Jeanette Falk
Christopher Frauenberger
Abstract
In HCI there have been calls for diversity-driven research and insights into how this may be carried out in practice. One way of conducting diversity-driven HCI research is by doing participatory design. In this paper we contribute with lessons identified from organizing a PD workshop that enabled diverse ways of participating for our participants. The workshop design is based on insights from two years of doing diversity-driven PD with two middle school classes, which are particularly interesting settings to explore as diverse children spend substantial time together in a period of their development that is formative for their socialisation. We describe the workshop itself before reflecting on its structure and facilitation as well as the role of the physical space and the choice of design materials with the aim to distil insights and recommendations about what researchers can do to enable diverse pathways of participation in design processes.
1 INTRODUCTION
In recent years, human-computer interaction (HCI) research has aspired to engage with diverse participants in the design of future technology, acknowledging that knowledge generation is framed as social and “maintained through being shared and contested by many different consciousnesses and perspectives” [50]. However, a selective framing of diversity in the field has been criticised [16, 31, 39] as this may lead to adverse forms of othering [63], i.e. ways of constructing one’s own identity in reference to others along single dimensions of diversity [36, 69]. To address this, there have been calls in the HCI community to position diversity at the field’s core: “we appeal for a mainstreaming of diversity. This situates all users, regardless of identifiable or non-identifiable traits at the core of research and development.” [16].
The notion of Diversity Computing (DivComp) [25], has argued for such a holistic framing of diversity, advocating to design technology as a means of mediating differences and processes of othering in meaningful ways. Setting diversity at the core of HCI is not only a matter of considering the outcomes of designing technology, it is preceded by the need for integrating diversity into the design process. In this paper, we reflect on how we have explored the broader framing of DivComp within a research project and we focus on how to put diversity at the core of a participatory design (PD) process. This focus is motivated by research in PD which emphasises that “[c]onsideration needs to be given to the fact that a group or community consists of several subgroups and individuals, who all have different needs and preconditions to participate, and who therefore need to be involved in different ways” [39]. Further, Kanstrup and Bertelsen suggest that diversity in PD can be managed by facilitating “multiple tempi and paths in participation (in contrast to searching for a uniform type of participation with a fixed rhythm and end-point).” [38]. Thus, the main research question we approach in this paper is how PD processes can be designed and facilitated to offer diverse pathways for participation.
To investigate this question, we present the analysis of a sustained PD research with children aged 11 to 13 in a middle school as a case study. The goal of the overarching research project is to design DivComp Spaces; technologically augmented, interactive physical spaces in the informal in-between spaces of a school environment — i.e. school yards, aisles, break rooms or after-school care — that enable diverse groups of children to have meaningful shared experiences. These particular school spaces bring together diverse groups of children and involve complex dynamics of othering [9] since social interactions in these spaces are partly voluntary and partly mandatory, and are based on a mix of “friendships, camaraderie, segregation, tension, fellowship and competition” [24].
During the time span of two years, we conducted and analysed ten workshops with two classes of 48 middle school students in total. The first, exploratory phase of the project involved nine workshops which were conducted as hour-long sessions within the regular school schedule. By analysing the data from this first phase, we identified three design directions for DivComp Spaces in this particular environment [23]. For this paper, we focus on the next phase of the project where the objective of the project transitioned from exploring ideas to exploring prototypes for DivComp Spaces with our participants. Based on the three design directions and our experiences from the first phase, we organised a tenth workshop that lasted two days with each school class.
While it is not possible to consider all dimensions of diversity in one project [31], we explored the multiple, intersecting dimensions presented to us in the chosen school setting including gender, first-language backgrounds and neurodiversity. Our analysis of the tenth workshop contributes to the PD discourse by identifying four lessons and proposing these as elements to consider for enabling diverse pathways of participation. The identified lessons include (1) the methodological in-situ balancing acts when facilitating PD, (2) the explicit consideration of temporal and (3) spatial aspects of PD activities, and (4) the role of design materials. These lessons are presented as separate lenses, however they are interwoven in practice. We highlight the lessons on the physical space in which PD takes place, and the materials in the space as ways to create diverse pathways of participation, for two main reasons: first, we have a research interest in physical spaces as it aligns with the aims of the overarching research project. Second, while there are related research on facilitating participation with respect to method, see section 5.1, and considering time in PD, see section 5.2, we found fewer contributions on the role of the physical space, see section 5.3, and design materials, see section 5.4, as dimensions for creating diverse pathways for participation.
The paper is structured as follows: we first present related work on diversity in PD workshops focusing on children participants and school settings, and physical spaces and materials in PD. In section 3, we present the method for how we arrive at the identified lessons. We describe how the participants experienced the workshop in section 4 before presenting the identified four lessons in section 5. In section 6, we discuss how these lessons may be used by others as well as some of the limitations.
2 RELATED WORK
In this section, we present related research which connects with the main themes of the paper: Diversity in PD workshops, focusing on children participants and school settings, as well as the role of physical spaces and materials in PD.
DivComp frames diversity and differences between people as something which not only operates on “known diversity dimensions—for example, gender identity or race—but can also depend on mood, health, recent experiences, and personal goals” [25]. The theoretical underpinning of diversity in DivComp is the concept of participatory sense making [17], which describes how meaning is created only by interacting with others. From this perspective, DivComp Spaces can enable agonistic spaces [44], by providing a common frame for interaction and participation that enable processes of othering which have potential of being agonistic, i.e. non-violent, respectful and constructive ways of being different together.
2.1 Diversity in Participatory Design Workshops
Workshops are often described as the “hallmark activity” in PD [7], framing the activities of participants in a design process. Since PD emerged as an approach in the 1970s [2], there have been several explorations of how participation in PD can be structured, such as exploratory design games [10], inspiration card workshops [27], and future workshops [37] to name a few. There are several works which reflect on their PD research practice and how to involve diverse participants. These contributions e.g. take the form of conceptual frameworks which may be used to guide reflection on participation [39], or discuss particular dimensions of diversity (such as: neurodiversity: [4]; vulnerable participants [38]; children participants [59]; older people [5], to name a few). In this section, we focus on related works on how to support diverse participants in PD, more specifically children participants [59] and neurodiverse participants including children [4, 8].
Slingerland and colleagues discuss insights from the PD research literature on how to support children’s participation in PD activities, including how time is needed for learning how to collaborate in a given context, for understanding expectations, and for the participants to feel responsible for their own actions [59]. They also highlight insights from [33, 61] on how the behaviour of children in PD can be different than expected, which speaks to the design of flexible PD processes where children can participate on their own terms [59]. This includes having materials and tasks adjusted to the children’s needs and skills and allowing the “children to adapt them towards their own preference” [59]. This reflects our approach to the PD workshop consisting of two consecutive days with our participants, as well as the longer-term commitment to the same participants for two years.
Based on their PD research with neurodiverse children, Benton and colleagues propose that HCI researchers consider how a neurodiverse PD approach may apply more generally [4]. Although we did not focus on a single dimension of diversity such as neurodiversity, many of the identified features in Benton and colleagues’ proposed framework for structuring a neurodiverse PD approach — the Diversity for Design (D4D) framework [4] — reflect some of our findings, such as the role of familiar environments, supporting multiple modes of expression, and providing adult support. Their framework focus mostly on the structure and sequence of activities — which reflect our findings in section 5.1 and section 5.2 — while an in depth discussion on how the physical space or the design materials supported the participation is not included, which our findings contribute with, see section 5.3 and 5.4.
While neurodiverse PD approaches are an important aspect of furthering diversity-driven research it is but one aspect. This approach to diversity reflects Schlesinger and colleagues’ findings which found that CHI papers published between 1982 and 2016 tended to focus on only a limited number of diversity dimensions, with gender being the most frequently included dimension [57]. For PD research involving children, Börjesson and colleagues conducted a systematic literature review on including developmentally diverse children in the design of technology, and found that out of 88 papers only 11 papers “work(ed) with groups of children with several types of disabilities” [8]. They also found that many of the technologies were only designed for and with children with a particular diagnosis. This can be problematic if these technologies are introduced into school settings [70], where oftentimes children “with a range of different diagnoses are often grouped together, and in some cases they also attend the same class as typically developing children” [8]. Therefore, they call for research which “[d]evise and investigate approaches and methods for mixed groups of children, both children with different disabilities as well as developmentally diverse and typically developing children” [8].
While “there is no way of considering all dimensions in one study or project” [31], we approach diversity in our research from multiple dimensions: Based on our previous research [23] and reflected in the workshop design hypotheses described in section 3.2.1, the design of the PD workshop was intended to embrace the many different children participating in our research. We argue that schools are particularly interesting settings for exploring diversity-driven HCI research and DivComp Spaces, as schools are settings where diverse groups of children are “interacting based on friendships, camaraderie, segregation, tension, fellowship and competition... These public school spaces then become places where people spend their time, partly because they have to, but also because they choose to” [24]. Consideration is generally needed in order to involve diverse people in PD workshops according to their needs and preconditions [39] and this flexibility is particularly important when involving children [59].
Instead of designing a uniform approach to PD workshops, Kanstrup and Bertelsen suggest considering multiple tempi and paths in order to manage diverse participation [38]. In their research, they identified the following different tempi of participation: a high pace entailed proactive participation which went beyond the prescribed design activities, an easy pace followed the prescribed design activities, and a low pace entailed a less systematic participation. Their call for action reflects a similar one made in the CSCW community, where Rosner and colleagues called for “a more engaged understanding of design workshops that takes seriously the ways these events selectively animate (and resist) social alignments” [54].
Criticism has also been directed to how workshop formats manifest PD. In the context of PD with underserved populations in the US, Harrington and colleagues argue how PD workshops may bring “certain privileges, potentially resulting in unintentional harm” [29]. They further note that although the fields of HCI and design have contributed with some recent adaptations to design workshops in this context “the larger literature on PD lacks detailed analyses and reporting of many of these considerations and adaptations related to engaging underserved populations” [29]. This critique is reflected by Teal and French, who observe that many PD publications offer guiding principles for participation, but “do not offer a flexible structure for considering how to apply the principles in practice” [65].
Our paper contributes to the discourse on how to support diverse participation by highlighting practical insights related to facilitation, time, physical space and materials. In this section, we have highlighted some related works which discuss how diverse participation may be supported by considering aspects of facilitation and time [4, 8, 38, 59]
Particularly regarding physical space and materials, we find that there are some reflections on the physical space which constitute the setting of design and participation (see e.g. [34, 41, 49, 56]). However, while these contributions reflect on how, among other things, the physical space may support designerly activities and, to some degree, participation, they do not consider in depth how these activities or physical space support (or suppress) diverse paths of participation. We outline these related works in the next section.
2.1.1 Physical Spaces and Materials in Participatory Design.
In the HCI community, there have been various perspectives on the notion of space, such as design spaces [6], fictional spaces [18], “Handlungsspielraum” [42], or the ‘third space’ between technology developers and end users [45]. Space and place theory is an ongoing and complex discussion. Our theoretical stance on the topic is elaborated in a publication [23] , therefore we briefly outline this stance here: Space describes the physical setting and environment, whereas place is “space with content” [26] as cited in [52]. This notion entails that place not only consists of the physical environment, i.e. space, but also consists of and contributes to shaping our experiences and activities occurring in the space [12]. In the context of creating DivComp Spaces, we frame our PD research as a design process of creating physical spaces which have the potential of becoming places by the people using them. Physical spaces then play a key role not only as the outcome of our PD process, but also for shaping participation during PD activities.
We align with Teal and French’s framing which describes the physical space in PD as one that supports all other conceptual PD spaces, such as design activities, collaboration and creativity [65]. Therefore, the physical space in which PD takes place influence participation and should be carefully considered [42, 56], for example in terms of where to facilitate PD, how to setup up physical spaces to challenge power dynamics, and how the physical space as well as its materials can support reflection and creativity.
The choice of where to facilitate PD activities entail different benefits and challenges, and is not just about access to a location but is a “matter of instantiating shared spaces where partners feel empowered and enabled to fully design” [21]. Elsayed-Ali and colleagues conclude that “[p]recisely how to instantiate shared spaces could be a fruitful issue for future inquiry” [21]. PD can be enacted in the participants’ own location — and thereby resolve potential access and transportation issues for participants — although one drawback of this is existing and complex power dynamics between stakeholders and participants or if PD sessions conflict with schedules in school settings [21]. Conversely, while it may be less accessible for participants to go to PD researchers’ location, these spaces may have exclusive access to specialized materials and equipment. Here, we reflect on how we approached some of the challenges of conducting PD in participants’ location.
On a more pragmatic level, we mitigated some of the scheduling conflicts when doing PD workshops in the participants’ location by collaborating with the teachers on finding a suitable time for a longer PD workshop spanning two days.
One example on how to set up a shared, physical space for facilitating creative participation or “co-experience” is the work of Ivey and Sanders [34], who used probes to gain inspiration from their participants on how the final co-experience environment should be designed so that the participants might like and feel familiar with the space (although the final space design was ultimately made by the designers). Similar to Ivey and Sanders’ approach, the two setups described in section 3.2.2, which we installed for the tenth workshop in the physical school space, were inspired by the preceding nine workshops where we as designers translated the insights that we had gained into the environment of the tenth PD workshop. This translation is reflected in the hypotheses described in section 3.2.1.
To approach the question of how to initiate shared spaces in PD in order to challenge existing power dynamics in a location — such as in a school setting between teachers and students [21] — we chose to conduct the tenth workshop in the informal and in-between school space [9, 24], i.e. the school’s entrance hall. This space not only provided easy access and familiarity for the participants, but it was also a space which was not normally used for any structured activities such as formal school lessons. By engaging with a familiar space in an unfamiliar and novel way for the participants, we hoped to challenge some of the existing power dynamics in the school space, and between the teachers and the participants as students, so that the children felt empowered to engage in the PD workshop.
We frame the physical space as consisting of not just its location but also its materials, thereby following Sanders and Westerlund who defined the physical design space as “the experienced or practiced physical design space in which, and with which, the design work takes place. This includes the materials/props that are present in the space” [56]. Sanders and Westerlund proposed that participants who feel like they are not a “creative type” — and would perhaps struggle with feeling like they cannot contribute to PD — can to some extent be supported by the physical space in which the PD activity takes place [56]. In other words, such a space can “provide a ‘scaffolding’ that supports participants’ creative expression and input” [49].
By conducting PD in a familiar space in an unfamiliar way we sought to not only challenge existing power dynamics [21] but also to support the participants’ reflection and creativity [49, 56]. Specifically, we sought to “disrupt” or change the familiarity of the space by adding elements and materials that would stand out and be surprising, similar to Nind and colleagues’ approach which entails “disrupting academic spaces, opening them up, making them messy and even configuring them differently (Seale et al. 2015) in order to make reflection and different perspectives on expectations and roles in school possible” [46]. Lucero and colleagues connect this ability of physical spaces to influence how people think and reflect to a key idea from embodied, distributed and interactive cognition, where “cognition is always dependent on the given context, and the world becomes part of cognition because we draw upon the resources of the environment and offload cognitive activities into the environment by delegating cognitive work to artefacts that help us to think and act” [41].
Using the terminology by Agger Eriksen [1], materials can be categorised as, respectively, basic design materials such as yarn, paper, pens, aluminium foil, tape, cardboard etc. which can be used for making many different things and as pre-designed and project-specific materials, which have been especially selected and created for the co-design session. Such pre-designed materials can serve as inspiration and enable the participants to explore a conceptual design space which these pre-designed materials constitute. Following this line of thought, we brought both basic design materials and pre-designed, project-specific materials [1] to the school space, specifically in the form of the two setups as described in section 3.2.2.
These perspectives on the physical space and its materials in the context of PD also entail that a physical design space and its materials can have adverse effects: “This can be the case when the environment does not afford people to sit, stand or move around in ways that they want” [56]. Summarising, the physical space and its materials can shape PD, both positively by supporting participants’ creativity and reflection as well as negatively by e.g. not meeting needs and preferences by participants. While we are inspired by the related research, we also find that they often focus on professional designers or professionals from interdisciplinary backgrounds and do not discuss how the physical space and materials may support different pathways to diverse participation.
3 METHOD
In this section, we first describe the participants, then we briefly describe how the tenth workshop format was developed. Subsequently, we describe the data collection and how we analysed the data.
3.1 Participants
The two participating school classes (aged eleven to thirteen) constituted 48 children in total from diverse first-language backgrounds: 3B (this class focused on creativity and design school subjects) consisted of 25 children (19 girls with 1 girl undergoing gender transition, 6 boys) with the following first languages: Albanian (2), Austrian (2), Bosnian (1), Croatian (3), Dari (1), Serbian (4), Slovakian (1), Spanish (1), Turkish (9), and Ukrainian (1). Four of these children had special educational needs, with two having ADHD. 3C (this class focused on natural sciences school subjects) consisted of 23 children (7 girls, 16 boys) with the following first languages: Afghan (3), Austrian (4), Bosnian (3), Brazilian (1), Chechen (3), Cuban (1), Hungarian (1), Macedonian (1), Serbian (1), Slovenian (1), Turkish (2), Romanian (1), and Ukrainian (1). Five of these children had special educational needs, with one having ADHD and one with autism spectrum disorder.
The following roles were present during the workshops too: The first author participated as an observer and took notes, the second and third authors actively facilitated the workshop activities, while the fourth and fifth authors documented the activities. However, during the workshops the fourth and fifth authors transitioned into assisting the workshop facilitation while reducing their documentation role.
3.2 Developing the PD Workshop Format
In this section, we present the rationale for how the workshop was organized and finally we present the studied workshop format.
3.2.1 Preceding Workshop Formats.
The nine preceding workshop are described in detail in [23] , and constituted the first exploratory phase of our overarching PD research project. For the purpose of this paper, we briefly describe the workshops:
• | Workshop 1: Introduction for the children to the researchers and the research project | ||||
• | Workshop 2: The children created Cognitive Maps [67], to gain insight into their perception of the school space | ||||
• | Workshop 3: The children were invited to Imagine Future Technology | ||||
• | Workshops 4, 5 and 6: The children participated in Technology Exploration, where they developed small-scale lo-fi prototypes | ||||
• | Workshop 7: Combining the insights on school space and technology, the children did a Bodystorming [48] | ||||
• | Workshop 8: The children Designed for Others during a design activity involving ideation, lo-fi prototyping and user testing | ||||
• | Workshop 9: Lastly, the children Presented and Celebrated their efforts during the workshops | ||||
After these nine PD workshops with the children, our PD research project transitioned into a second phase which focused on exploring prototypes. We conducted an Inspiration Card Workshop (ICW) [27] with seven HCI researchers and one expert on children pedagogy, who generated ideas for what DivComp Spaces may look like in the school space. The ICW included a discussion on how to conduct the PD workshop format presented in this paper in a way that supported diverse participants and different ways of participation. Based on the practical insights we gained from conducting the first phase of the PD research project and from our discussions on PD and diversity with domain experts during the ICW, we developed the following hypotheses to guide the organization of the tenth PD workshop:
• | Flexible structure: The structure, including time-frame, should be flexible and open towards the participants’ own preferred way of participating within the frame of the workshop theme. | ||||
• | Collaborative or Individual Participation: It should be possible for the participants’ to form groups on their own or participate individually, if they preferred that. | ||||
• | In-Between Spaces: The physical workshop space should be in an in-between school space, large enough to contain different PD activities and materials. | ||||
• | Basic and Pre-designed Design Materials: There should be basic design materials for making many different things and there should also be pre-designed and project-specific materials [1], which could serve as inspiration and enable the participants to extend the design space which these pre-designed materials constituted. | ||||
3.2.2 The PD Workshop Format.
The workshop time-frame was planned within the school’s regular teaching hours, and whenever the school bell rang — indicating a break — we would encourage the students to take a break as well. The workshop days started at 7:45 am and ended at 1:25 pm, i.e. 5 hours 40 minutes per day, see table 1.
| Day 1 | Day 2 | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Time | Activity | Time | Activity |
| 7:45 AM | Introduction to workshop days and short ice-breaker activity | 7:45 AM | Introduction to the second workshop day and short ice-breaker activity |
| 8:40 AM | The two setups were briefly introduced and the children were free to explore them | 8:00 AM | Prototyping ideas |
| 9:50 AM | The children generated ideas. A short introduction to materials and techniques such as finger knitting, hand knitting, crocheting and connecting Makey Makey with inputs. The children made posters with a description or drawing of an idea. During this time-slot, the facilitators facilitated a small ice-breaker activity | 12:35 PM | Presentations and testing of the prototypes |
| 1:00 PM | Idea posters were presented | 1:00 PM | Debrief and lunch circle with reflection: What was good, what was bad? |
| 1:25 PM | Debrief of the first workshop day with intermediate status of ideas and reflection on what they liked and did not like | 1:15 PM | Tidying up |
Table 1: A time plan and description of activities of the two workshop days.
The PD workshop was set in an informal and in-between school space, which was familiar to the children as they transited it everyday: a big entrance area which connected classrooms and a small library, see figure 1.
We brought different basic design materials, such as yarn, paper, pens, aluminium foil, tape, cardboard, and crochet tools. For making interactive things, we brought Makey Makey’s and laptops as well as a set of LittleBits. As a way to "disrupt" the familiarity of the space and help the children imagine what this space could be, we installed two interactive pre-designed and project-specific setups: setup 1 and setup 2.
Figure 1: A floor plan of the school entrance space where the PD workshop took place. The red box reading “Setup 1” indicates the area in which setup 1 was located, while the red box reading “Setup 2” indicates the area in which setup 2 was located. Eventually, the children would spread out to the whole room of this space of the great entrance hall.
Setup 1: The first setup consisted of two artefacts created with electronic textiles and yarns: a sensory tepee (figure 2a) and a finger-knitted net with sensors suspended between two columns (figure 2b). Both were inspired by the urban graffiti ethos of reclaiming the public space, and were meant to inspire the children to make the common school space their own. The idea for the tepee was inspired by some of the children’s own ideas from the nine preceding workshops and our own observations from facilitating these workshops and revolved around having a space for relaxation and retreating from the busy school surroundings. Inside the tepee, the children could touch the crocheted touch-, pull- or pom pom-sensors, and mix different sound clips. The net artefact was designed to create a space for the children where they could explore and engage in performance-like interaction like dancing in front of their peers. It was built using Makey Makeys and conductive materials and included handcrafted e-textile sensors like stretch sensors and pom poms, which would produce sounds upon touch.
Figure 2: Setup 1 consisting of a musical tepee and an interactive knitted net.
Setup 2: The second setup consisted of a space where children were recorded and projected onto a screen in a kind of distorted kaleidoscope pattern, which could be changed with a MIDI controller, see figure 3a. This was inspired by our previous observations of some of the children, who liked to act in front cameras or take pictures in front of mirrors. The setup consisted of a 2.5 m x 2.5 m space with a height of 2 meters, one side partly closed with a canvas for the projections and had two webcams as input sources. The kaleidoscope-patterned projections showed the video stream from one of the two webcams, and the video stream could be switched between the two webcams with a MIDI controller. Setup 2 also consisted of movable cardboard floor tiles which made use of audio-frequency induction loops (AFIL) [20] to create sound spaces by interacting with an amplifier and a tablet, and which could be experienced when wearing headphones, see figure 3b When using a hand-held hearing loop receiver connected to headphones, the children were able to explore three different sound spaces, by moving across the three cardboards. When leaving the cardboard sound space, the audio in the headphones would stop.
Figure 3: Setup 2 consisting of an interactive projection space and induction loop areas. Figure 4: The childrens’ 11 ideas for DivComp Spaces.
3.3 Data Collection
Before the workshops, the school communicated with the participating children’s parents about the workshops and the overall research project, and collected signed consent forms on our behalf from the parents.
3.3.1 Workshop Video.
Two GoPro cameras were installed in the workshop space, one ensuring a birds eye view of most of the workshop space and the other recording the interactive projection space in setup 2. Since the birds eye view camera was pointed towards the entrance hall, which was also used by other children during the breaks, we made sure to turn the camera off whenever the school bell rang signalling the break. In total, 14 hours of video were recorded from the two cameras. The first, second and third authors did an open, initial coding of the videos in MaxQDA and subsequently compared and discussed the codes, which informed their reflections on the workshop. The video data supported the authors in recalling the workshop for analysis [35], particularly regarding observations on the children’s movement in the workshop space.
3.3.2 Audio-recorded Interviews and Surveys with Participants.
During the workshop, the fourth and fifth authors documented the workshop activities by taking photographs and conducting audio-recorded contextual interviews with the children. At the end of the workshop, all five participating authors interviewed the groups of children about their immediate experience of the workshop and what they had created during the workshop, see appendix A. About three months after the tenth workshop, five researchers (including three of the participating authors) from our lab went back to the school classes and distributed surveys to the children (29 responses) and, for each class, five children volunteered to participate in semi-structured audio-recorded individual interviews by a researcher, i.e. ten interviews in total. Both the surveys and the interviews were conducted following an interview guide, see appendix B. All interviews were transcribed and translated into English for analysis. The survey answers are summarised in section 4. In total, 545 photographs were taken and 10 hours of audio were recorded.
3.3.3 In-Situ and Post-Situ Observations and Reflections from Facilitators.
Observations and in-situ reflections were written by the first author during the workshop while the second, third, fourth and fifth author wrote post-situ reflections of their workshop experience, creating in total 7400 words.
3.4 Analysis
For the purpose of this paper, the video and audio recordings as well as the facilitator and observer notes played a major role for supporting our reflection and development of the identified lessons. The other workshop outputs — such as the children’s sketches and lo-fi prototypes, see figure 4 where 11 design ideas from the children are illustrated — played a minor role for supporting our reflections on the workshop. Shortly after the PD workshop the first, second, third, fourth and fifth authors who participated in the workshop discussed immediate impressions and reflections on the workshop. Over the course of the next few months after the PD workshop, the data was organised and analysed by the first, second and third authors. We used the DivComp paradigm as an overall lens to analyse and reflect on our data in order to identify lessons for organizing diversity-driven PD workshops. Specifically, we analysed the data to identify different ways of how the children participated during the workshop and how their participation changed over time as well as looking for how the physical space and its materials supported these different ways of participation.
Similar to others in PD, see e.g. [64], we use a “lessons learned” or, rather, “lessons identified”1 format for our findings, i.e. “that from which others can learn, and it should be actionable” [51].
4 THE WORKSHOP EXPERIENCE
From the survey, the aspects which the participants reported to have enjoyed the most were: working in a team (N = 9), finger knitting and crocheting (N = 8), playing or making games (N = 6), building (N = 4), working with computers and Makey Makey (N = 4), choosing and embedding music (N = 3), having creative freedom (N = 3), and working alone (N = 2). The least enjoyed aspects mentioned were challenges during the building process (N = 4) and during the ideation process (N = 2), as well as the individual design systems or design techniques that we introduced during the workshops (N = 3).
While many participants described working in a team as one of the best experiences of the workshops ("[...] we were allowed to work together and talk together and try out different things"), one participant explicitly enjoyed working on their own: "I had the most fun building, because I did it alone and I had peace and quiet." Another participant identified one of their main learnings as follows: "That I can work well with fingers and work alone." Group work was also perceived as challenging by some participants: "Group work was not so good, because we couldn’t work that well together. And then we did not want to work together, and then we ended up working together after all."
While 8 participants reported having learned nothing new during the workshops, other participants highlighted learning that revolved around the use of Makey Makey and physical materials (like tin foil) for computing (8 participants): "I learned that you can make many different games with simple things lying around at home." Others have noted a boost of self-confidence as part of their workshop experience: "That I can work well with fingers", "I learned that I am handy". "I probably knew it before, but now I am entirely sure that we can do anything we want. [...] It means that we have no boundaries to build something." Another participant reflected on the qualities of designers which are required for a successful design project: "You have to be patient to make something good in the end."
One example of creative freedom was described by one of the participants: "That you could do what you wanted and you felt free. That you left your ideas free and you could do what you wanted."
Finger-knitting, which was an integral part of how setup 1 was built, was generally perceived as a relaxing and fun activity by nine participants: "Because you don’t get bored quickly and you can get comfortable and finger knit at the same time.", "Because I prefer to work with my hands more (finger knitting)." Setup 2 was appreciated for being "modern", "interesting", and having "many functions."
Two participants highlighted the experience of using their craft skills and expertise to educate their peers and teachers: "I also taught my teacher and my friends how to crochet! :D ***", and "I really liked teaching my friends how to crochet!!!", "I know how to crochet, so it was fun to teach the others."
5 LESSONS IDENTIFIED FOR DIVERSITY DRIVEN PD WORKSHOPS
How can we organize diversity-driven workshops which enable diverse paths of participation? In the following section, we reflect on how our PD workshop contributes to this question, identifying lessons in four areas (facilitation, time, space and materials), which future PD research and practice may consider when exploring diversity-driven PD.
5.1 Balancing Acts: Facilitating Diverse Participation in PD Workshops
An essential part of PD is the “ability to improvise and adapt our practice ‘in the moment’ is a key quality developed through the experiential nature of our work.” [65]. As Slingerland and colleagues highlighted from the PD literature [59], the behaviour of children in PD can be different than expected and therefore PD processes should be flexible. In addition to this it is not only essential to adapt practices in the moment; a part of the PD workshop facilitator’s role is to embrace ambiguity towards their own role. This can be difficult to do as the facilitators may also have put in a lot of time and energy into planning the PD workshop, and anticipate certain behaviours or outcomes from their planned activities and structures.
In planning the workshop facilitation all five participating researchers had a predefined role, which had to be adapted. During the workshop, it turned out that the groups needed more support than was foreseen. Consequently, the two researchers who initially were tasked with documenting the workshop switched to supporting the children in ideation and prototyping, meaning that four researchers were supporting two groups of children simultaneously. As we experienced during the workshop, the role of a PD facilitator is a balancing act between different roles: e.g. balancing between supporting the children who are eager to engage and explore, and supporting and motivating others to become involved. It is also balancing between teaching the children about prototyping and what is possible with the available materials, and facilitating ideation within the constraints of the prototyping environment, without imposing an idea on them.
We had expected the children to work in the vicinity of the two setups and choose one of the two setups as inspiration to their ideas; instead, they spread out to the whole entrance hall and occupied spaces where they would continue the PD activities and where their ideas were not confined to the modalities suggested by the two setups. At first, this seemed like a breakdown of the purpose of the workshop and we discussed strategies for how to mitigate this during the workshop. Eventually we adapted to the children’s behaviour as we at the same time could see value in the children taking ownership of their time, ideas and space. As one child described in an interview conducted about three months after the workshop:
“It surprised me that we worked like that, exactly what we want. In class, you are sometimes allowed to do what you want. But in this project, we were allowed to decide almost everything ourselves. Almost everything, about 90%. And yes, that kind of surprised me. And that we could walk around all the time and chat with our friends.”
Not only the children developed a sense of ownership over ideas and spaces, but also the facilitators started to take a share in the ideas. For example, the children regularly asked for support with ideation (e.g. pitching their idea for feedback), facilitators supported the handling of basic and project specific materials (e.g. interaction with Makey Makey interface on laptop), they helped with realising concepts (i.e. how the idea could be realized with the available materials) and tried to resolve group conflicts. In this way, facilitators became closely looped in to the prototyping, co-shaping the directions which the projects took. Further, the facilitators started to divide facilitation responsibilities amongst themselves — by staying with particular groups during the workshop — so that children could advance with their projects according to their diverse paces and interests. Thus, the children were supported by a facilitator that knew about their ideas.
The facilitator role hence includes an awareness of ownership as a balancing act: it is recognizing when there is value in letting the PD process be participant-driven (and perhaps challenge the facilitators’ ideas of how the process should have been) and it is balancing the supporting facilitator role without imposing ideas and thereby supersede the participant-driven process. We argue that this balance, and awareness of it, can be essential in enabling diverse paths of participation in PD workshops.
Another balancing act is recognising the things within and outside the boundaries of the facilitator role. One of our hypotheses for a diversity-driven PD workshop was that it should be possible for the participants to form groups on their own or participate individually. While some children enjoyed working on their own, this organizational choice on our side also exposed pre-existing power structures in the class. For example, we observed how one child would spend a lot of time on her own and, during the workshop, she eventually told one of the facilitators that the rest of the class usually excluded her. Spiel and colleagues suggest micro-ethics as a lens for understanding the kinds of in-the-moment judgements and decisions PD facilitators need to take in the context of situational tensions when doing PD [62]. What is the responsibility of PD facilitators in the case of excluded individuals? Should they facilitate the participant’s inclusion into a group of children or focus on supporting their individual participation during the workshop? This example illustrates a long-term tension and power dynamic, which we realised was at least partially outside the boundaries of our power as facilitators. On a micro-ethical level this was a difficult situation, however, in the moment we focused on supporting her participation in the workshop on her own and giving her a good experience, as one facilitator reflected after the workshop: “In the end, she was incredibly proud of herself, it felt like this experience was really empowering to her.” One of the researchers, who transitioned from conducting documentation to facilitation, reflected on these kinds of in situ balancing acts after the workshop:
“The crafting materials needed to be organised, the cable to be unravelled, the girl’s tears picked up due to something not working how she imagined it, the boy with special needs had to be accommodated, one group needed to be specially motivated, and the “Sports activity” group had to be helped to balance the tasks so that no one felt disadvantaged or that others were resting on their work.”
These in situ balancing acts — consisting of meeting diverse needs, ambitions, ideas and skill-sets from the children — requires a great deal of patience, adaptability and empathy from the facilitators and can, at times, be overwhelming, requiring small acts of self-care. For example, transitioning back to the role of documentation and observing the workshop through a camera lens sometimes served as a mental retreat for the facilitator, enabling a bit of distanced time and space for reflection and recharging.
In addition to taking on roles before (as organizers) and during PD workshops (as facilitators and observing researchers), as PD researchers we often engage with participants post-situ in order to reflect on PD activities. Here, yet another balancing act may arise for PD researchers: Some children were proud and liked what they had achieved with their workshop outcome, i.e. their final prototype. However, some were critical of themselves and reflected that they could have done more:
Child: “It could be better. In the beginning we had a lot of energy, we had a lot of ideas. And then at the end we were lazy and just made up something like that. Motivation was first at the top and then at the bottom. [...]”
Interviewer: “But you also have to think, you only had two days. [...] you first have to get to know it [the design materials] and for that you have to use it. And you were only a team of two. All the other teams were much bigger. So I have to say that you were really great.”
During the interview, which was conducted three months after the workshop, the role of the interviewer transitioned into a supportive role, turning the children’s disappointment around and make them aware of what they had achieved in the time span of the workshop despite their initial ambitions for more.
While acknowledging that some PD studies — citing [14, 32, 40]— have “brought attention to the quality of facilitator-participant relations and its effect on participation and the participatory result” [15], Dahl and Sharma argue that “an extensive study of how experienced PD facilitators conceptualize their role has, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, not yet been conducted” [15]. Our insights especially relates to one of their highlighted concerns regarding the facilitator role: upholding situational awareness [15]. Dahl and Sharma describes this as the “capacity to notice and take rational, purposeful actions in response to rapidly changing situations” [15] and compares this with Schön’s notion of reflection-in-action [58].
Summarising, enabling diverse pathways for participation is not only impacted by the structure of the PD workshop but is also impacted by the PD facilitators’ abilities to embrace ambiguity in relation to facilitating PD workshops in order to adapt to and support the diverse needs of participation. This entails an ability to navigate different balancing acts, such as being aware of the micro-ethical aspects [62] of taking reflective actions in situ [15, 58], and recognizing when there is value in allowing the PD process to be participant-driven in ways which may even challenge the facilitator’s preconceptions, while simultaneously maintaining a supportive role that refrains from imposing ideas onto the participant-driven process.
5.2 Time as a Design Dimension for Diverse Participation in PD
We wanted the workshop structure, including the time-frame, to be flexible towards the participants’ own preferred way of participating within the frame of the workshop theme. While the plan for the workshop was for the children to come up with ideas for designs in their school space, there were only a few fixed time-points during the workshop where we had planned certain activities to happen. The rest of the workshop was planned with plenty of time which was participant-driven and supported by the facilitators.
For example, the first objective for the children was to freely explore the two setups with only a brief introduction to the setups from the second and third authors who initially were the only two meant to facilitate the workshop. Some children would immediately approach the setups curiously while others stayed in the background. In the beginning the facilitators attempted to nudge the children to explore the setups, but many of the children would use more time on other activities in the spacious entrance hall and, for example, play a ball game or sit in a nearby couch. As noted by the observing researcher “The whole Aula is being used”, and at this point one of the birds eye view GoPros was moved in order to capture more of the space and the different activities going on outside the space of the two setups, including sitting in the couch or on the floor, walking and running around, playing with a ball, crocheting and knitting, chatting.
In terms of time, the workshop was quite long and the children had plenty of time to participate and come up with ideas and designs, but also do things which did not seem to relate to the objectives of the workshop (such as playing and running around in the space). We noticed how the energy in the room would often fluctuate between high and low (i.e. lots of movement and excited chatter vs. less movement and quiet talk). This example illustrates the potential and challenges of having long time frames (in terms of hours) with mostly unstructured time, where the children could work on their own with help from facilitators if needed (we view structured time in terms of the planned activities, where all the children came together and the facilitators instructed them or facilitated an activity).
A potential challenge is that some participants may disengage completely with the activities of the workshop, and potentially become bored, which some children told us that they were during the workshop. While boredom is often associated with a negative and even distressing experience, studies have linked boredom to positive experiences too, such as reflection, relaxation, trying something new [30] and creativity [3, 30, 43]. Boredom has, for example, been related to the incubation phase of creativity [53], referring to Wallas’ account of the creative process: preparation, incubation, illumination, and verification [68]. Consequently, boredom should not be dismissed outright but rather acknowledged as a valuable aspect of the workshop experience as the participants’ attempts to overcome boredom can potentially prompt reflection and creativity. During an interview three months after the workshop, one child reflected on how their attempt to overcome boredom sparked an idea that they eventually prototyped (see figure 4f):
“We played Limbo first out of boredom. And then she realised we could do it. But not too small, but [using] several columns. And everything, yes that fits, we can do that. And then we asked you how it all works with Makey Makey. And then we said, yes that works, we can do that.”
We also observed that the long, unstructured time enabled the participants to move back and forth between activities, such as respectively ideating and designing within the frame of the workshop objective and engaging in high-energy play or chatting in the entrance space. This seemed to work well for varying individual needs, providing some participants with a retreat while enabling others to maintain continuous participation. This observation reflects Kanstrup and Bertelsen’s notion of different tempi and paths of participation for doing PD [38]. Falk and colleagues continue this line of thinking and suggest time as a design dimension for configuring participation: “we suggest that managing time in design processes becomes a balancing act, where both short-term and long-term design processes can complement each other, by respectively foregrounding some qualities of decision making and participation as well as downplaying other qualities” [22]. Although they compare short-term and long-term design processes, we argue that time as a design dimension for configuring participation can also be considered within individual design activities such as PD workshops.
Summarising, we argue that in enabling diverse pathways for participation PD practitioners should consider time as a design dimension for structuring participation. For example, by enabling enough time for unstructured participation some participants may choose to engage in other activities parallel to the workshop such as play or the unstructured time may lead to experiences of boredom and attempts to overcome boredom, both which have been linked to increased creativity and which should therefore not be dismissed (see e.g. [66] for play, [43] for boredom).
5.3 Considering Space for Accommodating Diverse Participation
We chose the great entrance hall of the school as the in-between space for our workshop activities, setups and materials. One aspect of having the workshop activities in one big space, meant that the different groups’ and individual children’s ideation and prototyping were visible to each other, and that they could freely move between their own spaces, the two setups and the design materials and interact with each other. From creativity research, we know that cues in the environment [11] — and in our case, this visibility in the space to others’ ideas and progress and the backdrop of the two setups — can be inspirational. For example, during an interview three months after the workshop one child reflected on how they felt creative and also noticed others’ creativity:
“I noticed that I am actually very creative and that I actually have a lot of ideas that I never really use. Everyone somehow had an idea and presented it and then you always got new ideas and I just realised that I actually have a lot of ideas and I didn’t know that before.”
Another aspect of having the workshop in a large space such as the entrance hall, was that the children had space to play together, which we also noticed that many children did during the workshop. As one child reflected during an interview three months after the workshop:
“but it was just cool that we could play there, because here [in a narrower hallway in front of their classroom] we don’t have a place for it and we could just do something together with the class and play and stuff. [...] because it was simply a class community where we did things together again. We also do a lot together in class because we all sit together, but it’s so much fun when we can play together. We don’t meet outside that often either. That’s why I really liked the fact that we could play something together.
As the theory on environmental cues also implies, their impact on creativity can also be adverse [11, 56]. While we observed that the large space offered many opportunities for the children to play together and get inspired by each other, it was a bit of a double-edged sword as we also observed how it was disturbing for some, for example, if the room got too noisy or busy. However in those cases, it seemed to mitigate this disadvantage that the children were then able to move to another, calmer, part of the space.
Because the workshop took place in the great entrance hall, many other children of the school who did not participate would walk by during the breaks. While we had to turn off the cameras during the breaks, we observed how non-participating teachers and children showed curiosity towards the two setups, the workshop materials and the participating children’s own prototypes. For example, one of the prototypes, see figure 4f, was made with strings criss-crossing between four columns, creating a kind of obstacle course in a central location in the entrance hall. The observing researcher noted several kinds of interactions from the non-participating children passing by: “Other children from school pass by the space and some playfully interact with the strings suspended across space: Go under, spagat/split, Limbo, touch.” During an interview three months after the workshop, a child touched on this aspect too:
“For example, the little children from class 1c. They asked me what we were doing down there when we came in and then I explained to them what we were doing and they thought it was really cool. Then they asked me why they don’t do that and I said, yes, I’m sure they do that too and they really liked it.”
Not only can having workshop activities in one space large enough to contain many different kinds of activities and materials potentially support the participants’ creativity (as they get inspired by environmental cues such as seeing each others’ ideas and progress), it can also inspire non-participants passing by.
As described in section 5.1, we expected that the children would spend more time in the space with the two setups. Instead, we observed lots of movement between the two setups and the children’s “own spaces”, which they had occupied elsewhere in the entrance hall, as described by the observing researcher during the workshop:
“[...] the students don’t work with either one system or the other. They float between them, create their own spaces. They move back and forth between their space and the installations, carrying their idea papers [papers where the children sketched their ideas for designs.]”
Throughout the workshop, children would occasionally break out from their own spaces, move towards the two setups and either explore them more on their own or with a couple of friends or ask one of the facilitators to explain in more detail how the two setups worked and how they could interact with them. We had also expected that the children would reuse the modalities of the setups in their own ideas and prototypes, for example, by continue building the interactive yarn net in setup 1 or build a prototype connected to the projection space in setup 2. A facilitator reflected on this unanticipated behaviour after the workshop:
“Our ‘open’ systems [the two setups] did not work out as invitations to create, children did not see opportunities to build within those or extend them, but always started building their own ideas from scratch.”
Although the children did not build within or extend the two setups (as we had imagined), the children built their ideas using especially Makey Makey’s and different conductive materials, which was also how the basic functionality of setup 1 was designed. In this way, it seemed like the setups worked more as inspiration sources — rather than “building blocks” — for the children’s ideas, although in one of the final ideas, the children did reuse the induction loop modality of setup 2 (see figure 3b).
One reason for the children using the setups mostly as inspiration sources rather than building blocks could be related to the fidelity of the setups, where “[l]ow-fidelity or deliberately ambiguous prototypes invite participants to be more critical [i.e. to be able to reflect and identify opportunities for innovation] than highly polished prototypes” [65]. As one facilitator reflected critically after the workshop: “I think we created an over-engineered [...] environment with our installations [the two setups]”, the term over-engineered suggesting a high fidelity of the setups.
Although the setups were not used exactly in the way we had imagined, “disrupting” the normal school space — with both the setups, the design materials and the activities themselves — seemed to be surprising and inspirational, and leaving an impression on the children. For example, during an interview three months after the workshop, a child reflected on how they liked how the space looked during the workshop:
Child: “Yes, sometimes I think back to when we did that. It looked really crowded, what we did there. There was really something everywhere and I thought that was cool. And I wish it would have stayed like that, but you had to clean it up. But I feel more comfortable there now.”
Interviewer: “Okay. Why do you feel more comfortable there?”
Child: “Yes, because it was fun to do that. And I like to think back on it. And I hope they come back and do it with us again.”
Interviewer: “Why was it [the auditorium or great entrance hall] better than it is now?
Child: “Well, I think the auditorium looks very empty. And when we did that, then it looked nicely decorated. And everyone had fun in the assembly hall. I think that’s why.”
Summarising, the physical space can be considered a design dimension which can enable diverse participation, especially if it is large enough to accommodate the participants’ engagement in not only designing but also playing, relaxing, and moving. Thereby, participants are exposed to each other’s different ideas and approaches which may prompt their creativity further. While the fidelity of predesigned prototypes, used to inspire the participants, should be balanced for enabling participants to critically interact and build with them, predesigned prototypes may disrupt how the space is perceived by participants, serving as inspiration sources and showcase how the design materials can be built to create interactive things.
5.4 The Role of Basic Design Materials for Enabling Diverse Participation
While the two setups took more of an inspirational background role for the children’s creative processes, we observed that the design materials we had brought to the workshop space played very different roles for the children. The basic design materials seemed to be somewhat easy for most children to pick up, however the interactive design materials, i.e. the Makey Makey and laptops, required more support from the facilitators and was one of the main reasons why two of the researchers switched from documenting to facilitating as well. Regarding the yarn as a design material, one facilitator reflected:
“[finger-knitting] turned out to be a perfect activity to (1) get started with the material and with project days in general, and a perfect (2) side-activity for disengaged children or (3) children who were excluded from other groups. I was very impressed with how contagious and autonomous this material and technique turned out to be: I think I’ve only shown finger-knitting to two girls, and half an hour later half of the class was finger-knitting - they have taught each other. A similar thing happened with crocheting: one girl already knew how to do it and has shown it to others - and a moment later several people were sitting in a circle crocheting with a hook.
Interestingly, for some of the children the finger-knitting became a central part of their workshop activity for different reasons. For example, some incorporated the finger-knitting into their ideas (see figures 4d and 4g), others only engaged with the finger-knitting itself without using it for their prototypes. In a reflection note, one of the facilitators recalled a conversation they had with a child during the workshop about finger-knitting and how this was very relaxing for him and a way of retreating from busy surroundings:
“I had a conversation with one boy who was finger knitting by himself. He said that he was at peace while doing it and that he had watched his grandmother do it often. He also said that he liked the fact that you can make many things out of the knitted yarn. He didn’t like it when it was really loud in class or when students were fighting every day [...] During knitting, he said that he didn’t have to think as much as in school or when he was doing sports, and that doing something without thinking about it was calming for him. He shared that he was neither overwhelmed nor underwhelmed while working on it, and that he didn’t have to think if he was doing it the right or wrong way.”
For another child, finger-knitting became their main way of participating. This particular child was neurodiverse and had special educational needs and was therefore accompanied by a teacher most of the time to support him. He showed great interest in the workshop, however had difficulties working with other children and kept to himself. Instead, after he was shown how to do finger-knitting, he made several finger-knits which he would then connect to the yarn wall in setup 1 and continued doing this throughout the workshop.
Although this child did not present an idea or built a prototype as such like his class-mates, we can still reflect on his activity as an example on a low pace participation [38] or a kind of peripheral or parallel participation, where the child participated on his own terms next to his peers. How can this kind of participation and its contributions be genuinely considered for a PD project without turning into a kind of pro forma participation? We suggest enabling such participation and turn to not just the output but observing the activity itself: What kind of activity do they enjoy, and how can this activity be translated into the design space? In the case of the finger knitting: How can a final design include interaction which resembles that of finger knitting? Here, we as PD researchers might translate the act of finger knitting into design qualities such as: crafting with hands, repetition, low barrier to participate after learning basics of the interaction.
Summarising, while interactive design materials may require more facilitation, some basic design materials enabled diverse participation by accommodating different kinds of activities such as: prototyping, relaxing and peripheral participation. For example, by enabling peripheral participation we suggest that participants can participate on their own terms and both achieve the joy of creating something and participate in contributing to the PD project even if it does not result in traditional workshop outputs like a functioning prototype.
6 DISCUSSION
The four lessons are presented as separate lenses, however, they evidently are interwoven and cannot be considered in isolation. They actively need to work together to create diverse pathways for participation. For example, providing enough time may require a certain space and materials to enable some children to engage in play activities, while others continue their design activity. Further, this may only be possible if the facilitator makes the appropriate choices as part of their ongoing in-situ balancing acts, giving some children the freedom to disengage, while keeping others focused on the task. We argue it is very effective to be actively aware as PD researchers about these different dimensions to facilitate diverse pathways, but also acknowledge that there is a limit to what can be planned in advance. Like with many PD activities there remains an uncertainty about how engagements unfold and there is no guarantee to be able to enable all the pathways needed at any particular time.
While our empirical case is based on a school-setting with children, we propose that these lessons can inform other PD efforts with diverse participants and where there is concern about their ability to meaningfully engage. Like in our case, PD researchers can make diverse pathways for participation available by introducing the flexibility for participants to spend time “off” from the tasks at hand in their workshop formats. This can be suggested as a break or idle time, but also framed as an opportunity to explore ideas on their own account, away from the questions posed by the researchers. Varying the pace and rhythm of participation in flexible ways can become a means to allow for different speeds at which diverse participants prefer to engage [22, 38].
Such an active role of different temporalities is deeply interwoven with the affordances of the space in the process. To enable time away from the workshop structure, requires appropriate physical spaces that allow the easy transitioning of participants from and, importantly, back into joint PD activities. Such considerations in the planning need to take into account the overall numbers of participants. For example, our approach to engage with diverse participants was to include a large cohort at the same time and therefore a large space was needed to accommodate their different preferences for how to participate well. A large enough space for joint activities was as much required as opportunities for break-out-spaces in which individuals or small groups could retreat to “do their thing” or to facilitate one-on-one activities [4]. Our research has also highlighted how “space cues”, i.e. affordances within any given space, for example in the form of disruptions of project-specific props in familiar spaces, can be used to prompt participants’ creativity in PD. While our case exemplified this kind of disruption in a large space, this can also be considered in smaller spaces or for indicating a break-out space. Of course, in certain cases familiarity of a space is important to uphold, for example to make participants feel safe [4], and we acknowledge that this option sometimes comes with a trade-off.
The insights which we have presented in this paper are all tied to PD activities in a physical space. However, diverse pathways for participation equally need to be considered in remote or hybrid PD settings [13, 38]. As Elsayed-Ali et al. argue: “while a remote setting affords new opportunities and may make it easier to access PD, using a new design space may also raise newfound challenges to inclusion”, including challenges of “grounding presence and embodiment, difficulties with design materials and methods, as well as unforeseen ethical challenges” [21]. While online spaces are of a very different nature, we argue that an integrated view on time, space, materials and facilitation, as presented in this paper, can be equally beneficial to enable diverse pathways of participation.
For example, our experiences suggest that all remote forms of PD participation should be considered hybrid [55] in the way that they consist of the shared online space as well as the participants’ individual physical spaces. While facilitators may have less control over these spaces, the spaces can also be actively included in the format, e.g. as opportunities for retreat or as spaces to interact with local support structures such as parents or siblings. Much research in the Interaction Design and Children (IDC) community has been done to think about these structures [13], including from a perspective of inclusion and accessibility. What we want to add to this is a concern for the dimensions of facilitation, time, space, and materials in remote PD settings and highlight the importance of the actual physical spaces participants are in. In terms of materials, possibilities are offered by hybrid design tools — “artefacts that blend the physical with the digital” [60] — for supporting participatory and embodied sense-making to bridge the physical-digital divide in such PD settings [60]. In terms of time, remote settings allow for a wider range and mixture of synchronous and asynchronous activities that enable participants to adopt a pace of participation that they prefer [22].
As with on-site formats, we argue that facilitation, time, space, and materials cannot be considered in isolation for remote or hybrid settings, but needs to be integrated to offer diverse pathways for participation. While we believe that our insights around the use of these dimensions will also be productive for remote and hybrid participation, further work is needed to investigate to which extent they hold true and to which extent they need to be adapted.
6.1 Limitations and Future Research
Although we aimed at embracing as many of the participants as possible and create different pathways which enabled their participation, their teachers had more of a passive role during the workshops. While there may be value in balancing power relations — e.g. by emphasising the voice of the children during workshops who may otherwise restrain themselves more because of a potential authority bias — the teachers’ voices should be enabled too, in order to genuinely ensure a diversity-driven approach. For future research, we are planning workshops to include the teachers in developing the design space for our PD research project, which in the long-term will result in an interactive design in the physical school space. Here, the role of the teachers is ideally to be able to do light-weight maintenance of the final design to ensure a sustainable long-term implementation of the design into the school space [47].
In turn, this also creates ethical and methodological challenges for us as the designers: How do we stay true to our diverse participants’ voices and tie together the different PD activities and their outcomes in order to transform this rich design space into a final design? As a start, we have begun the work of mapping all design ideas — so far, counting all our PD activities, this includes in total 78 ideas2 — and analysing them inductively by searching for common themes and characteristics. One way of doing this kind of design space mapping is to deconstruct the ideas in terms of “aspects of concern and options for how these aspects can be implemented” [28], which can then be used to systematically and transparently conceptualise the design space and thereby support us as the designers in transforming the design space into a final design [19].
7 CONCLUSION
Based on two years of PD research with two middle school classes, we presented lessons identified for how to organize diversity-driven PD workshops which may enable diverse paths of participation. We formulated hypotheses to guide how the PD workshop, presented in this paper, was organised and described its setup. Based on an analysis of a comprehensive data-collection, we reflected on how the workshop enabled diverse paths of participation. We discuss how PD researchers may consider: (1) The balancing acts of facilitating diverse participation, (2) time as a design dimension for diverse participation in PD, (3) the physical space for accommodating diverse participation, and (4) the role of basic design materials for enabling diverse participation. For our future research, we aim at further exploring to which extent the identified lessons hold true and how they might be adapted for different PD contexts, such as remote or hybrid settings.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We thank the Austrian middle school teachers and the children who participated in this study. This research has been supported by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) [P34226-N].
A INTERVIEW QUESTIONS IMMEDIATELY AFTER THE WORKSHOP
(1) | What did you/did you not like about the workshop and why? | ||||
(2) | Were some things easier to do than others? Which ones? Why? | ||||
(3) | How do you feel about your outcome? | ||||
(4) | Was the outcome worth the effort you put into it? | ||||
(5) | How did you feel the time went by, was it fast or slow? When did it feel like this? | ||||
(6) | Did you feel creative and when did you feel creative? | ||||
B SURVEY AND INTERVIEW QUESTIONS ABOUT THREE MONTHS AFTER THE WORKSHOP
(1) | Describe the project you worked on during the project days | ||||
(2) | What did you enjoy most / least during the project days? Why? | ||||
(3) | Which materials / equipment did you like and why? (Finger knitting, Music boxes with headphones, Crocheting, Video projection with controls, Making pom-poms, Camera, Paper and pen, Alufoil and masking tape, Makey-Makey) | ||||
(4) | How did it feel to work in the entrance hall and how was it different to working in the classroom? Did you have fun? Did you feel felt creative? Free? Or uncomfortable? Watched by others? | ||||
(5) | What did you learn from the project work? What new skills did skills did you learn and what did you discover about yourself? | ||||
Footnotes
1 “NATO (2011) in its Lessons Learned Handbook states that recorded lessons are ‘identified lessons’ rather than ‘lessons learned’ and it requires a project to apply the identified lessons before they are learned” [51].
Footnote2 Here, we define ideas as a conceptual outcome of a PD activity. This means that not all of these ideas were neither necessarily feasible or very original. However, taken together, all of the ideas include more or less interesting and relevant aspects as viewed from the framing of the PD research project.
Footnote
Supplemental Material
Available for Download
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Index Terms
- Designing Diverse Pathways for Participation
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