Nov. 28 - Dec. 1, 2000 - New York City, USA

Sponsored by Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility

In Cooperation with the ACM and IFIP

Held in conjunction with CSCW 2000

pdc2000@cpsr.org

Participatory Design (PD) is a set of diverse ways of thinking, planning, and acting through which people make their work, technologies, and social institutions more responsive to human needs. The Participatory Design conferences, held every two years since 1990, have brought together a multidisciplinary and international group of researchers, designers, practitioners, users, and managers. The disconnection of the design of technology from the context of its use is well documented, yet the gap between design and use seems to be getting wider.

Many people claim that the wide-spread use of computers and the Internet have opened up democratic possibilities previously undreamed of. However, we believe that democracy and the quality of life are not givens in the design and use of computer systems. The socio-technical design of digital environments is a dynamic project, which requires the social inclusion and active participation of the users rather than the more typical situation in which the designers are far removed from the daily tasks and activities of the people who use the environments. This is particularly important, as systems grow more complex, intertwined and intransigent. The overall theme of this conference, "Designing Digital Environments — Bringing in More Voices" grows out of the earlier papers, books and proceedings of the PDC conferences. It is aimed at extending beyond Information System design toward the participatory design of web-based, mobile and new media environments that are linked through digital technology.

The Participatory Design Conferences have been held in even-numbered years in North-America since 1990, at institutions such as MIT and the University of Washington. The sixth Participatory Design Conference, PDC 2000, is a forum to explore theories, methods, and examples of design through participation that foster early intervention on the part of future users and active and democratic involvement of both current and future users. Conference participants will exchange ideas and experiences that can be applied throughout the cycles of design and use to:

• Maintain and deepen the knowledge about design through participation in order to promote inclusion of workers, citizens, students and users;
• Explore practices and methods of early intervention into the design and use of digital environments.

We encourage academics, practitioners, and users to document and demonstrate ways that multiple voices can be heard in technical design environments. In particular we are interested in research and experience about participation of active users in the following design environments:

• Community-based systems
• Health care systems
• Governmental and GIS systems at local, regional and international levels
• Education, instructional technologies and learning communities across distance
• Media, broadcast and new media environments
• Virtual communities and interactive designs
• Union — management relations
• Curricula for participatory design

We welcome interdisciplinary studies of use situations and users, and intercultural studies among new media users. In addition, we encourage educators and learning specialists to link us with cooperative and participatory movements in education and community networks. As in prior conferences, we look forward to examples and case studies of participatory design from areas in addition to computer systems development including psychology, environmental studies, urban and housing planning, and work practices.

We invite submissions for the following types of sessions:

• Papers: scholarly papers of up to 10 pages
• Work-in-progress presentations: 3-5 page proposals for presentations of current research, projects, practices and lab reports
• Country, regional reports: 3-5 page proposals for reports and demonstrations of events and activities
• Workshops about methods, practices, and other areas of interest: 1-2 page proposals for 3 hour workshops
• Artifacts, posters, interactive demonstrations: 1-2 page proposals for presentations which will be held during an evening sessions where participants can try out and discuss with presenters

Submission requirements are available at the conference website http://www.cpsr.org/conferences/pdc2000.

We encourage electronic submissions. Abstracts must be included for all submissions. We solicit individual and joint papers, proposals and reports in any of the above formats. Papers and reports may address practices, methods, theories, or project experiences (e.g. from perspectives of analysis, design, embedding, use, teaching, coaching, or maintenance). All submissions will be reviewed by members of the program committee. Ph.D. students are encouraged to submit work based on their research.

The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work takes place in Philadelphia, Pa, 1 1/2 hrs by train from New York immediately following the conference. PDC and CSCW have been co-located since 1992. More information is available at:

Phil Agre, University of California San Diego, USA

Peter v. d. Besselaar, Univ. of Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Jeanette Blomberg, Sapient Corp., San Francisco, USA

Jorn Braa, University of Oslo, Norway

Tone Bratteteig, University of Oslo, Norway

Debra Cash, New Century Enterprises, Belmont, MA, USA

Andrew Clement, University of Toronto, Canada

Peter Day, University of Brighton, United Kingdom

Fiorella De Cindio, University of Milano, Italy

Frank Emspak, University of Wisconsin, USA

Susana Finquelievich, Univ. of Buenos Aires, Argentina

Batya Friedman, Colby College, USA

Davydd Greenwood, Cornell University, USA

Joe Glick, City University of New York, USA

Thomas Herrmann, University of Dortmund, Germany

Finn Kensing, University of Copenhagen, Denmark

Sarah Kuhn, University of Massachusetts Lowell, USA

David Levinger, Qpass, USA

Kim Halskov Madsen, Aarhus University, Denmark

Terri Mizrahi, City University of New York, USA

Michael Muller, Lotus Research., USA

Toni Robertson, University of Technology Sidney, Australia

Mike Robinson, University of Jyvaskyla, Finland

Patricia Sachs, Social Solutions, USA

Doug Schuler, Evergreen State College, USA

Susan Leigh Star, University of California, USA

Lucy Suchman, Xerox PARC, USA

Randall Trigg, Work Practice & Technology Assoc., USA

Ina Wagner, Technical University of Vienna, Austria

Coralee Whitcomb, CPSR, USA

Volker Wulf, University of Bonn, Germany

Visit the Participatory Design Conference website: