Designing  with  Immigrants:  When  emo2ons  run  high  

   

Mariana  Salgado  Helena  Sustar    

Michail  Galanakis        

Arki Research group

Encore research group Department of Media/ Department of Design

Aalto University

Department of Geography Helsinki University

 21.04.2015  EAD  Conference.  Paris.  France  

While design researchers have started to understand the impact the phenomenon of immigration has in their fields, the actual input of immigrants in setting any design agenda is marginal. By engaging immigrants in design processes, we emphasise our responsibility as designers for social inclusion.

How to engage immigrants in participatory design research?

Compara2ve  analysis  

1  

MIGRATION STORIES FROM EAST HELSINKI: OUR CITY

A series of workshops and other events in which different immigrant communities were explicitly invited to take

part in the design process.

Participants in the workshop: 15 women who knew each other well. Food! an integral part of the workshop’s planning and realization.

Using props (cards) made participants’ life stories

easier to narrate/express/write/

visualize.

Participants have to think of a favourite object before the interview, an object evocative of the person’s home country. Telling the story about

the object selected served as an icebreaker.

MIGRATION JOURNEYS TO HELSINKI: STANDING IN SOMEONE’S SHOES

Immigrant customer journey in the early stage of integration in Finland

The study revolved around four themes: experiences before moving to the country, experiences upon arrival, interaction with services, and integration.

Seven immigrants (two men and five women) were interviewed

How they were using services related to their move and how they felt about those services?

Analysis  

2  

We wanted to compare the techniques applied while we worked with our participants and our own experiences

We went through the activities together, we

listened to our recordings and diaries from these encounters

Discussion  

3  

A jolly atmosphere was the result of more than just sticking to specific techniques, and that in itself

afforded rich data.

In both cases, strong emotions were triggered due to several factors: the visualisations, the relationships amongst participants, the overall atmosphere, the

open-ended nature of the questions, and the content of the discussion, namely migration stories.

While the techniques and context of our fieldwork encouraged reflection on the personal lives of participants,

we are not sure how to utilise these reflections for the benefit of the participants themselves. We do know, however, how

to use these reflections as input in the design process

Emotions, even when they are controversial, are unavoidable. As design researchers we must look into other fields to learn how to deal with, and report on emotions, rather than to “push them under the carpet”.

Participatory design activities are particularly useful in interactions with immigrants because they are largely visual, rather than language based. Non-language communication is a key not only because participants are communicating in a language that is not their own, but also because of the emotional nature of the issue of immigration.

Paying attention to issues of trust, empathy, personal and professional relationships and ethics are key to enriching design

visions.

References Beyer, H., & Holtzblatt, K. (1999). Contextual Design. Interactions, 1999 - dl.acm.org

Björgvinsson, E., Ehn, P., & Hillgren, P-A. (2012). Agonistic participatory design: working with marginalized movements. Co-Design: International Journal of CoCreation in Design and the Arts. 8: 2-3, 127-144.

Dindler, C., & Iversen, O.S. (2014). Relational Expertise in Participatory Design. In the proceedings of Participatory Design Conference, Windhoek, Namibia.

Brand, E., Binder, T., & Sanders, E.B.-N. (2013). Tools and techniques. Ways to engage telling, making and enacting. In Routledge International Handbook of Participatory Design. Simonsen, J. and Robertson, T. (eds). Routledge, New York, USA.

Clarke, R., & Wright, P. (2012). Evocative of Experience: Crafting cross-cultural digital narratives through stories and portraits. NordCHI’12, Copenhagen, Denmark.

Crossley, L. (2003). Building Emotions in Design. The Design Journal, volume 6, issue 3.

Denborough, D. (2008). Collective narrative practice: Responding to individuals, groups and communities who have experienced trauma. Adelaide, Australia: Dulwich Centre Publications. Fuad-Luke, D. (2012) How Was It for You? OurCity-OutReach and the City of Helsinki. Retrieved on 26.02.2014, from http://bit.ly/1mUmlNi Huybrechts, L, Dressen, K., & Schepers, S., (2012). Mapping design practices: on risk, hybridity and participation. Proc. Participatory Design Conference, 2012, Roskilde , Sweden, pp. 29-32

Hynes, T. (2003). The issue of “trust” and “mistrust” in research with refugees: choices, caveats and considerations for researchers. New issues on refugee research. The UN refugee agency, UK. Kalantidou, E., & Fry, T. (2014). Design in the Borderlines. Routledge. UK. Keshavarz, M., & Mazé, R. (2013) 'Design and Dissensus: Framing and Staging Participation in Design Research', Design Philosophy Papers, 1: unpaginated. Kimbell, J., & Julier, J. (2012). The Social Design Methods Menu. In perpetual beta. Fieldstudio, UK. Retrieved on the 1.09.2014 from http://www.lucykimbell.com/stuff/Fieldstudio_SocialDesignMethodsMenu.pdf Light, A., & Akama, Y. (2012). The Human Touch: Participatory practice and the role of facilitation in designing with communities. In the proceedings of the Participatory Design Conference, Roskilde, Denmark. McDonald, S. (2003). Answering questions and asking more: reflections on feminist participatory research. Resources for Feminist Research, 30(1/2): 77-100. Lammers, E. (2005). Refugees, asylum seekers and anthropologists: the taboo on giving. Global Migration Perspectives. Global Commission on International Migration. Switzerland. Rizzo, A., & Galanakis, M. (2014) Transurbanism – Towards a new Transdisciplinary

Approach in Urban Planning (Honourable Mention at the Young Planning Professionals Award 2012). In D. Iossifova (Ed.), Architecture & Planning in Times of

Scarcity: Reclaiming the Possibility of Making. Manchester: SoftGrid Ltd, 144-157. Salgado, M., & Galanakis, M. (2014). “… so what?”- Limitations of Participatory Design on Decision-making in Urban Planning. Proceedings of the Participatory Design Conference 2014, 06-10 October 2014, Windhoek, Namibia, 5-8. Stickdorn, M., & Schneider, J. (2010) This is Service Design Thinking: Basics - Tools - Cases, BIS publishers, Amsterdam, Netherlands, 158 - 161.

Twi7er:  @salgado  Blog:  

h7p://pinatasdigitales.wordpress.com/    

Arki  blog:    h7p://arki.mlog.taik.fi/  

Slideshare:    h7p://www.slideshare.net/marianasalgado  

       

 

Thank  you!  Mercí!    

mariana.salgado@aalto.fi http://www.slideshare.net/mariana.salgado

Pictures in this presentation are part of the two projects presented here.