Making, DIY & Participatory Design: ACM CHI 2018 workshop

May 8, 2018 - Reading time: 6 minutes

CAPS projects MAZI and MAKING SENSE workshop at prestigious global ACM conference

The MAZI project teamed up with another CAPS project, MAKING SENSE, to deliver a workshop on 22nd April at The ACM CHI 2018 conference in Montreal, Canada. The workshop proposal, titled Maker Movements, Do-It-Yourself Cultures and Participatory Design: Implications for HCI Research, was accepted after a competitive peer-review process. The topic of the workshop addresses methods of participatory design and the democratisation of technology and social innovation, with a particular focus on the emerging trends of maker culture and Do-It-Yourself approaches. The workshop submission can be downloaded from the ACM library.

The growth of the maker movement, and the wider availability of low cost technological components, has supported a wider participation in the hands-on activity of making objects. However, questions arise around the scale of impact that is possible within the essentially individually-oriented practice. Making is often carried out as an end in itself, for the fundamental, creative pleasure and direct engagement with materiality that the practice affords. In the European context, research projects including Making Sense and MAZI are developing approaches to engage citizens in the design and development processes of interactive networked technologies. These projects are addressing challenges and questions around what participation means against the background of widely accessible design tools and technologies.

As well as the presentations, participants spent time discussing emerging research themes in groups.

Within the workshop itself, 14 papers were accepted for presentation after an open call, with a review process carried out by the workshop organising committee, comprising members from institutions in the UK, USA, The Netherlands, Spain, Germany, Portugal and Denmark. Authors of the accepted papers represent a wide range of universities and research groups, from countries including the USA, UK, Canada, Germany and Cyprus.

More photos of the workshop event are on Flickr.

The ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems is the premier international conference of Human-Computer Interaction. CHI Conference website: www.chi2018.acm.org

Workshop website: www.makersdiyparticipatorydesign.wordpress.com

Making Sense: www.making-sense.eu

MAZI: www.mazizone.eu

Organizers

Michael Smyth, Edinburgh Napier University, UK
Ingi Helgason, Edinburgh Napier University, UK
Frank Kresin, University of Twente, Netherlands
Mara Balestrini, Ideas for Change, Spain
Andreas Unteidig, University of the Arts, Germany
Shaun Lawson, University of Northumbria, UK
Mark Gaved, Open University, UK
Nick Taylor, University of Dundee, UK
James Auger, Madeira Interactive Technologies Institute, Portugal
Lone Koefed Hansen, Aarhus University, Denmark
Douglas Schuler, Evergreen State College, The Public Sphere Project, USA
Mel Woods, University of Dundee, UK
Paul Dourish, University of California, Irvine, USA