Materials in Participatory Design Processes

📝 Abstract

This dissertation presents three years of academic inquiry into the question of what role materials play in interaction design and participatory design processes. The dissertation aims at developing conceptual tools, based on Deweys pragmatism, for understanding how materials aid design reflection. It has been developed using a research-through-design approach in which the author has conducted practical design work in order to investigate and experiment with using materials to scaffold design inquiry. The results of the PhD work is submitted as seven separate papers, submitted to esteemed journals and conferences within the field of interaction design and HCI. The work is motivated both by the growing interest in materials in interaction design and HCI and the interest in design processes and collaboration within those fields. At the core of the dissertation lies an interest in the many different materials used during the design process: sketches, prototypes as well as the materials we shape products out of: physical and digital materials now form a unity of computation and physical materials that has given rise to a new research interest in design and materiality. The main results from the dissertation are an understanding of design materials that draws on pragmatist philosophy. The papers and overview article highlights how materials in a pragmatist perspective are more than the matter out of which we shape an idea. Rather they structure the entire process of inquiry, helping us frame problems, inspire solutions and try out these solutions in practice. This framework, developed in several of the submitted papers, is tested and illustrated through a series of experimental design cases.

💡 Analysis

This dissertation presents three years of academic inquiry into the question of what role materials play in interaction design and participatory design processes. The dissertation aims at developing conceptual tools, based on Deweys pragmatism, for understanding how materials aid design reflection. It has been developed using a research-through-design approach in which the author has conducted practical design work in order to investigate and experiment with using materials to scaffold design inquiry. The results of the PhD work is submitted as seven separate papers, submitted to esteemed journals and conferences within the field of interaction design and HCI. The work is motivated both by the growing interest in materials in interaction design and HCI and the interest in design processes and collaboration within those fields. At the core of the dissertation lies an interest in the many different materials used during the design process: sketches, prototypes as well as the materials we shape products out of: physical and digital materials now form a unity of computation and physical materials that has given rise to a new research interest in design and materiality. The main results from the dissertation are an understanding of design materials that draws on pragmatist philosophy. The papers and overview article highlights how materials in a pragmatist perspective are more than the matter out of which we shape an idea. Rather they structure the entire process of inquiry, helping us frame problems, inspire solutions and try out these solutions in practice. This framework, developed in several of the submitted papers, is tested and illustrated through a series of experimental design cases.

📄 Content

Author’s note on arXiv submission This is a slightly edited version of my PhD dissertation submitted and accepted in 2016. I have chosen to submit it to arXiv because it, as an overview article with a set of appended papers, will probably never be reworked into a book. Nevertheless I think it still has some merit – specifically the recent focus on design thinking and co-creation makes my focus of materials and participatory design in a pragmatist perspective timely. Also I regularly get requests on how and where to find the dissertation, and I figured it was worth having it online somewhere public-yet-not-secret (like my website would be). The slight edits are mainly copyright-related: I am not allowed to republish ACM papers, so I have therefore attached the abstracts of the papers in their place, as well as included a link to the full paper. If you for some reason do not have ACM-access, send me a mail. The last paper, “(The Role of) Materials in Design Processes” is currently unpublished and on the backburner. I might try to publish it sometime, but for now, feel free to cite it as is, or just read it. It does constitute an interesting insight into the writing skills of an, at that point, almost finished PhD researcher, although I am more pleased with the write-up of the pragmatist perspective on materials that appears in the actual overview article. The proper way to cite the actual dissertation would be (correct for your own reference format): Nicolai Brodersen Hansen. 2016. “Materials in Participatory Design Processes”. PhD Dissertation. Department of Culture and Communication, Aarhus University, Denmark.
<3 Nicolai Brodersen Hansen nbhansen@gmail.com Aarhus University, Denmark March, 2017.

MATERIALS IN PARTICIPATORY DESIGN PROCESSES

Nicolai Brodersen Hansen PhD dissertation

DEPARTMENT OF DIGITAL DESIGN AND INFORMATION STUDIES SCHOOL OF CULTURE AND COMMUNICATION FACULTY OF ARTS AARHUS UNIVERSITY DENMARK

MATERIALS IN PARTICIPATORY DESIGN PROCESSES

A dissertation presented to the Faculty of Arts Aarhus University Denmark

by Nicolai Brodersen Hansen

June, 2016

DEPARTMENT OF DIGITAL DESIGN AND INFORMATION STUDIES SCHOOL OF CULTURE AND COMMUNICATION FACULTY OF ARTS AARHUS UNIVERSITY DENMARK

Thanks to Supervisor Kim Halskov, for careful guidance, vision, ambition and the human touch needed to make a phd a most pleasant journey.

co-supervisor Peter Dalsgaard for great discussions on pragmatism, for inspiring and challenging me in my time as a student and now as a colleague in CIBIS.

The research centres CAVI, Participatory IT (PIT), Creativity in Blended Interaction Spaces (CIBIS) and the Faculty of Arts for supporting and financing my project.

Our external partners at Dokk1, 3XN and BIG.

Ditte Basballe for being a good friend from we first joined forces as students in 2004 until now as colleagues and office mates.

Michael Mose Biskjær, Susanne Bødker, Clemens Klokmose, Siemen Baader and Nanna Inie in the CIBIS project, which transformed my phd work into something more coherent and focused.

Erik Stolterman, for inviting me to School of Informatics and Computing in Bloomington, Indiana, something I still rank as one of the best experiences of my entire phd.

The entire graduate cohort at the School of Informatics and Computing, for making me feel welcome and taking me to all those fantastic places. Especially thanks to Haley, Omar and Shad for being such fantastic human beings, as well as brilliant scholars.

The entire phd squad at our department, with a special shoutout to the VrUF-organisers: you made coming into the office something to be cherished.

All my students through the years, especially the three iterations of the course Advanced Interaction Design on Digital Design from years 2013-2015 - most days I learned more from you than you could ever imagine.

My colleagues and friends at Katrinebjerg, from the departments of Digital Design, Information Studies, Media Studies and Computer Science.

My family who I do not spend enough time with.

Inge, my love.
Abstract This dissertation presents three years of academic inquiry into the question of what role materials play in interaction design and participatory design processes. The dissertation aims at developing conceptual tools, based on Dewey’s pragmatism, for understanding how materials aid design reflection.

It has been developed using a research-through-design approach in which the author has conducted practical design work in order to investigate and experiment with using materials to scaffold design inquiry. The results of the PhD work is submitted as seven separate papers, submitted to esteemed journals and conferences within the field of interaction design and HCI.

The work is motivated both by the growing interest in materials in interaction design and H

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