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Danish Design school | sol@dkds.dk i n t e r a c t i o n s J u l y + A u g u s t 2 0 11 28 Community + Culture features practitioner perspectives on designing technologies for and with communities. We highlight compelling projects and provocative points of view that speak to both community technology practice and the interaction design field as a whole. Tad Hirsch, EditorcommuniT y + cuLTure Forum

In this paper we are exploring the relation between participation and fiction with the aim of investigating how fiction can be a resource for participatory design and can shed more light on the participatory value of fiction. We describe how fiction has been taken up and conceptualized in contemporary design research and argue that different strategies for applying fiction may be seen as a resource for evoking various forms of participation. Furthermore this paper present three case examples of participatory prototyping, that makes use of play or games as a way to engage participants with a particular use of make-believe. We discuss these cases with the purpose of identifying how participatory design can benefit from a more articulate notion of fiction.

This paper examines the project Urban Animals andUs as a journey -or foray -into the terrain vague between people and (other) animals with whom we share urban space. Through three design experiments developed around speculative prototypes and co-design tools, we attempt to bring "wild" urban animals like magpies and gulls into contact with the residents of a senior retirement home, to explore what new practices can arise between otherwise unconnected life-worlds. We expand the notion of companion species from philosopher of science Donna Haraway and begin to position the current project within a growing interest in animals in contemporary design research. Through analysis of the design experiments and the subsequent discussion, we argue that a foray into interspecies relations can inform the practical research agenda and help to re-articulate the dominant anthropocentricity of design research.

The aim of this paper is to contribute to a new conceptual foundation for design fiction. Much attention is dedicated to theorising how design fictions relate to our so-called actual world. This work can be seen as an attempt at securing the seriousness and legitimacy of design fiction as an approach to design research. The theory of possible worlds has proven promising in this regard. We argue, however, that a detailed understanding of design fiction is still lacking. In design fiction literature, authors often engage in critiquing techno-centric approaches while paying less attention to how design fiction has a potential to foster social change in situated actual affairs. We argue that analysis should start from the messy unfolding of the design event itself rather than from big ontological discussions of the boundaries between fiction and reality. To grasp the messiness of design fiction, we offer an interdisciplinary framework, bridging knowledge domains such as literally theory and design anthropology.