Papers by Jessica Schoffelen
International Journal of Child-Computer Interaction, Sep 1, 2022
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Interaction Design and Architecture(s)
This article reflects on how sharing documentation of subjective viewpoints on complex participat... more This article reflects on how sharing documentation of subjective viewpoints on complex participatory projects can contribute to end-user development in or generativity of projects. We will discuss the documentation approaches of some participatory projects that combine the development of software and hardware in a cultural, social or health context with groups of participants with an eye on generating ongoing participation. We will also describe how we, inspired by these projects, developed 1. a “thick documentation” approach, based on a collaborative mapping method called MAP-it 2. that provides a dynamic view, revealing the diverse subjective perspectives on the project; 3. that motivates different types of makers and participants to participate in documenting; 4. that aims for generativity. We evaluated our approach on these 4 goals and propose future challenges.
International Journal of Child-Computer Interaction
Participatory Design Theory, 2018
The Design Journal, 2021
Katrien Dreessen is a researcher at the InterActions research unit and teacher at LUCA, School of... more Katrien Dreessen is a researcher at the InterActions research unit and teacher at LUCA, School of Arts in Genk. She is currently finishing her PhD research on engaging non-expert users in long-term design processes taking place within open spaces (i.e. Fablab and Living Labs). Liesbeth Huybrechts is Associate Professor involved in the research group Arck, Hasselt University and Living Lab The Other Market, a space for reflection and action on the future of work. She works on and educational projects related to participatory design, collectivity and commons in city-making and spatial transformation processes. Jessica Schoffelen (PhD) researches participatory and open (design) processes. She lectured on arts and design research and Interaction Design. She coordinated the FP7 Marie Curie training project TRADERS concerning participation in public space. Currently, she researches participation and citizenship within the research group Inclusive Society (UC Leuven-Limburg). Generativity revisited. Participatory Design for self-organisation in communities Societal trends, such as the governmental withdrawal from the public realm, increasingly motivates communities to self-organise in taking care of it. As a result, designers have explored the concept of 'generativity' as a quality of design that supports communities in questioning, supporting and giving form to selforganisation in the public realm. Nonetheless, a thorough investigation of how to enable generativity in the context of community-based PD is lacking. When designers give form to generativity, they intend to allow people to 'self-organise' by transforming and using infrastructures through and for debating and creating public matters, without assistance from the infrastructure's original designers. While design for informatics defines generativity with a focus on "self"organised processes, we conclude that generativity in the context of designing for the complex politics of the public realm is a quality that mainly supports communities' "co"organisation. We describe the generative quality of design in the community project Betty's Garden and discuss how the specific roles and capabilities that were developed by the community and by us as researchers contributed to this quality.
Interaction Design and Architecture(s), 2019
Recent academic debates have urged us to rethink children’s roles in Participatory Design (PD). I... more Recent academic debates have urged us to rethink children’s roles in Participatory Design (PD). In this article, we feed this discussion by putting the role of process designer into practice, allowing children to define a PD process and methods. We report on a case study in which we involved children (aged 10 – 12) to generate ideas about the ‘Stiemerbeek’ valley (Genk, Belgium). Applying the concept of ‘Handlungsspielraum’as analytical lens, the role of process designer was put into practice in five ways: through creating a research plan, defining events, engaging in play, field explorations and taking design decisions. Whereas the first three ways departed from the children’s perspectives, the latter related to adults facilitating the role. These findings provide handles to adopt the role of process designer in real-life contexts and extend the debate on children’s roles in PD, e.g. by reflecting on adult roles.
Art/Research International: A Transdisciplinary Journal, 2021
On the 23rd of January 2020, a radio talk show of the future, 20:30 Bruxsels Talks, took place in... more On the 23rd of January 2020, a radio talk show of the future, 20:30 Bruxsels Talks, took place in Brussels. With guests and artists from the year 2030, it discussed how the transition to a climate-proof city had happened since 2019. In this article, we present and frame the development of the show and provide insight into the participative creation process. The radio show exemplifies (a) how future fiction can be used as a tool to evoke change and (b) how the participatory development of futurist fiction can be used as a method to trigger imagination and conversation on what citizens want for our cities. We argue that there is an opportunity for researchers to explore fiction as a method, as a format and as a space. Foresight practitioners who want to create engaging stories may find inspiration in the body of knowledge of arts-based research and the arts. Note: This article should be read in conjunction with 20:30 Bruxsels Talks: A Script for a Future Fiction Radio Show, in this is...
This article discusses the role of a FabLab as a research and making environment within the ‘Besp... more This article discusses the role of a FabLab as a research and making environment within the ‘Bespoke Design’ research project and its implications for the involved designers. ‘Bespoke Design’ deals with the participatory design of self-management tools for and with people with type 1 diabetes. The project furthermore explores the role of a FabLab in developing, sharing and documenting these tools. Although the context of a FabLab as an open and accessible workplace is beneficial for the idea of personal fabrication, we argue that it also poses important challenges. The necessary skills and expertise for using the different machines in a FabLab form a major challenge related to accessibility and efficiency. After all, a lack of skills and expertise can discourage people to experiment or may lead to time and cost-consuming trial-and-error. Then, if these processes become too costly and time-inefficient, one can question the relevance of developing personalised tools. However, we belie...
This paper describes a continuous process of making, sharing and using ‘thick’ documentation in a... more This paper describes a continuous process of making, sharing and using ‘thick’ documentation in a project wherein we co-designed three self-management tools with three participants with type I diabetes. Making, sharing and using thick documentation of these processes increased the individual cases’ impact beyond the three participants and the design team involved. Thick documentation represents the material and immaterial aspects of a design process - the latter referring to the dynamic range of participants’ perspectives- in a readable way and motivates use and documentation by others. We discuss the development of two different kinds of thick documentation for two processes and evaluate how they enabled knowledge building among existing and new participants and how all actors valued this.
This article explores self-fabrication by novice participants in a FabLab for a Participatory Des... more This article explores self-fabrication by novice participants in a FabLab for a Participatory Design (PD) research project ‘Bespoke Design’. We developed bespoke tools for self-managing diabetes specifically related to one person’s everyday experiences. Instead of the strictly medical top-down approaches, combining bespoke designs with PD and self-fabrication is more in line with the fact that people with diabetes use these tools 24/7. Being experts on using these tools we involved three participants with diabetes in the design of bespoke prototypes for each of them. To facilitate re-designing these tools to other people’s wishes and needs, we shared documentation of the prototypes development and conducted these processes in a FabLab. In this way participation of the participant extends to the concrete making or fabrication process (Seravalli, 2013), instead of restricting participation to the exploratory, conceptual making phase (Ehn & Badham, 2002). While this sounds promising, w...
info:eu-repo/semantics/publishe
This paper describes a continuous process of making, sharing and using ‘thick’ documentation in a... more This paper describes a continuous process of making, sharing and using ‘thick’ documentation in a project wherein we co-designed three self-management tools with three participants with type I diabetes. Making, sharing and using thick documentation of these processes increased the individual cases’ impact beyond the three participants and the design team involved. Thick documentation represents the material and immaterial aspects of a design process the latter referring to the dynamic range of participants’ perspectivesin a readable way and motivates use and documentation by others. We discuss the development of two different kinds of thick documentation for two processes and evaluate how they enabled knowledge building among existing and new participants and how all actors valued this.
Although the connection of making and knowledge may seem self-evident for a designer, we experien... more Although the connection of making and knowledge may seem self-evident for a designer, we experienced in developing an educational design research course at Media, Arts & Design Faculty (Genk, Belgium), that when design and research are intertwined, students tend to lose their focus on making. Therefore, this paper explores how the intertwining of making and reflecting can be more explicitly supported throughout the process. We propose to use playful design representations throughout the design process to mediate this interaction between making and reflecting. Elaborating on Buckland (1991), Visser (2011), Suchman (1995) and Palmer (1978), we describe design representations as representations, descriptions, interpretations of (elements of) a design, e.g. field studies, experiments, prototypes. They are made by designers throughout the making process, and used within collaborative settings to enable communication among participants via confronting their reflections in making. We argue...
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Papers by Jessica Schoffelen
Title: Trading Places. Practices of Public Participation in Art and Design Research
Editors: David Hamers, Naomi Bueno de Mesquita, Annelies Vaneycken & Jessica Schoffelen
Editorial support: Anne van Oppen
Copy-editing: Daniel Lacasta Fitzsimmons
Graphic design printed book: Numa Merino Studio
e-Book coding and design: dpr-barcelona
Cover and inner illustrations: Ida Elisabet Liffner
ISBN: 978-84-944873-9-2
Formats: paperback | eBook .mobi | ePub
Publisher: dpr-barcelona