This paper outlines the method of Interpersonal Process Recall (IPR) as a Participatory Design method, especially in the context of design for mental health and wellbeing. IPR is more commonly used in psychotherapy and other helping professions to help trainees and practitioners and their clients reflect on their process, using AV recordings of interactions for the facilitation of deep and accurate recall. We propose that it can provide a mechanism for reflection on team working and relational aspects of Participatory Design. The paper discusses the rationale for using IPR and the ways in which the method relate to phenomenological inquiry (including the Person-Centred Approach); it describes an IPR research method protocol, and finishes with a discussion of the implications for Participatory Design methodologies.

This paper is one of three talks which reflect on the use of participatory design methods,

She is interested in how networks of things can be designed for networks of people, and her research interests include craft theory, design for mental health and wellbeing, and design anthropology. She is a council member of the Design Research Society, and convenes the tentSIG special interest group in tangible, embedded and networked technologies. Her practice-led research resulted in the first user-centred application of the ubiquitous computing platform, Speckled Computing in 2005. She currently leads the EPSRC project, An Internet of Soft Things.

This paper introduces a heuristic case study, reflecting on the use of the Interpersonal Process Recall (IPR) method as part of An Internet of Soft Things, a multidisciplinary design research project working with the UK mental health charity, Mind. The three authors represent three different disciplines within the projectPsychotherapy, e-Textiles, and Human-Computer Interaction -and naturally bring their own experiences and expectations to the multidisciplinary team process. The aim of the project is to develop, through practice, a methodology for a Person-Centred Approach to design, informed by the theories and practice of Carl Rogers, and thereby to address the increasing need for researcher reflection in Participatory Design. The paper outlines the project and describes our experiences of IPR within it; it discusses how we are taking this work forward and closes with some guidelines based on our personal observations in working with this method.

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