[Sigia-l] CALL FOR ABSTRACTS, AWF 2004: "Involving, Engaging & Educating Others"

[Lucas Daniel]

Apologies for cross-postings...

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Involving, Engaging & Educating Others

What are your strategies for involving the client in the design
process? Do you have a creative, infallible or interesting method for
engaging and educating end users or management in design research?
About, With and For 2004 would like to invite you to share your
theories, principles and ideas in a professional conference committed
to advancing the practice of design research.
http://www.aboutwithandfor.com

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About, With and For Conference
Advancing the practice of design research

October 22nd & 23rd, 2004
Courtyard Marriott, Chicago, IL

CALL FOR ABSTRACTS 2004: "Involving, Engaging & Educating Others"
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DUE AUG. 18 2004

AWF 2004 Conference Theme
As human-centered research continues to grow in popularity and
presence, we as social scientists, researchers, designers, educators,
consultants, and project managers are responsible for moving our
discipline past simple story-telling and obvious solutions. Creating
rich and insightful data often requires involving and engaging others
in the process of design research, analysis and synthesis. But this
isn't easy.

Effective research lies in the ability to work together to uncover
insights; good analysis rests in the ability to communicate the value
of sound methods to others; and successful synthesis (ending in
successful products & services) results in a common understanding of
user and business needs.

This year's About, With and For conference will focus on how to
involve, engage, and educate a third party audience, be it clients,
colleagues, students, research participants, or executive decision-
makers.

Liz Sanders, President of SonicRim, and Tony Salvador, Design
Ethnographer at
Intel Research, will deliver keynote addresses on this subject. Liz
is a pioneer in the use of participatory methods in the design and
branding of consumer and office products, systems, interfaces, and
spaces. She will lead additional workshops at the conference to give
people hands-on experiences with some new participatory design
methods and tools for the generative phase of the design process.
Tony's relevant recent work has been in the "emerging part of
emerging markets" examining the benefits of information &
communication technologies for development while taking a critical
look at the role large multinational corporations can appropriately
adopt.

Conference Topics
We are inviting presentation and workshop abstracts related to
involving, engaging, and educating others in the process of design
research.

1. Presentations
Presentations can range from academic to professional. We are
specifically looking for abstracts, relevant to the theme of the
conference, that focus on case studies, tools and methods.
Presentations should last no longer than 45 minutes, and should
include time for Q&A and discussion. The ideal length should be
around 25-30 minutes.

Topic areas for presentations include, but are not limited to:
-     Effective ways to work with client design teams
-     Presenting design directions to executive decision-makers
-     Creating learning environments for students and/or clients
-     Incorporating end users into the design process
-     Constructing brainstorming or design work sessions
-     Communicating the value of design within corporations
-     Effective research presentation methods
-     Training new hires on research methods
-     Making data manageable
-     Managing project expectations

Here is a brief abstract from one of our keynote speakers to give you
an idea of the focus of the conference.

Liz Sanders - Inspiring and Informing Others
In the early front end of the design development process, design
research aims to provide insight into the unmet needs and dreams of
people, provide inspiration to the development team and to identify
new product opportunities. New tools and methods for generative
research are emerging continually and can be seen to fall along a
continuum from inspiration to information. I will present new
participatory tools and methods (for example, primes, probes
and "make tools") from across this continuum and show how they are
being applied in practice today.


2. Workshops
Workshops are intended as interactive hands-on sessions where
attendees can experience participatory tools and methods first-hand.
It is, in fact, the participatory part of our conference, and should
be dynamic, fun, and educational. Workshops are allocated an hour and
a half and will host 15-20 people each. AWF will cover the costs of
workshop materials as well as a small stipend for the organizer.

Potential workshop ideas could have conference participants involved
in:
-     Tailoring a presentation for a specific audience
-     Preparing work session kits for a client team
-     Creating a user case useful to brainstorming/ideation
-     Creating take-away kits for your audience
-     Involving the client in analysis/synthesis of data
-     Including participants in the design process
-     Researching from remote locations

SonicRim will also be coordinating two workshops for the conference,
below are abstracts for those to give you further ideas.


Workshop #1: Participatory Tools for Individuals

Each workshop participant will have a hands-on experience with a
participatory "make tool" for an experience domain of current
relevance such as communication, security, mobility, etc. After
presenting their creations, the workshop participants will decide
collectively what to do in the time remaining. Discussion topics
might include: "make tool" construction, "make tool" analysis,
toolkits for exploring emotional experience, etc.

Individual participatory design tools are very useful for
understanding the needs and dreams of potential end-users in order to
be able to drive the design development process from a human-centered
perspective.


Workshop #2: Participatory Tools for Groups

Workshop participants will work in teams for a hands-on experience
with participatory "make tools" for collective thinking and
imagining. Team-based toolkits based on an experience domain of
current relevance such as communication, security, mobility, etc.
will be available for each team to use. After the collective "make
session", the workshop participants will decide how best to utilize
the rest of the session. Topics might include: times and situations
in which the use of group tools would be most effective, constructing
toolkits for group decision-making, constructing toolkits for
collective creativity, etc.

Group participatory design tools are often used internally and can be
very effective for collective ideation as well as for decision-making
with multidisciplinary teams.


3. BOTH!

You may also consider submitting an abstract for BOTH a presentation
and a workshop, where the content of the workshop is based on the
presentation.

Submission Details
Please submit the following to abstracts at aboutwithandfor.com by
August 18, 2004:

-     A title
-     A two-sentence summary of your presentation or workshop
-     A detailed description of your topic (no more than 250 words)
-     A brief author biography (no more than 150 words)

You may submit as many individual abstracts as you wish. A panel of
external advisors and professionals will review your submission. We
will notify accepted speakers by September 15th.


Registration and Fees
Registration began on June 1st, 2004. We expect between 150 and 200
attendees, based on last year' attendance, as well as current
registration numbers. The conference takes place on Friday, October
22 and Saturday, October 23 at the Courtyard Marriott in downtown
Chicago.

Prices for attending About, With and For are as follows:

Before September 1st:
Professionals - $290
ID Alumni - $40
Non-IIT Students - $20
IIT Students (including ID) - Free

After September 1st:
Professionals - $320
ID Alumni - $60
Non-IIT Students - $30
IIT Students (including ID) - $10

AWF will cover registration and one-night hotel accommodation for all
confirmed speakers.


About the Conference
About, With and For is a collaborative forum offered by the Institute
of Design to address issues within Design Research. It is targeted at
those who develop ideas based on insights into people's behaviors,
perceptions, beliefs and attitudes. Within this forum, we explore a
range of methods to uncover insights and translate them into
meaningful systems, products, organizations, services and
communications.

Our goal is to attract people (students, educators and professionals)
from a wide variety of fields. Now in our third year, we are growing
and continually striving to provide more useful content. Creating an
environment for learning together will help us to extend our tools
and methods beyond their current boundaries and advance the practice
of Design Research.