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Utopias of Participation: Feminism, Design, and the Futures

Author:

Shaowen BardzellAuthors Info & Claims

ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI), Volume 25, Issue 1

Article No.: 6, Pages 1 - 24

https://doi.org/10.1145/3127359

Published: 22 February 2018 Publication History

Abstract

This essay addresses the question of how participatory design (PD) researchers and practitioners can pursue commitments to social justice and democracy while retaining commitments to reflective practice, the voices of the marginal, and design experiments “in the small.” I argue that contemporary feminist utopianism has, on its own terms, confronted similar issues, and I observe that it and PD pursue similar agendas, but with complementary strengths. I thus propose a cooperative engagement between feminist utopianism and PD at the levels of theory, methodology, and on-the-ground practice. I offer an analysis of a case—an urban renewal project in Taipei, Taiwan—as a means of exploring what such a cooperative engagement might entail. I argue that feminist utopianism and PD have complementary strengths that could be united to develop and to propose alternative futures that reflect democratic values and procedures, emerging technologies and infrastructures as design materials, a commitment to marginalized voices (and the bodies that speak them), and an ambitious, even literary, imagination.

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Cited By

Lusi BPetterson APayyapilly Thiruvenkatanathan KKrawczyk MTseng EReime LBalaam MSiek KZaga CFarzan RLópez CCardoso Llach DQuercia DMustafa MNiu SWong-Villacrés M(2024)Caring for Reproductive Justice: Design in Response to AdversityCompanion Publication of the 2024 Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing10.1145/3678884.3681832(693-696)Online publication date: 11-Nov-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3678884.3681832
Lu AWikstrom EDillahunt T(2024)Contamination, Otherness, and Negotiating Bottom-Up Sociotechnical Imaginaries in Participatory Speculative DesignProceedings of the Participatory Design Conference 2024: Full Papers - Volume 110.1145/3666094.3666110(173-186)Online publication date: 11-Aug-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3666094.3666110
Huybrechts LSmith RWinschiers-Theophilus HLoi DSimonsen J(2024)Participatory Design in a Changing World: A Situated ActionProceedings of the Participatory Design Conference 2024: Situated Actions, Doctoral Colloquium, PDC places, Communities - Volume 310.1145/3661456.3666065(59-61)Online publication date: 11-Aug-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3661456.3666065
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Index Terms

Utopias of Participation: Feminism, Design, and the Futures
1. Human-centered computing
  1. Interaction design
    1. Interaction design process and methods
      1. Participatory design

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Published In

cover image ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction

ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction Volume 25, Issue 1

Special Issue on Reimagining Participatory Design

February 2018

162 pages

ISSN:1073-0516

EISSN:1557-7325

DOI:10.1145/3183791

Editor:
Ken Hinckley
Microsoft Research

Issue’s Table of Contents

Copyright © 2018 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

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Publication History

Published: 22 February 2018

Accepted: 01 July 2017

Revised: 01 April 2017

Received: 01 January 2017

Published in TOCHI Volume 25, Issue 1

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Lusi BPetterson APayyapilly Thiruvenkatanathan KKrawczyk MTseng EReime LBalaam MSiek KZaga CFarzan RLópez CCardoso Llach DQuercia DMustafa MNiu SWong-Villacrés M(2024)Caring for Reproductive Justice: Design in Response to AdversityCompanion Publication of the 2024 Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing10.1145/3678884.3681832(693-696)Online publication date: 11-Nov-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3678884.3681832
Lu AWikstrom EDillahunt T(2024)Contamination, Otherness, and Negotiating Bottom-Up Sociotechnical Imaginaries in Participatory Speculative DesignProceedings of the Participatory Design Conference 2024: Full Papers - Volume 110.1145/3666094.3666110(173-186)Online publication date: 11-Aug-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3666094.3666110
Huybrechts LSmith RWinschiers-Theophilus HLoi DSimonsen J(2024)Participatory Design in a Changing World: A Situated ActionProceedings of the Participatory Design Conference 2024: Situated Actions, Doctoral Colloquium, PDC places, Communities - Volume 310.1145/3661456.3666065(59-61)Online publication date: 11-Aug-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3661456.3666065
Volpi VMitchell VCockbill SKuzmina K(2024)PD as in Prefigurative Design: A ludic framework beyond participationProceedings of the Participatory Design Conference 2024: Exploratory Papers and Workshops - Volume 210.1145/3661455.3669877(98-106)Online publication date: 11-Aug-2024
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Jenkins TTsaknaki VHowell NBoer LWong RCampo Woytuk NKun PSøndergaard M(2024)Mapping Futures and Futuring in HCI/DesignCompanion Publication of the 2024 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference10.1145/3656156.3658384(458-461)Online publication date: 1-Jul-2024
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Murray MPantidi NMccarthy J(2024)Designing for Dissensus: Socially Engaged Art to access experience and support participation.Proceedings of the 2024 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference10.1145/3643834.3661516(2851-2865)Online publication date: 1-Jul-2024
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