insights were gained through design-oriented explorations together with the participants inthe different field settings and through analysis of these observations. The results are not only the insights gained through the analysed empirical observations but also include a physical activity-oriented design method called Physical Movement Sketching as well as experiences from using Movement Probes. The experiences from using these two design methods led me to formulate a proposal for a new approach called Movement Acumen Design. This approach applies a socioecological perspective on physical activities. It provides methods and concepts to support the integration of physical activities into everyday activities performed with the support of interactive technology and it argues that physical activity should reclaim a more central role in these situations. Let us design for it to happen! / <p>QC 20150217</p>

Ubiquitous computing aims to make human-computer interaction as naturalistic and functionally invisible as possible through embedding computing potential within a particular context to support human activity. However, much of ubiquitous computing research is focussed on technical innovation due to the challenges involved with deploying embedded computing, thereby reducing the commitment to the philosophical ideals of ubiquitous computing in research. This dissertation describes the investigation of a participatory approach to technically-complex research in order to understand how our view of the engineering and human challenges changes when the two are approached hand-in-hand. The domain chosen for this system was a dental surgery. Dentistry involves a complex workspace with computer interaction constrained by surgery hygiene. Ubiquitous computing offers a compelling interaction alternative to the keyboard and mouse paradigm in such an environment. A multi-method approach that employed ethnographic research and design prototyping was undertaken with dentists from several different private practices. A series of field studies used ethnographic methods such as observation and interview. Design events explored prototypes with activities such as design games, contextual interviews, role-playing and contextual prototyping. Activities were devised with the aim of providing a level playing field, whereby both designers and participants feel they can contribute equally, with their respective disciplinary knowledge. It was found that methods needed to be carefully chosen, devised and managed, in order to communicate complex concepts with participants and to constrain the design to technically feasible options. The thesis examines the design problem from the perspectives of a variety of different stakeholders within a participatory design framework, reflected upon by means of human-centred action research. Data was gathered through design speculations and observation, and explored using methods such as the Video Card Game and Video Interaction Analysis. Fieldwork was analysed using a multi-stage qualitative analysis process which informed further design collaboration with participants. The analysis of data gathered during design studies with dentists also contributed to the development of a prototype system to validate methodological contributions. The resulting prototype utilised off-the-shelf hardware and software which allowed for innovative customisation and development. In-situ prototyping (defined by the author as “participatory bootstrapping”) and a comprehensive knowledge of the domain afforded the creative application of technology. In addition to contributing to the prototype design, the interpretive understandings drawn from analysis identified how technical ideas were presented and utilised by participants of the studies, and how best to engage busy professionals. The final outcomes of the research were a multimodal ubiquitous computing system for interacting within a dental surgery; the development and implementation of a variety of methods aimed at communicating technical concepts and eliciting user motivations, practices and concerns; and a set of design principles for engineers engaging in design of systems for human use. The research presented within this thesis is primarily part of the field of human-computer interaction, but provides evidence of how engineering development can be influenced by a user-centred participatory approach. The benefits that derive from inclusive methods of design are demonstrated by the evaluation of a prototype that employed such methods. The contribution of this thesis is to demonstrate and delineate methods for developing ubiquitous computing technologies for the context of human use. This led to a set of design principles for the engineering of systems for human use: 1. Technology needs to be robust and simple to appropriate. This allows users to give insights on technology developments and also to allow users to discover for themselves how they would use the technology. 2. An evolving and carefully considered set of methods are needed to elicit communication between practitioners and across disciplines. The gaps in understandings and the different representations that arise across the disciplines provide essential clues to next steps in design. These gaps and differences form tensions that can be exploited productively. 3. Context is important for determining which design steps to take. Rather than abstracting a problem in order to solve it, as is usual in engineering design, the problem should remain grounded in the context of use. It reveals what the real problems are that need to be solved rather than the imagined ones. This requires an appreciation of the situated nature of action and of the variability of work. In turn it also requires an appreciation of what the human can and does do and what the machine should support. 4. Accountability in design is required. There is a fundamental tension between trying to make something work and seeing what really does work; specifically it is necessary to understand when automation is worth it in human machine systems. While engaged in the design process, engineers should ask how much technology should reconfigure human practices because of a useful outcome, rather than attempting to automate and converge devices for its own sake. A clear understanding of the constraints and workings of the work space needs to be balanced with the understandings of the limitations of the technology in order to design a system that improves work practice and empowers the practitioner.

The aim of this research is to examine the role of practice in collaboration between designers and African craft producers in order to develop a different methodology for future exchanges that can be more sustainable and equitable. It looks to determine how craft and design practices can act as tools for communication and exchange, to examine how to foster meaningful collaboration when the relationship of those involved is inequitable and to develop a co-creation methodology for practice, capitalising on the differing skills, experiences and cultures of those involved. The research explores collaboration through making with two Cape Town based, craft businesses - Imiso Ceramics and Kunye - investigating the interactions that occur between the collaborators. A critical contextual review reveals the majority of such partnerships are instigated from the top down with an emphasis on product development. This study proposes that the focus is shifted to one that is human-centred, where the process of collaboration between the people involved is foregrounded. By strengthening the collaborative relationships and giving all participants an equal voice, the process becomes more productive, with product development an inherent result. Using a practice based, participatory design methodology, the work draws on the African notion of ubuntu, which speaks of people's interconnectedness. Applying the cross-disciplinary practices of all three collaborators, products are developed, provoking a dialogue that challenges the designer's role in the developing world. The research culminates in an exhibition of the journey, conversations, issues and outcomes that occurred throughout. The exhibition provides an opportunity to provoke a conversation with the stakeholders, listening to their experiences and gaining their feedback on the work presented. Practical exercises for participatory design in future cross-cultural, cross-disciplinary contexts are presented.

This BA thesis is about an attempt to explore micro-utopianism through design, an investigation that seeks which driving forces come into play in a search for a better place. In comparison to conventional utopianism, I will give my insights about why micro-utopianism should instead be practiced as an alternative approach to the subject. It is more about the process, exploring, imagining and experimenting rather than constituting a perfect place. The way I chose to go about this was through participatory design, which is a discipline that involves the stakeholders throughout the whole design process and beyond. I will also talk about dissecting as a design method and how I tried this out to explore micro-utopianism. To do this, the participants and I conducted two workshops so that, together with the participants, we could have a space where our imagination could ‘gestalta’ (or ‘exterpret’) thoughts of critique and opportunities. The two workshops were targeting different age groups: in the first one mainly adults participated and the second workshop was with youth. This will give you an insight of how dissecting can be applied to stimulate the utopian impulse using the power of imagination.

This paper addresses a design exploration focusing on interactive jewellery and wearable computing that could affect sexual harassment in social contexts in everyday life. Drawing on a design inquiry study that lead to the creation of an interactive and digital necklace named Sunshine, which is a personal alarm connected to an emergency center, this paper focuses on how a piece of digital jewellery can contribute to women’s empowerment in relation to sexual harassment. The functionality of Sunshine is based on a device that will be activated when the user presses a button on the necklace and an alert with the location of the user will be sent to an alarm center. The users press the button when in danger or exposed to violence and/or abuse. This study so forth addresses a design exploration of a piece of jewellery that can be seen as a symbol for women’s safety, unity and equality. The combination of digital technology and fashion design demonstrate that people can be brought together and especially be empowering in social contexts where sexual harassment might be a part of women’s everyday life. / <p>Självständigt Examensarbete (Forskningsartikel)</p>

I detta kandidatarbete har jag gått igenom hur man skriver ett manus med kunden, låta kunden komma på idéen och vara med i skrivandeprocessen. Med hjälp av en kombination av Deltagande Design och Kollaborativt Skrivande som metoder har jag byggt ihop en ny modell som hjälpte både mig och kunden för att få det bästa filmmanuset vi kunde göra med dom begränsningarna vi fick på vägen. Under skrivandets gång fick vi lite hinder om vad som kunde vara med och inte kunde vara med. Flera begränsningar dök upp men löstes på det bästa möjliga sätt. Åskådarnas feedback var nyttigt för oss alla för att kunna göra bättre framtida filmer och filmmanusar. / In this Bachelor Thesis I’ve gone through how to write a script with a customer, letting the customer to generate an idea and participate in the writing process. With the help of a combination of Participatory Design and Collaborative Writing as methods I have built a new model that helped me and the customer to get the best script we could make with the restrictions we got along the way. During the writing we got some hindrance on what could be in the script and on what couldn’t. More hindrance got up but got solved on the best possible way. The viewers feedback was necessary to hear for us to evolve and to do better movies and scripts in the future.