Emerging Spaces for ICT4D and PD Communities
Welcome to Participatory Design Conference (Place-Malaysia)
18-20 August 2022
PDC Place Malaysia
18-20 August 2022
In Malaysia, the Information and Communication Technology for Development (ICT4D) community has strong roots and acknowledges the importance of “participation” and “community-centric” approaches in designing safe, inclusive, and equitable technologies. Participatory Design (PD) as an aspiration reflects in the practices, however, PD as a field of research is often implicit and could not emerge as an academic discipline in Malaysia.
Hence, University of Technology Sarawak is hosting Malaysia PDC Place (18-20 August 2022) with an aim to bring together academia, industry, government and local underserved communities and to develop a shared understanding of;
What does the emergence of Participatory Design and ICT4D mean to Malaysia?
How to design and establish alternative spaces and opportunities to decolonise development practices and produce shared knowledge? and
How can the guiding principles of PD influence the actions and reflections processes of ICT4D initiatives?
Conference Program
17 August 2022 | 18 August 2022 | 19 August 2022 | 20 August 2022 | 21-25 August 2022 |
Pre-Conference Workshops
Managing Service Learning
with
Amy Somchanhmavong
Associate Director
Service-Learning and Partnership
Cornell University
Dr. Lizette Reitsma
Malmö University
Sweden
Preserving Indigenous Knowledge through A Meeting of Design, Craft, Technology
We often talk in a celebratory way about innovation. However, in some cases we might need extra care in designing and implementing innovation as in the process of innovating we might loose important qualities and knowledge. This might be, for example the case if the aim with our designs is to preserve indigenous knowledge. Then we need to understand it not just in relation to the future, but also to the past. This talk is about different projects with indigenous communities exploring how design can support preservation respectful to the knowledge system. In each of the projects, combining design with craft and technology, became a way to integrate, connect to and respect the indigenous knowledge system.
Policy Dialogue
Policy Dialogue: Status and Way Forward for Digital Inclusion and Meaningful Connectivity in Sarawak
COVID-19 showed the vast divide between connected and disconnected people in Sarawak, as well as in many other parts of the world. With a low population density and rural settlements dispersed over distant locations, Sarawak presents a geographically hard environment for private telecommunications providers, and current spectrum laws are unable to solve the digital divide in remote Sarawak. As a result, the Sarawak government has chosen to invest in the establishment of a massive network of telecommunications towers and has applied for a Universal Service Provision (USP) licence in order to establish its own telecommunication firm. On 10 June 2022, in conjunction with the IDECS 2022 conference, University of Technology Sarawak (UTS) hosted a public forum in Sibu, featuring local community representatives, policymakers, practitioners and international panelists to discuss digital access, services sustainability, and the critical role of community engagement and empowerment in developing long-term and sustainable digital inclusion policies for Sarawak. The Policy Dialogue in PDC 2022 will carry forward the discussion and will bring together the policymakers, local community champions, and international speakers to develop a greater understanding of the trends, policies and strategies for promoting rights-based, universal meaningful connectivity and quality user experience for everyone in the state of Sarawak.
Exhibition
ipid-Asia Forum
Dr. Leonardo Parra Agudelo
Associate Professor
Universidad de los Andes Bogota
Colombia
Keynote Session
Participatory Design Otherwise and More-Than-Human Entanglements
In this session, we will talk about the more-than-human turn in Participatory Design, and discuss how we're starting to look at it in Colombia from a conceptual perspective, to engage the entanglements that this turn is revealing, whilst grounding the discussion in Latin American epistemologies and understandings.
Dr. Cat Kutay
Chair Network of Indigenous Partnerships
Charles Darwin University
Austalia
Parallel Sessions
Co-development is the next step
When we co-design with our users we aspire to incorporate their needs in our work in a way they can engage with our product. But do we understand how they work in the apps they have, and do we incorporate their ideas that can change how all people use apps. We are looking at co-development strategies, even when working with users with low IT skills and low IT language use. Especially with Aboriginal communities in Australia, we have seen a failure in the implementation of our software. These bespoke products take significant funds to produce, then the project does not cover someone taking it to the community and working on the implementation. However research in education, which is what such an implementation project entails, is focusing more on the implementation side of development, so lets use that research. Design-Based Implementation Research is a new area of focus for educational research.
The talk will cover the approach used in some projects that have been done with community from electricity supply to language learning. The aim is to make these scenarios as real as possible so participants in the workshop can see how they might work on their projects, as our approach will change with each location. So please come with your experiences in PD, your difficulties and your achievements and lets share the ways we can be prepared for users and their special contexts.
Dr. Masitah Ghazali
Associate Professor
Universiti Teknologi Malaysia
Parallel Sessions
What does the emergence of participatory Design and ICT4D mean to Malaysia?
Policyb Dialogue: Status and way forward for digital inclusion and meaningful connectivity in Sarawak
COVID-19 showed the vast divide between connected and disconnected people in Sarawak, as well as in many other parts of the world. With a low population density and rural settlements dispersed over distant locations, Sarawak presents a geographically hard environment for private telecommunications providers, and current spectrum laws are unable to solve the digital divide in remote Sarawak. As a result, the Sarawak government has chosen to invest in the establishment of a massive network of telecommunications towers and has applied for a Universal Service Provision (USP) licence in order to establish its own telecommunication firm.
On 10 June 2022, in conjunction with the IDECS 2022 conference, University of Technology Sarawak (UTS) hosted a public forum in Sibu, featuring local community representatives, policymakers, practitioners and international panelists to discuss digital access, services sustainability, and the critical role of community engagement and empowerment in developing long-term and sustainable digital inclusion policies for Sarawak. The Policy Dialogue in PDC 2022 will carry forward the discussion and will bring together the policymakers, local community champions, and international speakers to develop a greater understanding of the trends, policies and strategies for promoting rights-based, universal meaningful connectivity and quality user experience for everyone in the state of Sarawak.
Workshop: Storytelling as a tool for participatory design
Dr. Lizette Reitsma, Malmö University (Sweden)
Amy Somchanhmavong, Cornell University (USA)
Title:
Boleh! We can do this together
Storytelling as a tool for participatory design
Session Description:
Stories teach, nourish, and energize us to understand and connect ourselves to history, culture, and tradition that shape us and make meaning of our daily lives, interactions, the surroundings, and the world. This session looks to engage participants in storytelling and learn how to utilize stories to connect and involve participants in the design process.
Objectives:
- Introduce storytelling as a form of engaging everyone involved in the community-based projects
- Recognize that there are multiple stories, multiple experiences, and methods in making meanings
- Provide space for us to examine the concept of a participatory design through stories?
Discussions:
How do we use storytelling as a way to learn what we don’t know what we don’t know?
How might the unknown knowledge be unlocked so we can start going beyond it?
Can stories be our invitations to one and other, to participate in each other’s stories and to regenerate new stories?
Academia has its knowledge system of construction, production, and reproduction
The community has its knowledge system of construction, production, and reproduction
How might we interact with one another? Intersect with one another? Can we go beyond this duality? If so, how so? What would be the purpose?
Pluriversal Fair
Co-Design Community Workshops in Bawang Assan
- Community Networks
- Climate Change Observatory
Co-Design Community Workshop in Bawang Assan
Dr. Lizette Reitsma, Malmö University (Sweden)
Gary Loh Chee Wyai and Dr. Tariq Zaman University of Technology Sarawak
During a full day co-design workshop, there will be different focus points. Firstly, there will be a session on Mapping Community Networks. During this session, adapted from “Make the net-work”, a local version of 3D models will be used to engage and create spaces for community members and researchers to co-design an infrastructural model of community networks (CNs). This workshop will enable researchers and community members to critically think about the benefits and challenges of developing, organising, sharing, preserving, and sustaining a broadband network. The second focus point will be on initiating an exploration between community members and researchers to understand climate and biodiversity change observed by the community, focusing on the local knowledge. In the session, the use of materials (design probes) will be explored to: firstly, try to understand what is considered a climate change? secondly, how the change could be measured or mapped? and lastly, how this knowledge base could be used to support the community’s decision process about climate adaptation and conservation?
Click here for informed consent form
Post Conference Visit
Long Lamai Community, Baram Sarawak
ORGANISERS
Address
Advanced Centre for Sustainable Socio-economic and Technological Development (ASSET),
University of Technology Sarawak (UTS)
96000 Sibu, Sarawak,
Malaysia
Contact Us
Tel: (+6) 084-367520
Fax: (+6) 084-367301
Email: asset AT uts.edu.my
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