Large scale urban planning consultations can elicit public contributions with limited reflectivity and scope in comparison with participatory projects in HCI. We therefore investigated how digital technology can be configured to enable participation at greater depth and at scale in Metro Futures 2020 – an online public consultation on light rail trains. Drawing on participatory methods used in HCI, we devised experience-centered and creative activities at different depths and scales – from “shallow and wide” social media polls to “deep and narrow” online workshops – and a website with three ways of exploring a digital train mock-up. Participation on the website was both at scale and to notable depth according to our analyses of data entry behavior and website comments. Our findings show that the value of online public consultations can be increased through providing experiential context for design proposals, supporting exploration of design details via immersion, and providing interconnected activities of varying depths and scales.

Abstract Online services have become increasingly centralized, drawing on notions of the ‘platform economy’ to focus on ecosystem value rather than user value. In parallel, there have been efforts by developers to augment these platforms, empowering platform users in the process. We explored a 12-month participatory-action project, focusing on redesigning portions of Just Eat, an online aggregator for takeaway food ordering, building upon theoretical perspectives from public health and Digital Civics. We document our experiences in identifying user behaviours and motivations across multiple design workshops, including the design of a web-augmentation–based template to disrupt platform provider behaviours, empower service users and increase individual agency. Through this case study, we identify opportunities and mechanisms for platform modification, linking augmentation to adversarial design with outcomes that have the potential to improve the well-being of platform users.

This paper discusses how characteristics of experience-centred and collaborative design can be translated to larger scales. We describe Metro Futures, a region-wide public consultation on the design of new light rail trains, where we followed an experience-centred co-design approach supported by digital media and tools to develop findings with a core group of 20 ?co-researchers' and ~4000 public participants. The paper discusses how the characteristics of a focus on experience, and collaborative design exploration were achieved with co-researchers and, at scale, through online and face-to-face interactions using various digital media and tools. Whilst not at the depth of smaller scales, there are opportunities to retain characteristics of experience-centred co-design at scale to produce findings that can usefully inform ensuing design work, and avoid the averaging of public contributions often evident in large scale public consultations.

Actuating, dynamic materials offer substantial potential to enhance interior designs but there are currently few examples of how they might be utilized or impact user experiences. As part of a design-led exploration, we have prototyped (Wizard-of-Oz) an actuating, dining table runner (ActuEater1), and then developed a fully-interactive fabric version that both changes shape and colour (ActuEater2). Four in-situ deployments of 'ActuEaters' in different dinner settings and subsequent 'design crits' showed insights into how people perceive, interpret and interact with such slow-technology in interesting (and often unexpected) ways. The results of our 'ActuEating' studies provide evidence for how an actuating artefact can be simultaneously a resource for social engagement and an interactive decorative. In response, we explore design opportunities for situating novel interactive materials in everyday settings, taking the leap into a new generation of interactive spaces, and critically considering new aesthetic possibilities.

We contemplate paths between form and formlessness as a middle way between digital technology for mindfulness, and mindfulness without digital technology, thereby inviting alternative departure points with interactive systems. In doing so, we step into a contested yet potentially fertile arena to challenge the handling, analysis and reporting of the relationship between mindfulness and technology and the methods used to interrogate it. Through the documenting of the authors' own creative practices (video, photography, and gardening), material traces and written vignettes of our experiments are presented to stimulate resonances and evoke mindfulness with readers. We also question the form of conference papers to consider how we can best share formless states of being in discussing their relevance for design.

Recent innovations in online, social and interactive media have led to the emergence of new forms of documentary, such as interactive documentaries ('i-Docs'), with qualities that lend themselves to more open and inclusive production structures. Still, little is known about the experience of making and/or participating-in these kinds of documentary. Our two-year in-the-wild study engaged a large community-of-interest in the production of an i-Doc to explore the ethically-desirable yet challenging aim of enabling multiple subjects to have agency and control over their representation in a documentary. Our study reveals insights into the experiences of participating in an i-Doc and highlights key sociotechnical challenges. We argue that new sociotechnical infrastructure is needed, that frames both "executory" and "structural" forms of participation as symbiotic elements of a co-design process.

Empirical sociological and critical-reflective accounts of technology in action show how the design, development and use of interactive systems involves complex, changing configurations between participants, materials and the objects of design. Such observations make many rationalistic and normative accounts of design highly problematic (e.g. that design is essentially problem solving). Our work goes beyond such critical points and investigates practical strategies for managing complex projects that do justice to the entangled character of practice whilst enabling a high level of creative productivity. We report on a long-term collaboration between micro-businesses, artists, researchers, their institutions and their publics to create media, installations, performances, and participatory workshops. We document the range of design work that we were able to achieve and discuss a number of the challenges we encountered. We conclude by critically discussing several orientations to design research against our emerging image of design as "many makings".

Type 1 diabetes affects approximately 1 in every 500 children in the UK. Although it is a lifelong condition, there are few if any overt manifestations, which can make it more difficult to meet people with the same condition. To avoid the risk of health complications, an emphasis is placed on a routine of self-management behaviours. However, factors such as the desire to 'fit in' with the peer group may impede adherence and thus increase the probability of diminished health later in life. Creating appropriate peer support networks may be valuable in aiding a young person with diabetes to attend to their condition through interactions with otherwise unseen peers. Through a series of design workshops the context of living with type 1 diabetes and the value of peer support are explored from the perspective of an adolescent. Four types of support are reported: informational; emotional; tangible; and belonging/companionship, and design opportunities explored.

We present a method for the situated discovery and articulation of issues at the intersection between the politics of place making and city planning. We describe the construction and use of designed tools, such as historical political archives; counterfactual maps; and cards to invite situated dialogue between the social and institutional practices and mechanisms that produce our cities. Grounded in an account of the political as vernacular and embodied, our analysis advance understandings on the politics of design, and on the complex interrelationship between places and political spaces. We outline how HCI can adopt methods and develop sensitivities to support democratic practices and publics envisioning their urban futures.

We conducted a study to explore the values and qualities of 'grassroots documentaries', framed around the production of two parallel documentary films with a London-based opera company. A team of professional filmmakers produced one film and the other was an exploratory form of grassroots documentary. We studied the different production activities through observations, interviews and a reflective workshop at the end of the study and evaluated the resulting films. Our analysis reveals critical insights that could inform the next generation of technological systems to support user-generated video content (UGVC) production, particularly in collaborative contexts such as grassroots communities.

Much of the knowing employed in skilled craft practice is difficult to communicate solely through written or verbal description. Consequently, the reflection and development of a craft practice in this manner may miss important nuances of practitioners' skills and experiences. We created digital technologies to sonify (using audio to perceptualize data) a group of craft practitioners' gestures to explore how we can aid their reflection in and on their craft, and consequently develop it. Over a number of workshops, the design of these sonifications were iterated based on how the practitioners responded to them. We found that direct sonification of gesture (sounds generated directly from motion sensor data) helped practitioners understand and reflect upon their own and each other's practice, encouraged discussion and enabled modification of craft technique.

Elaborating on the result of a field study of Christmas traditions in eight British households, we explore the design of technology specifically aimed at augmenting existing practices. Four concepts that favoured playfulness and engagement across generations were discussed in a workshop with eight people who took part in the initial field study. The importance of being connected and spending time together in a way that reinforces the family bonding was evident. The enthusiasm demonstrated during the workshop for some proposals and participants' engagement in revisiting those that did not feel right to produce better concepts seems to demonstrate there is space for interaction design that is ethnographically motivated and aesthetically harmonious with the meaning of home.