The 10th anniversary conference on Participatory Design: Experiences and Challenges

September 30 – October 4, 2008 Bloomington, Indiana, USA, 
www.pdc2008.org

The conference theme for this Participatory Design Conference, PDC  2008, is Experiences and Challenges. Join us to celebrate two decades of biannual PDCs. We invite you to reflect on past experiences and review the important lessons we have learned so as to better meet the  new challenges of the future. What are the important trends, phenomena, developments, and views on participation and design etc., which in so many different ways challenge our traditions, our  experiences and/or the current 'wisdom' within the field?

Participatory Design (PD) is a diverse collection of principles and practices aimed at making technologies, tools, environments, businesses, and social institutions more responsive to human needs. A central tenet of PD is the direct involvement of people in the co- design of things and technologies they use. Participatory Design Conferences have been held every two years since 1990 and have formed  an important venue for international discussion of the collaborative,  social, and political dimensions of technology innovation and use.

PDC started as a dialogue about user involvement in IT systems development between, on the one hand, Scandinavian scholars and  promoters and, on the other hand, European and Americans interested  in how the Scandinavian experience could be adopted and extended.  Since then, the conference agendas have broadened to address participatory approaches in a variety of other arenas, including  communications, computer supported cooperative work (CSCW),  healthcare, new media, architecture, the arts, and others.

PDCs brings together a multidisciplinary and international group of software developers, researchers, social scientists, managers, designers, practitioners, users, cultural workers, activists and citizens who both advocate and adopt distinctively participatory approaches in the development of information and communication artifacts, systems, services and technology. A central concern has always been to understand how collaborative design processes can be driven by the participation of the people affected by the technology designed.

PD approaches have been used in traditional application domains (such as computer systems for business, CSCW, healthcare and government) and more recently in areas such as web-portal design, e-government services, community networks, enterprise resource planning, social administration and community development, university/ community partnerships, tele-health, communities of practice and political deliberation/mobilization (edemocracy), digital arts and design, scholarship and teaching with mediated technologies (e-learning), the experience of a sense of place, PD in developing countries, cultural production and cultural institutions.

PDC 2008 will be held at Indiana University (IU) in Bloomington, Indiana, USA, and hosted by the IU School of Informatics. It will be the 10th PDC and a golden opportunity to reassess the achievements of the PD movement and to consider its future. We hope to broaden further the focus of PD and to consider the relevance of its traditions and commitments to the new debates over design. As the home of the first US PhD in informatics, the School of Informatics is very pleased to be hosting PDC. The Bloomington campus of Indiana University provides an excellent occasion for the Participatory Design community to extend its dialogue with leading scholars in international and global education. The campus is the site of several of the leading Area Studies programs (e.g., African Studies, East Asian Studies) in the US, as well as the socalled 'i-school' movement in the US. The i- or "information" schools are higher education units, typically professional schools, which are developing programs that goes beyond the traditional computer science curriculum, even beyond programs in Information Technology. Several of the more than 50 i-schools were previously Schools of Library Science that now call themselves Schools of Information, Information Studies, or Informatics.

SUBMISSIONS

PDC is a lively event with a range of different activities. We invite submissions of: Research papers: (full paper – maximum 10 pages). Research papers should report on completed research which furthers topics in Participatory Design. Research papers will be published in the ACM International Conference series. High academic standards will be expected. Each submitted paper will be double blind reviewed by at least 3 reviewers. Authors are invited to suggest names and contact information of one or two possible reviewers to supplement reviews by Program Committee members. Such prospective reviewers should have demonstrated expertise in the relevant field and be at arms-length from the author(s) and the work presented. Accepted papers should be revised according to the review reports and the language should be checked by a native English speaker. Exploratory papers: (short paper – maximum 4 pages). Exploratory papers should present ideas that could benefit from discussion with members of the PD community. These papers may include work-in-progress, experiences of reflective practitioners, and first drafts of novel concepts and approaches. Each submitted paper will be double blind reviewed by at least 3 reviewers.

Interactive workshops: (2 page proposal). Half day and full day sessions on topics that include methods, practices, and other areas of interest and that support an interactive format where active participation beyond presentation is solicited. The proposal must justify the need for the workshop and should contain a title, goals, technique, relevance to PD and a schedule. Intended participants and how they will be recruited should also be described.

Tutorials: (2 page proposal). Half day and full day sessions for teaching conceptual frameworks, methods/techniques, and novel approaches. The proposal should contain a title, goals, technique, relevance to PD and a schedule. Please describe in the proposal any handouts that you intend to make available.

Doctoral consortium: (2 page proposal) Full day session. The doctoral consortium is intended for Ph.D.-students working in the field of PD. It will provide students with an opportunity to present issues of concern to them in their doctoral studies and receive extensive feedback from the session co-chairs and student participants. Enrollment is limited and selection will be based on application submissions. The proposal should give an overview of the Ph.D.-project, including research question, method, how the Ph.D.-work is related to PD, the status of current work, major findings and plans for further research. Accepted applicants will be asked to provide a revised and elaborated proposal a few months before the conference.

Artifacts, posters, products, interactive demonstrations: (2 page proposal). Works may include projects, techniques, and products developed with a commitment to the principles and philosophy of PD and they may incorporate any forms or genres of information/communication technologies or digital media (e.g., sound, still/moving images, touch, space, text). Successful proposals will be presented during an evening session where participants can interact with presenters and artifacts. The proposal should include title, goals, technique, relevance to PD and a sketch or design, as appropriate. Please describe your plan for audience participation. Participatory art installations: Artists/designers working in the field of visual, installation, and performative arts are invited to submit a project that explores how participants' interactions can become part of a piece of art or performance.

Submissions should follow the SIGCHI Conference Proceedings Format  (www.sigchi.org/chipubform).

The proceedings (research papers) will be published in the ACM International Conference series. Exploratory papers, Workshop descriptions, Tutorials descriptions, Doctoral proposals, and Art work descriptions will be published by Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility (www.cpsr.org).

IMPORTANT DEADLINES: Submissions (all contribution types): March 15, 
2008 Acceptance notification: May 1, 2008 Final camera-ready version of contribution: June 15, 2008

CONFERENCE COMMITTEE MEMBERS Conference chair (chair (at) pdc2008.org): 
David Hakken, Indiana University, Indiana, USA.