Advance Program:
Participatory Design Conference (PDC'94)

October 27-28, Chapel Hill, NC, USA

PDC'94 is sponsored by Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility (CPSR) and in cooperation with ACM SIGCHI.

Notes: Exact session times, paper session chairs, and panel participants are not yet fixed. Sessions marked with "A" are paper sessions, those labeled with "B" are panels. (The exception is 2B which is a combination of one paper and a shortened panel.) "A" and "B" sessions occur in parallel.

Thursday morning I

Introduction

Opening keynote: From subversion to hype: On political and technical agendas in PD
Morten Kyng, Aarhus University, Denmark

Thursday morning II

1A: Scandinavian Participatory Design: From trade unions to organizations

User participation - A strategy for work life democracy?

Gro Bjerknes & Tone Bratteteig

Department of Informatics, University of Oslo

Creating conditions for participation - conflicts and resources in systems design

Susanne Boedker

Dept of Computer Science, Aarhus University, Denmark

Participatory analysis of flexibility: Some experiences

Arne Kjaer & Kim Halskov Madsen

Information and Media Science Department, Aarhus University, Denmark

1B: Does PD have a role in software package development?

Moderator: Erran Carmel, The American University, Washington, D.C.

In this panel, software package designers will discuss their PD practices and where PD may play a role in future developments. Part of the discussion will focus on whether and how 'participation' in the development process, in the traditional PD sense, can have any real meaning when the ultimate 'users' are so removed from the scene. A related question is how support for later PD in customization can be addressed during package design.

Thursday afternoon I

2A: Power relations: structures and dynamics

Systems as intermediaries - Political frameworks of design and participation

Johannes Gaertner, Ina Wagner

Vienna Technical University

Take Users Seriously, but Take a Deeper Look: - Organizational and Technical Effects from Designing with an Intervention and Ethnographically Inspired Approach

Jesper Simonsen and Finn Kensing

Computer Science Dept, Roskilde University, Denmark

Dilemmas in Cooperative Design

Randi Markussen

Information and Media Science Department, Aarhus University, Denmark

2B: PD Education

This session is aimed mainly at those who teach PD. An overview paper on PD in the curriculum is followed by a panel discussing actual teaching experiences. This session serves as a useful introduction to the education workshop on Friday morning.

On participatory design and user involvement as topics in computing education: A contribution to a curriculum debate

Karlheinz Kautz

Norwegian Computing Center, Oslo, Norway

Panel: Teaching PD

Moderator: Terry Winograd, Stanford University, USA

Thursday afternoon II

3A: Designers meeting users: conversations and representations

Voices in design: The dynamics of participatory information system design

Toomas Timpka & Cecilia Sjoberg

MDA Linkoping University, Sweden

Representations of Work: Bringing Designers and Users Together

Patricia Swenton-Wall & Andrea Mosher

Research & Technology Integration, Xerox Corporation

Reflections on Work-Oriented Design

Jeanette Blomberg, Lucy Suchman and Randall Trigg

Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, Palo Alto, CA

3B: PD in complex organizations

Moderator: Pat Sachs, NYNEX

This panel addresses systems development issues when going beyond the single, stand alone PD project, to attempt to change, in a participatory, large, chaotic, heterogenous organizations.

Thursday evening

Evening keynote: When 'old' and 'new' technologies have to interact and co-exist
Bjoerg Aase Soerensen, Oslo Work Research Institute

Dinner and schmoozing in the "Artifacts Room" where conference participants will display the artifacts they use in their participatory design work. Dinner is included with conference registration.

Friday morning I & II: Parallel workshops

1. Leigh Snelling & Cath Jolly (Australia): A Work Mapping Technique
2. Albert Selvin, Angelika Kindermann, Maarten Sierhuis (USA) and Rob van der Spek (The Netherlands) present a framework for participatory work system design.
3. Barbara Andrews, David Hakken, Michael Muller (all USA), Tone Bratteteig, Karlheinz Kautz, Kari Thoresen (all Norway): Education for Participatory Design.
4. Elizabeth Bauer-Nilsen Sanders (USA): Velcro-modeling and Projective Expressions: Participatory Design Methods for Product Development.
5. Werner Beuschel, Reinhard Keil-Slawik (both Germany), Susanne Boedker (Denmark), Scott Minneman (USA): On the role of representations in distributed design - The social and technical organization of design practices.
6. Sarah Kuhn, Charley Richardson, Marian Williams (all USA): Meeting of the Minds: The Challenge of Interdisciplinary and inter-occupational communication.
7. Melissa Cefkin & Brigitte Jordan (both USA): Embedding Expertise in the Workplace: The Use of Video-based Interaction Analysis in The Workplace.

Friday afternoon I

4A: Lessons from the field: Three case studies

HIV and AIDS awareness and education poster project; a study in participatory graphic design

Leslie Patricia Tergas

School of Art, University of Michigan

Enabling school teachers to participate in the design of educational software

Marian G. Williams

Center for Productivity Enhancement, University of Massachusetts, Lowell

Specific Cooperative Analysis and Design in general hypermedia development

Kaj Groenbaek & Preben Mogensen

Department of Computer Science, Aarhus University, Denmark

4B: The Limits of PD? Contingent Jobs, Contingent Pay

Moderator: Joan Greenbaum, City University of New York & Laguardia College

This panel addresses the extensive changes now taking place in work and workplaces. Specifically it will examine the ways jobs are changing and the implications this has for both the participatory design process and resulting systems.

Friday afternoon II

Closing discussion: PD: Politics and Prospects

Session moderator: Andrew Clement, University of Toronto
Opening speaker: David Noble, York University

This closing session deals with the political character of PD practices and theory. - How can we better understand the relationship between PD as a political project and as a cluster of techniques? How does PD relate to contemporary political movements. When does the rhetoric of participation thwart rather than advance workplace democratization? How should developers act when 'authentic' participation is infeasible? The session will involve a discussion with the audience about the implications of these issues for the future directions of the field.