Experiences of remote user participation (workshop at ECIS 2023)

About the workshop

The aim is to cover the methodological breadth of remote user participation in interaction design and include a critical discussion of developing practices.

Sustainable future needs participation. Co-creating digital futures is not easy due to various limitations of physical nature. As noted by several researchers and practitioners the last twenty years, participation can be facilitated if we are not constrained by physical presence. Furthermore, COVID-19 has sped up the process of digital transformation in many aspects. Including academia, researchers in the field, have resolved to remote and hybrid ways to develop design work. In participatory design, collaborations go beyond the mere inclusion of different stakeholders. Instead, stakeholders are involved in the co-creation process. The workshop participants will discuss their own and each other’s experiences of adapting or inventing methods for remote use.  Specifically, it would include critical discussion of old and new practices to see opportunities as well as limits in inclusiveness when user participation in digital design is conducted ”remotely”.

Workshop format

Half-day with up to 15 participants, of which 6-8 people will have papers that have been distributed to everyone. Each of these 6-8 papers will be discussed. For each paper, one person is appointed in advance as a chair for the discussion.

We prefer to have this in-person as we hold the community building is facilitated by meeting also during the rest of the conference. The European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS) 2023 will be held in Kristiansand, Norway, in June 11-16. Workshops are held in Monday-Tuesday June 12-13. https://ecis2023.no/

The workshop will include short talks sharing experiences of remote user participation as follows: Ala Sarah will present experiences of remote focus groups, John Sören discusses gradual shifting between usability testing and co-design, and Malin Wik presents her experiences with carrying out co-design over distance with mobile co-designers. Further short presentations are welcome to invoke discussions; see below 'Call for submissions'.

At the end of the workshop there will be a discussion of a next step: for instance, is it worth to work towards a joint publication (a special issue or a book) on the topic of the workshop, or is it better to prepare to propose tracks on next/future ECIS on requirements and design methods with extended user participation? Follow-up meetings will be held in Zoom.

Target audience

Target audience includes practitioners and academics who have conducted design work remotely in any format (focus groups, co-design sessions, workshops, user tests with design discussions, including educational settings).

Call for submissions and instructions

There is no specific template, and the range limit is 6-12 pages; extra pages used for appendices with extra material are allowed.

We also welcome submissions for short presentations (10 mins) with abstracts (300-500 words +illustrations). Please send your paper draft and abstracts in .docx or pdf format to as.alaqra@kau.se .

Review guidelines

Paper contributors and other persons accepted to attend to the workshop are expected to provide comments to 2-3 papers. Such comments are supposed to be taken into considerations by the authors before they hand in the workshop version of their papers. Short presentations will be reviewed by organizers.

Important dates

For working papers:

• Submission EXTENDED deadline of working papers (6-12 pages) April 10, 2023
•  Distribution of (selected) papers to be reviewed April 12th
•  Reviews deadline April 27th
•  Decisions notifications April 28th
•  Workshop version submission deadline May 29th
•  Distributions of workshop version of discussion papers May 19th, 2023 June 1st
•  Workshop date (half day) June 12th

For short presentations:

• Submission of abstract (300-500 words) April 19th
• Notification of acceptance April 28th

For questions, please contact the workshop organizers

Ala Sarah Alaqra, PhD, Karlstad University, as.alaqra@kau.se
John Sören Pettersson, Prof., Karlstad University, john_soren.pettersson@kau.se
Malin Wik, PhD candidate, Karlstad University, malin.wik@kau.se

This information can also be referred as https://is.gd/FnTHOP