Friday, December 11, 2009

Participatory Design Conference 2010 + Reflections about participatory design and usability...

Cross posted from Interactive Multimedia Technology:


I really want to go to Australia next year and attend this conference! Below are links to the conference, along with an excerpt from the conference description:

11th Biennial Participatory Design Conference:  Participation :: The Challenge (pdf)
PDC2010 Conference Website
PDC2008 Conference Website

"Participation is the complex, contested, changing, creative and celebratory core of participatory design. We invite you to explore what participation can and needs to mean in the design contexts where we are working now and those we are likely to encounter soon. While current ‘best practice’ in many areas of interactive technology design now at least pays lip service to people’s participation, how is this participation being negotiated and defined, and by whom? And if Participatory Design methods developed some 20 years ago are claimed to have become standard design practice, how do we go about developing the methods that will define standard design practice 20 years from now?"


REFLECTION
Judging from what I've experienced as a consumer/user,  there are many things that are floating around in the form of electronics, software, and related gadgets that are examples of the absence of participatory design.

My daily pet peeve is the remote control for my entertainment set-up, which includes DVR and a small but growing number of interactive TV channels.  Another pet peeve is the usability of productivity software, including the software I must use for work.

At any rate, below are links to some of my thoughts related to usability topics that might be of interest to people who are thinking about or practicing participatory design or user-centered design.

2007 Letter to the Editor, Pervasive Computing
Useful Usability Studies (pdf)

2007 Blog Post
Usability/Interaction Hall of Shame (In a Hospital)

2008 Blog Posts
Interactive Touch-Screen Technology, Participatory Design, and "Getting It"
An Example of Convergence: Interactive TV: uxTV 2008

2009 Blog Posts
Microsoft: Are You Listening?  Cool Cat Teacher (Vicki Davis) Tries out Microsoft's Multi-touch Surface Table
Haptic/Tactile Interface:  Dynamically Changeable Physical Buttons
The Convergence of TV, the Internet, and Interactivity:  Update
UX of ITV:  The User Experience and Interactive TV (or Let's Stamp Out Bad Remote Controls)
ElderGadget Blog: Useful Tech and Tools

No comments: