Future Workshop on Facebook

An important part of my thesis is looking at how traditional methods for participation can be utilized in the online space. While this may bring about a series of challenges (Hagen & Robertson 2009), there is value in the knowledge and experiences that we have from using pre-established methods, and for that reason, I believe that the methods will have the ability to work through online spaces. However, as the methods were developed for the use in face-to-face interactions, they may not work the same way in an online space. I have therefore explored the process of translation of the method in the execution of a Future Workshop on Facebook to further celebrate the inexpensive and unifying territories for participation.

Online Future Workshop
In Participatory Design the Future Workshop approach is a technique to enable participants in generating ideas for the future activities at work places, and initiate ideas and visions for impementing those ideas in system design (Greenbaum & Madsen 1993). In my study, I chose to conduct a Future Workshos to enable users of an online Heritage Photo service to contribute in the decision making of developing a mobile application of the service.

To apply this method to Facebook and the online space, several challenges and issues needed to be addressed, such as: who and what type of users I was involving, the fact that they were distributed, and the fact that their differences could lead to difficulties with facilitation.

In addressing one such issue, I prepared banners to create boundaries between the different phases and as introductions for the participants involved. Each phase had a topic for dicsussion as a centering point to facilitate the heterogeneous participants.

Not only would they give a visualized division between the different phases of the workshop and create a framework for the participants to work in, but also introduce and create a common understanding for the heterogeneous people involved.

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Further explorations on the workshop, the process of translation and how Facebook as a platform for performing Participatory design influenced the method and the outcomes, are important themes of discussion in my thesis, and hopefully a valuable contribution to the Participatory Design community.


References

Greenbaum, J. & Madsen, K.H., 1993. Small Changes: Starting a Participatory Design Process by Giving Participants a Voice. In D. Schuler & A. Namioka, eds. Participatory design: principles and practices. Hillsdale, N.J.: L. Erlbaum Associates, pp. 289-298.

Hagen, P. & Robertson, T., 2009. Dissolving boundaries: social technologies and participation in design. In Proceedings of the 21st Annual Conference of the Australian Computer-Human Interaction Special Interest Group: Design: Open 24/7. OZCHI  ’09. New York, NY, USA: ACM, pp. 129–136.