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Participatory design fieldwork. Dealing with emotions

This document discusses dealing with emotions in participatory design research. It describes a case study of workshops with immigrant women in Finland where strong emotions were triggered discussing migration stories. The workshops identified needs for language courses and community spaces. Emotions are unavoidable in this type of research and time for reflection, debriefing, and defusing is important. Design researchers take on multiple roles as confidants, translators, and facilitators, so being empathetic while not exacerbating emotions is key. When emotions run high, reserving time for discussion with colleagues or trained personnel is important.

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Urban Design Insights• Co-Design•
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Participatory Design Fieldwork: Dealing with Emotions Mariana Salgado Michail Galanakis Esa Pursiainen SUO&CO Independent researchers & practitioners 21.11.2016 Cumulus, Hong Kong
Emotional investment while engaging with vulnerable people – as many immigrants are – in design fieldwork should be an element of analysis. Processes with emotional impact influence fieldwork.
An emotion is a strong feeling coming from certain circumstances, moods or relationships with others and which is intuitive.
How to deal with emotions in participatory design research?
Case Study 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 the life stories of our participants easier to narrate/express/write/ visualize.
“In my home country, I had to escape from the police. In Finland, you are not free even though you are not in prison. When I came here I got a new life and I smiled at everyone. But Finnish people keep their distance and so I do not feel free. Real freedom for me is in Kurdistan. Freedom is in the mind and in the feelings.” ”I do not think myself in Meri-Rastila, in the future I will go back to Kurdistan, I am counting the days.”
The identification of the need for services in the area such as appropriate language courses for mothers and recreational spaces in which immigrants could get to know Finnish people. In the Alternative Master Plan which was the main design product of the OURcity project, our findings were translated into a larger communal space for immigrants and Finns to gather, as well as a number of public spaces planned to be used by the diverse community in the area
Engagement Emotions Reciprocity 2
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.
It is ethically questionable to incite memories of painful events. As design researchers we have multiple roles: confidants, translators, facilitators, and investigators. In these roles we oscillated within a wide range of emotions varying from sadness when our participants got sad, to joyful when our participants were happy. We felt empathy and we were also quite conscious of our roles and research questions, and tried to keep our emotions at bay.
Emotions, even when they are controversial, are unavoidable. Light and Akama (2012) argue that participatory methods cannot be seen in isolation from the people engaged in them. They are “[m]ethods and techniques [that] require embodiment”. This embodiment could be painful in research situations in which traumatic events are discussed. Light, A., & Akama, Y. (2012). The Human Touch: Participatory practice and the role of facilitation in designing with communities. Proc. Participatory Design Conference, Roskilde,Denmark, p. 61-70.
When emotions run high 3
Time and space for reflection Defusing
Debriefing and defusing
Relational expertise
Conclusions 3
Spent some more time talking with us or personnel trained for debriefing, immediately after the workshop Picture in Flickr by Stephen published under CC license.
Reserve time to make a debriefing session with our colleagues just after the session Picture in Flickr by Stephen published under CC license.
Be empathic with participants’ emotions but also know how not to aggravate their emotions Picture in Flickr by Stephen published under CC license.
Offer our mediation in order for our participants to get help from, for instance, community workers and trauma specialists, in dealing with certain very distressing events in their lives. Picture in Flickr by Stephen published under CC license.
When our research falls into the category of designing with the Other, recognizing design as a social practice requires dealing with emotions.
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Thank you! mariana.salgado@aalto.fi http://www.slideshare.net/mariana.salgado Pictures in this presentation are part of the two projects presented here.
Twitter: @salgado Blog: http://pinatasdigitales.wordpress.com/ Slideshare: http://www.slideshare.net/marianasalgado