[Commlist] CHI’23 Workshop, CfP: Bridging Distances for Global Participation: Conducting and Theorizing Participatory Design and Research in Hybrid Contexts

Call for Papers

CHI’23 Workshop

Bridging Distances for Global Participation: Conducting and Theorizing 
Participatory Design and Research in Hybrid Contexts

Workshop website: https://sites.google.com/view/urbanai/conducting-hybrid-pd

CHI conference website: https://chi2023.acm.org/



In this hybrid workshop, we explore the opportunities of conducting 
multi- site participatory design (PD) and research through hybrid 
present-telepresent participatory methods, and share issues, challenges, 
methods, and empirical examples pertaining to this as a goal.

PD must increasingly be able to address and serve various global 
contexts. Overall, then, there is a fundamental need to raise previously 
unheard global voices in technology design and development, and to bring 
various stakeholders together. The bread and butter of participatory 
methodology has been physically co-located creative work with 
participants, with the aim to immerse the practitioners in the use 
context, and to learn about the practices, needs and values relevant for 
the stakeholders in this context. This embedded, hands-on work is 
crucial and arguably forms the basis of PD practice. Often, this has 
also meant that PD research teams have been mostly physically 
co-located, at least for the duration of the PD process. This approach 
has fundamental validity, as PD requires an in-depth understanding of 
the cultural context in which it is performed.

Nevertheless, this approach also has its drawbacks, as collocated work 
means both geographical and financial limitations to the type of work 
that can be accomplished. Conducting multi-site co-located work may be 
prohibitively time-consuming and expensive, and may also require 
extensive physical capabilities from both practitioners and 
participants, leaving many voices unheard. Furthermore, the rapid 
adoption of various synchronous and asynchronous communication methods 
through online collaborative tools offer opportunities for more 
continuous, more dispersed, and more diverse PD research settings and 
processes.

During the world-wide social distancing efforts of 2020–2022, an 
enormous leap forward was made seemingly overnight in adopting novel 
modalities of participation and collaboration. As we have since moved 
into a post social distancing world, it is important and timely to both 
seize the lessons learned from the pandemic-induced forced hybridization 
of PD, and to keep developing the potentialities that emerged from the 
experience. However, this opportunity also raises several questions, 
including: How can we enable various global stakeholders to take part in 
global hybrid PD? How can PD practitioners work across cultural spheres 
in distant settings, and how can we perform culturally aware and 
sensitive work without ‘being there’? What can a partly 
technology-mediated PD process consist of, what knowledge can it 
produce, and what limitations does it have? What novel challenges and 
opportunities pertaining to accessibility emerge in a 
technology-mediated PD process? What values, competences and awareness 
do PD practitioners need when conducting PD work in culturally diverse 
hybrid settings? What PD processes or methods are not suited to hybrid 
work and best left for the “nonline” world? What theories, methods and 
lessons from other fields of research, e,g, from remote ethnography or 
Computer-Supported Collaborative Work, could be applied?

We invite those interested to submit a position paper (3–4 pages) in the 
SIGCHI Single column paper format 
(https://www.acm.org/binaries/content/assets/publications/taps/acm_submission_template.docx).

These contributions may address, for example:

  *   Theoretical considerations: e.g., utilising key theoretical 
concepts from various fields to build understanding of how to conduct 
hybrid participatory design and research in various global contexts
  *   Case studies: empirical works that analyze experiences of hybrid 
participatory design and research in various global contexts
  *   Design-based explorations in real-world settings: e.g. 
implementation of participatory design and research approaches in 
different global contexts in hybrid environments
  *   Methods: Methodologies that can contribute towards better 
implementation of participation in various global contexts and in hybrid 
environments
  *   Thematic issues; e.g. ethical issues; various user or stakeholder 
groups, various areas of design, global perspectives, etc. pertaining to 
conducting hybrid PD in multi-side, multi- cultural contexts



Extended Deadline: Feb 19, 2023 (23:59 AoE)

Notifications: Mar 1, 2023 (23:59 AoE)

Workshop Duration: one day

Date & place: Sunday April 23, Hybrid workshop (Hamburg, Germany / online)



Papers should be sent to: aale.luusua(at)oulu.fi

Organizers:

  *   Aale Luusua, University of Oulu, Finland
  *   Johanna Ylipulli, Aalto University, Finland
  *   Dani K. Raju, Studio Hasi, India
  *   Emilia Rönkkö, University of Oulu, Finland


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