Foad Hamidi - Investigating Transdisciplinary Approaches for Community-engagement

Participatory design (PD) offers powerful and inclusive principles and methods for enabling mutual learning among diverse stakeholders and interested parties. As our society’s aspirations for computational systems and processes that respond to multifaceted needs and desires continue to grow, so does the need to investigate approaches that transcend disciplinarity to achieve broad societal goals. One such goal is to develop the public's capacity to engage creatively and critically with emerging technologies of interest. In this talk, I draw on several recent projects where I use community-based PD to investigate and interrogate emerging technologies, such as DIY assistive technologies and living media interfaces (LMIs), together with stakeholders. I describe how we develop and use prototypes, design activities, and art installations in these projects to generate conversation about technological and social possibilities, limitations, and implications.