On April 3rd 2019 I, with my assistant Michael, gave a presentation on the topic of Designing with Communities. This seminar gave a brief overview of what communities are, what issues communities face, and methods for designing with communities. The presentation can be seen below:
Following the seminar, I led a Participatory Design workshop with the class, where we would explore the topic of pollution in the UL campus community.
We started our workshop with an 'ice-breaker' using 'show and tell' as a warm up method for getting the groups to think about a particular topic before attending the workshop. In an email prior to our seminar we asked the participants to bring "one item that represents pollution (in any form) on campus; something that you see as a cause of pollution, or something that you think is contributing to reducing pollution, or anything in between. Just make sure it's something representing what YOU think is an issue!" So, when our workshop began we asked our participants to take out the items they had brought with them and we discussed them and why we felt they were important issues to address. There was one cause of pollution that the entire group found themselves concerned about: plastic. Three of the participants brought something that was exclusively a form of plastic (plastic bag, plastic packaging etc.), and others brought items or images that alluded to the disposal and waste of plastic, particularly single use plastics. Traffic and public transport options in Limerick were also spoken about by the group. Following the ice-breaker, I posed two questions to our participants; "How can the UL community reduce their pollution on campus?" and "Where are the most polluted places on campus?". I provided a map of the UL campus for the participants to understand the extent of the area we wanted to talk about. Again, the issue of traffic leaving UL in the evenings was mentioned as it is spectacularly inefficient. This traffic added to both air and noise pollution on campus. The river was also mentioned, not so much as a source of pollution, but as an entity affected by pollution. The river and its banks are popular walking areas on campus, and the tide often washes rubbish onto the banks. There is plenty of wildlife in the area that is dependent on the river, so this consistent level of pollution was worrying to the group. After posing these questions to the group and discussing the aforementioned issues, I handed out a set of picture cards to each participant. The pictures on the cards depicted various types of pollution and dangers associated with it. We asked the participants to choose three or more pictures that they felt represented the biggest challenges on campus. The top choice, which we could have predicted based on the discussions to this point, was the image of the plastic waste. The traffic image was also selected by the vast majority of participants. Rounding out the top three issues faced by the campus community was food waste.
At this point, I decided to split the group into two based on the issues they identified through pictures as concerning, as well as their show and tell items. The two groups were asked to discuss these topics briefly again before choosing one issue to to think about in depth and develop potential solutions for. Ultimately, both groups chose single use plastic and plastic waste. The groups developed brainstorms and sketches of their ideas for approximately 15-20 minutes.
Overall, I think my workshop ran quite smoothly. All participants seemed to enjoy the workshop and participated at each stage. The final water fountain concept was a synthesis of everybody's ideas, which as Muller's 1991 paper stated (see slides), is indicative of successful participatory design.
If I were to run it again, instead of considering the participants solely as part of the UL community, I might branch out and consider them part of the Limerick community as to get a wider range of ideas facing the city. I would also use a more durable/sticky material for the final activity, as the play-dough did not stay together in the way that we hoped it would!
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Author: Kim O'SheaThis page will be used to post my assignments from taught modules in UL over the course of my master's prgram. Head over to my portfolio page for a look at some of the work I have done in my undergraduate program of Digital Media Design! Archives
April 2019
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