In HCI, material engagement is often conceptualised as an ongoing dialogue between designer and material. However, how such dialogues are situated in time remains underexplored, which is particularly relevant in educational contexts where time is a limited resource. This paper examines e-textile crafting processes through a temporal lens in a two-phase study: Phase I involved three exploratory workshops varying in duration, participants’ skills, and materials; Phase II comprised a synthesising workshop with 17 interaction design students. Our findings show how time constraints actively shape negotiations between skills and materials, and conclude by proposing three strategies for attending to temporality in dialogues with materials: (1) Navigating Temporal Flows, (2) Allying With Time Constraints, and (3) Attending to Pacing through Material Complexity. These strategies offer insights and strategies educators can adopt to embrace time constraints and integrate time-aware approaches when planning and facilitating e-textile workshops.

In HCI there have been calls for diversity-driven research and insights into how this may be carried out in practice. One way of conducting diversity-driven HCI research is by doing participatory design. In this paper we contribute with lessons identified from organizing a PD workshop that enabled diverse ways of participating for our participants. The workshop design is based on insights from two years of doing diversity-driven PD with two middle school classes, which are particularly interesting settings to explore as diverse children spend substantial time together in a period of their development that is formative for their socialisation. We describe the workshop itself before reflecting on its structure and facilitation as well as the role of the physical space and the choice of design materials with the aim to distil insights and recommendations about what researchers can do to enable diverse pathways of participation in design processes.

To counteract the fast-paced and efficiency-driven nature of technological development, Slow Technology philosophy calls for designing technology for reflection and mental rest. However, its focus lies mainly on interaction with artifacts on the user side. There is a lack of understanding of how applying this philosophy can influence designers and shape design processes. The goal of my PhD is to investigate notions of slowing down within participatory design processes through the lens of handcrafting with e-textiles, to uncover alternative design strategies for envisioning future technologies. To achieve this, I will probe slowing-down properties of crafts like state of flow, rhythm, and repetitiveness that have a peaceful and relaxing effect. I will apply these qualities to participatory design processes, allowing time for creativity, reflection, and diverse paths of participation. My findings will provide an understanding of how temporal affordances of e-textiles can shape PD processes, and offer strategies to facilitate and document slow design processes.

We present the insights from participatory design work that explores notions of Diversity Computing (DivComp) and how HCI can meaningfully engage with designing technology around diversity without resorting to tokenistic approaches. A future goal overarching the initial findings in this paper is to design technologically mediated, physical spaces (DivComp Spaces) within a school context where children meet, experiment and learn the complex dynamics of othering. We report on a series of nine workshops with 48 children. Based on a thematic analysis, we present four themes — Technology as Utility and Authority, Individual and Collective Place-Making, Staged and Emerging Conflicts, Belonging to the Group and Self-Expression — which we use to inform three design directions for developing DivComp Spaces specifically in the context of school. Finally, we critically reflect on our design practice and the difficulties of designing not only for, but also with diversity meaningfully embedded into design processes.

In this paper we would like to explain our approach to the development of this swatch, from the idea to the possible applications of the final product. We will explain how we came up with the basic idea, which questions we asked ourselves and what kind of materials we used to achieve the desired result. Furthermore, we will also explain what problems we had to deal with during the development process and how we found a way to solve them. Moreover, we will have a look at how our Swatch can be integrated into everyday life and what possibilities its use could offer. It is important to us to convey our way of thinking and working during the process, so we also added a little step by step guide that tells how the swatch is made.