What community?

Abstract

Notions of 'community' are still taken-for-granted in Participatory Design discourse, omitting critical examination of how people participate in projects to achieve and evaluate community-based participation and outcomes. This paper critically reflects on challenges and obstacles faced when using participatory design methods in engaging a 'community' on bushfire risk awareness. Bushfires are a critical and continuous threat to residents living in regional areas of Australia. Through this project, we identified a critical communication problem in bushfire awareness and preparation caused by 'fragmented' networks among a 'community of place'. This fragmentation contributes to significant communication obstacles in community-level preparation for bushfires. This research explored participatory design 'scaffolds' to capture, share and visualise locally relevant knowledge vital in mitigating bushfire risks. These methods facilitated awareness and revealed tacit knowledge on who and what community is. Critical reflection of the project examines how such methods have the potential to facilitate the creation of sub-groups gathered around a common cause. And has also built understanding to avoid 'imagined' notions of a community that can hide social heterogeneity.

Socio-materiality of trust: co-design with a resource limited community organisation

“…Indeed, distrust can help provoke reflection on design researchers' roles (Lee 2008), and ensure that design approaches are appropriately reconfigured (Light and Akama 2012). This is particularly pertinent when working with people experiencing limited or precarious access to information or other resources (Akama and Ivanka 2010;Le Dantec and Fox 2015). For example, awareness of a group's distrust in local services informed how Light and Akama (2012) sought to make a 'good impressionboth as people to be trusted and able to make a contribution to the wellbeing of the locality' (ibid 68).…”

“…While distrust can be perceived as undesirable in potentially hindering cooperative relations and action in design (Lee 2008;Pirinen 2016;Yee and White 2015), its articulation in early interviews was significant in enabling a better understanding of how members of Flourish felt let down by others. This presented opportunities for greater critical reflection within the team and ways of doing things differently (Akama and Ivanka 2010;Light andAkama 2012, 2014), particularly in our choice of design activities and materials. We revisited what it was that we were trying to achieve with and through design research and how to make the most of particular materials for those involved.…”

“…Relevant for co-design is how sociological literature frames trust as enabling people to commit and engage creatively while generating risk and vulnerability (Barbalet 2009;Giddens 1994;Luhmann 1979;Mollering 2013). While trust is often considered vital for beneficial societal relations and action, understanding distrust in institutions associated with access to material resources (Arnstein 1969;Botsman 2017;Clayton, Donovan, and Merchant 2015;Withers 2017) and within community-based and participatory research may also be useful to enable critical reflection and material sensitivity in design (Akama and Ivanka 2010;Light and Akama 2012).…”

Anticipating Precarity and Risk in Social Innovation Design for Entrenched Place-Based Disadvantage

“…More situated design responses for socially engaged design and innovation with specific communities (such as Clarke et al 2016) have however responded more holistically to precarities of existence in very particular ways. This includes design for sustainable financial services for rural farmers in Myanmar to support poverty reduction (Aung Din 2017), support for an understanding of the circulation and appreciation of creative cultures under threat of disappearance in Taiwan (Bardzell, Bardzell and Ng 2017), and design for community fire preparedness to support coordinated local responses during bush-fires in Australia (Akama and Ivanka 2010). These practice-based and well researched examples go beyond social innovation that enhances the efficiency of services or enables clients to communicate more effectively with government services.…”

Designing InWith Black Box Technologies and PD

“…The main workshop was loosely informed by the approaches taken to giving material form to 'prototyping' (Andersen, 2013;Nissen & Bowers, 2015;Akama & Ivanka, 2010) within open PD dialogue. We used these as means of engaging participants and prompting their discussions on the properties and workings of the Blockchain technologies.…”