Abstract Over the past decade, a range of methodological approaches, user studies, and research results focused on technology for people with dementia has led to insights into the design of innovative solutions that can be embedded in the complex daily lives of people with dementia and their care-network. This paper recounts experiences and lessons learned over the course of a three-year participatory design project with and for people with dementia and their caregivers in domestic and institutional care settings. It contributes with long-term insights and reflections on the challenges confronting researchers in these sensitive care domains and discusses the need to 'know the users' and their care-networks so as to enable a deeper understanding of their unique difficulties. In particular, it examines the relationship between empathic understanding, experience-centered design, and the social appropriation of ICT, in our case exergames, in these various healthcare settings. What this might mean not only for future technology design, but also for the conduct of human-centered research is then discussed. We emphasize that designing appropriate assistive technologies for people with dementia requires sustained, empathetic engagement with both people with dementia and their caregivers, grounded in regular, trust-building interactions. Caregivers play a vital role in the appropriation and maintenance of these systems and researchers must be prepared for the emotional demands and relational commitments that such work entails. By embedding technology development within the rhythms of care and prioritizing mutual respect, researchers can create more meaningful, responsive, and sustainable support systems.

The COVID-19 pandemic triggered an unprecedented shift from office-based to remote work, catching many organizations off guard. This paper examines a German video game development company's adaptation to enforced working from home during the first lockdown. Through remote interviews with 20 employees from various departments, we identify technological, physical, organizational, and socio-psychological challenges. To address these, we devised a Crisis-Responsive Infrastructuring framework, blending socio-technical perspectives with strategies to enhance organizational adaptability. Our research highlights the crucial and reassuring role of Information and Communication Technology in maintaining productivity and social connectivity and reshaping work dynamics and infrastructure. Further, we emphasize the importance of flexible work concepts, such as hybrid models and decentralized organizations, in fostering resilience. Finally, by advocating for adaptive infrastructures that support remote work during crises and beyond, we aim to enrich the discourse on modern work practices and offer a systematic approach to strengthening organizational resilience.

Previous CSCW research has paid increasing attention to regional innovation systems providing the context for CSCW research and design. In this paper we provide insights into attempts to intervene in such a regional innovation system via practice-oriented activities. Our findings describe experiences of co-creating knowledge around digitization of SMEs on a regional level, beyond individual company contexts. We reflect on the benefits and challenges such an approach affords and highlight the importance of interpersonal relationships and similarities between practices in different contexts to enable intended but also initially unexpected knowledge spillovers. Our findings highlight how a praxeological approach to CSCW can be influential in regional development programs, and open this field to CSCW research and design. We draw out lessons for similar interventions and outline fruitful avenues for future research.

Abstract Human–computer interaction (HCI) scholars and others have advocated treating design as inevitably implicating political and ethical sensitivities. A subset of those considerations has been the attempt to deal with the often conflicting interests of stakeholders through ‘value sensitivity’. Drawing on value-sensitive design (VSD) as an inspiration, we emphasize the necessary way in which the evolving contextuality of the values in question shaped our research collaborations. This paper presents a retrospective analysis of two case studies from long-term user-centered design projects in fields with explicit ambitions for value-driven HCI research and concerned with emancipation and empowerment. The first, a 3-year project, entailed an explicit commitment to feminist policy initiatives with female participants that aimed at fostering values of gender equality. The second, a 4-year project, dealt with HCI research with and for older adults, where a multimodal mobility platform for ridesharing and public transportation was developed. We show how we translated general commitment into pragmatic, co-design research goals and infrastructures. The long-term ambition of our endeavors and integration of a broad stakeholder base were vital to support this. We additionally provide insights into how our approach offered safe spaces for trustful collaboration and flexibility when adapting methods to specific contexts.

The number of women in IT is still low and companies struggle to integrate female professionals. The aim of our research is to provide methodological support for understanding and sharing experiences of gendered practices in the IT industry and encouraging sustained reflection about these matters over time. We established a Living Lab with that end in view, aiming to enhance female participation in the IT workforce and committing ourselves to a participatory approach to the sharing of women's experiences. Here, using the case of a German video game company which participated in our Lab, we detail our lessons learned. We show that this kind of long-term participation involves challenges over the lifetime of the project but can lead to substantial benefits for organizations. Our findings demonstrate that Living Labs are suitable for giving voice to marginalized groups, addressing their concerns and evoking change possibilities. Nevertheless, uncertainties about long-term sustainability remain.

Participation of women in IT is still low and companies wonder which external communication measures are necessary to attract more female personnel. To gain a richer understanding of adequate gender sensitive ways of communicating towards girls and women, one needs to take into account contextual challenges. Following a Participatory Action Research approach, we conducted a qualitative field study in a video game company in a large city in Germany, identified areas of concern, and sketched out implications for gender-sensitive communication measures together with our participants. Findings show that addressing gender stereotypes, making role models visible, and using adequate channels is relevant. Some problems might be solved via short-term solutions, but the majority require a long-term perspective. Our lessons learned leave implications for companies in the IT sector who want to foster gender sensitive external communication measures and can contribute to the realization of more gender balanced working environments.

Digital participation has become an important issue in modern societies, typically focusing on groups prone to marginalization. From this perspective, less attention has yet been paid to imprisoned persons. Many penitentiary systems are formally characterized by the basic requirement of resocialization. Accordingly, life in prison should be largely adapted to conditions outside and to fundamental social changes, which must be considered in designing the framework for prison systems. Still, the digital opening of the prison is debated controversially, not least due to anticipated security issues. Hence, to raise awareness about challenges for digital participation of prisoners, we conducted a knowledge-sociological analysis (SKAD) of the public discourse on the use of ICT by prison inmates in Germany. We thereby seek to advance knowledge and insights from social and organizational practice arising from the use of ICT in context of total institutions and create the basis for action from a socio-informatics perspective.

Women interested in STEM fields (science, technology, engineering and mathematics), especially information technology (IT), are still facing several problems considering equality and career chances. Companies realize the opportunities of diversity and yet for several reasons they are struggling to hire or integrate female young professionals. Although gender study research provides promising frameworks there are still issues of making those usable in practical environments. Thus, there does exist a gap between science and practice -- A gap which our project aims to close by promoting the transfer of knowledge between gender studies and IT practice. Therefore, we collaborate with IT-organizations over a timespan of three years using a Participatory Action Research (PAR) approach. This approach offers opportunities to reveal new, relevant insights and create social change in a collaborative way. Thus, my PhD thesis deals on the one hand with the results considering specific gender-related topics we gained in the organizations as well as, on the other hand, with an evaluation of our methodology in this specific context.