Workshop on

Participatory Design in Therapeutic Contexts

Sunday, 19th October 2008, Lund, Sweden

In conjuntion with NordiCHI 2008

EXTENDED Deadline for submissions: 15th September 2008.

Therapeutic contexts is a growing IT application area and thus an area that HCI should deal with from a design perspective. By therapeutic contexts we refer to situations where the technological artefacts mediate relations between therapists and clients/patients/citizens to further a therapeutic intervention. Examples could be treatment of phobic patients by means of a PDA application, EPR systems to be used in general health care practice, or tools for cognitive training of children with Downs syndrome in a swimming pool, just to mention a few.

In such design situations the user side is heterogeneous and the power relations seem to be rather complex, because some of the users (the clients/patients/?) may be fundamentally unable to participate in a dialog about what is the right environment for their recovery, e.g. if they are cognitively handicapped.

Such design situations challenge the basic perspectives of traditional participatory design because equal dialog and co-determination is not possible. In the care relation equal power and dialog are odd concepts. In most therapeutic situations a more triangular relation can be identified, comprising the designer the patient and the therapist. The patient is the person whose life is to be impacted by the new technology but often he cannot participate in the design activities because he cannot speak, or because he is too scared, or for some other reason.

The purpose of the workshop is to elicit and discuss possible new perspectives that enable designers to ensure empowerment for all in such situations. We expect participants from academia working with participatory design, assistive technologies, healthcare computing, etc, as well as more practice-based people.

We invite position papers about specific design cases, methodological or theoretical reflections, and other relevant contributions to the emerging debate.

Position papers should be 2 pages in the conference publication format, and should be sent in pdf format to olavb@daimi.au.dk no later than 15th September, 2008

The conference publication format can be found here: http://www.acm.org/sigs/publications/proceedings-templates

More information about the workshop may be found here: http://www.daimi.au.dk/~olavb/PDTC-nc08ws/

General information about NordiCHI 2008 can be found at: http://www.nordichi2008.org/

Organizers

Olav W. Bertelsen (olavb @ daimi.au.dk) is an associate professor in HCI and use oriented design at the Department of Computer Science, University of Aarhus, Denmark. He has organized a number of successful workshops at nordichi as well as other conferences.

Per-Olof Hedvall is a doctoral student in Rehabilitation Engineering and Design at Certec, Department of Design Sciences, University of Lund. He has worked within the fields of Augmentative and Alternative Communication and Assistive Technology for 15 years.

Partizia Marti is a researcher at the Interaction Design Area of the University of Siena, Italy. She has worked with information technology in a variety of therapeutic settings ranging from neonatal care to rehabilitation of citizens with dementia.