At the beginning of September 2023, RE-SAMPLE partner RRD took part in the workshop "Partizipative und Sozialverantwortliche Technikentwicklung" ("Partcipatory and Socially Responsible Technology Development") at the conference "Mensch und Computer" (MuC, "Humans and Computers") in Rapperswil, Switzeland.
MuC is the largest conference series on human-computer interaction in Europe. The conference is organised by the German Informatics Society and German UPA (association of German usability and user experience professionals).
The workshop on participatory and socially responsible technology development wanted to foster the discussion around the question: "To what extent does user participation lead to socially responsible technology development?" People interested in joining the workshop were invited to submit a position paper in which they reflect on their experiences in participatory design and on questions:
- What was the structure of participation and the relationships of interests in the project? Which criteria were used to select users? Were gender and diversity aspects taken into account?
- What was the research and development process like? Who was involved in which knowledge and decision-making proceses? How much influence or decision-making power did the users have?
- What methods were used? How did they influence, enable or prevent participation and influence?
- How are the process and the project evaluated with regards to the demands of participatory design and ultimately with regard to their contribution to socially responsible technology?
RE-SAMPLE partners from RRD Christiane Grünloh, Marian Hurmuz, Eline te Braake, and Stephanie Jansen-Kosterink wrote a position paper for the workshop "End-user and stakeholder participation in the European eHealth project RE-SAMPLE".
Abstract:
In our position paper, we reflected on the end-users and stakeholders that were engaged in several different activities in the project (for example, user needs and requirements elicitation, testing of technology, creating the new service model) using different methods (for instance, interviews, surveys, workshop) and formats (online, in-person, by phone). We are very grateful for the the time that people took, to give us their input and information, on which many decisions were based.
Together with other participants, we reflected on how we could improve the level of participation of end-users and stakeholders. Given the workload of healthcare professionals and the disease burden of people living with COPD, we have to balance the level of involvement (i.e., sharing power, decisions and responsibilities) with the burden that comes with this. Given the challenges to recruit people to be involved, we often needed to take what we get. However, the people who volunteered might not be representative of the whole population of people living with COPD. An ongoing challenge therefore is to reach people who are difficult to reach, to also include their perspective when developing the RE-SAMPLE virtual companion.
As we conclude in our position paper: our goal is to continuously find ways to reach all people that are affected by the technology under development and that are representative of the population - in all of our projects. Building good relationships with the stakeholders and involving them already when writing a grant proposal can help to shape the project in a way that addresses their needs and kick-start outreach activities early on. Furthermore, we believe that delivering first and asking later (e.g., by continuously sharing activities and results from ongoing studies in an accessible way) is a good way to show our commitment to stakeholder involvement. It can also illustrate what we mean by participation, to lower the barriers for people who do not have any experience yet.
