The role of design fiction in participatory design processes

Paper in proceeding, 2018

Participatory design is in essence very malleable as any design technique could lend itself to it, as long as users and stakeholders are involved. Design fictions however, have more often been used as either a vehicle for critical designs, or as a sheer design tool, created by designers for designers as a means to drive ideation. In the 2010s however, the HCI community has opened up for using design fictions in conjunction with participatory methods and in parallel, researchers have started to explore the practices of creating and using fictions more thoroughly. In response to this, this workshop aims to explore if, how, and when in the design process participatory design practices and design fictions can be combined. We aim to create a first overview of the combined Participatory Design / Design Fiction process, including a set of practical examples. In this we invite not only interaction design researchers and practitioners, but also participants from related fields such as creative writers and artists in general.