People listening to talk
Experiences of remote user participation
12 June 2023
13:30 - 17:30
A7 006

Do you have experience with remote user participation? Then you might be interested to submit a working paper for the workshop titled "Experiences of remote user participation". The purpose of the workshop is to focus on experiences of and activities within the wide range of distributed participatory design and related user participation experiences.

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 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 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 consideration by the authors before they hand in the workshop version of their papers. Short presentations will be reviewed by organizers.

Important dates

For papers:

  • Submission extended deadline of working papers (6-12 pages) March 14th, 2023 April 10th, 2023
  • Distribution of (selected) papers to be reviewed March 23rd, 2023 April 12th, 2023
  • Reviews deadline April 16th, 2023 April 27th, 2023
  • Decisions notifications April 21st, 2023 April 28th, 2023
  • Workshop version submission deadline May 15th, 2023 May 29th, 2023
  • Distributions of workshop version of discussion papers May 19th, 2023 June 1st, 2023
  • Workshop date (half day) June 12th
  • For short presentations:

    • Submission of abstract (300-500 words) April 19th
    • Notification of acceptance April 26th

    For questions, please contact the workshop organizers

    Ala Sarah Alaqra, PhD, Karlstad University
    John Sören Pettersson, Prof., Karlstad University
    Malin Wik, PhD candidate, Karlstad University

    This information can also be found at https://is.gd/FnTHOP.