Participatory design methodology
The Mazi project will carry out four pilot studies, in separate locations, in collaboration with partner organisations.
The pilot studies will provide a wide variety of examples of different instantiations of the MAZI toolkit (different types of MAZI Zones) deployed in different environments and proposing different local hybrid interactions through a combination of web application and physical elements.
The goal is to collect enough data and personal experiences that will allow us to:
• Draw useful correlations between context, design choices, challenges and objectives
• Gain complementary expertise in understanding user perspectives regarding the usage
• Compile a set of guidelines for the customisation of a MAZI node based on the context
• Provide a set of pre-configured templates for common situations
• Gain a better understanding on the concept of hybrid space design through an interdisciplinary lens
There are different variations of the general concept of participatory design and in MAZI we will experiment with different versions based on the background of the pilot leaders. More specifically, to understand better the needs of the local actors and depending on whether these are individuals or communities, we will perform different combination of the following methodologies to enable researchers and communities to learn from actual use-cases in the early stages of the process and, based on this, the iterative development of both technological infrastructures as well as applications:
• Co-design workshops
• Design of boundary objects and early-stage prototypes
• In-depth interviews with important actors
• Field research
• Cultural and Technological Probes
Most importantly, the different pilot cases will give us the opportunity to co-create with different types of actors that will be included in the process.