MA1 Interaction Design
Design Ethnography and Participatory Design
IDEC 13/16

March 13 to June 2, 2006

The Spring 2006 term project will provide a practical project as a platform to explore techniques within a design ethnography and participatory design framework. The term will combine lectures, workshops, practice, and presentations to explore the value and boundaries of:

• design ethnography (interview, observation, field notes, representation)
• representation forms (text, photos, video, mock-ups, artifacts)
• participation of users/stakeholders (one-on-one/workshops, designing for vs designing with)

Design ethnography and participatory design are closely linked and in practice are not necessarily divided sequentially. However, the term project will be tutored rather sequentially moving from field studies to sharing and analysing material before beginning various phases of participatory design.

The practical project is part of the Design for Cultural Pluralism project (CUPL) that falls within the 3-year Umeå Municipality and the Umeå Institute of Design service design collaboration agreement. The contextual background of the term project is the middle school environment.

In groups of two and three, students will work in close contact with each other, tutors, stakeholders and users developing and testing design concepts that increase meaningful communication between teachers, pupils in the middle school, and their parents. There is special emphasis upon concepts that include parents of non-Swedish decent. In this project, students  will have an opportunity to benefit from the wide cultural diversity within the class and the networks of fellow classmates. The results of the project have the potential to have direct and indirect impact on the educational support tools locally and nationally.