[Air-L] Final Call for Papers: The 13th biennial Participatory Design Conference (PDC) in Windhoek, Namibia. (6. – 10. October 2014)

[Maurizio]

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Final Call for Papers: The 13th biennial Participatory Design Conference
(PDC) in Windhoek, Namibia. (6. – 10. October 2014)

www.pdc2014.org

Join us in Windhoek, Namibia in 2014 to celebrate the 13th Participatory
Design Conference (PDC). The conference theme of the PDC 2014 is
“Reflecting connectedness”. We are currently experiencing a technologically
pushed trend in ‘being always connected’.  This is manifested in a number
of designed artifacts, such as smart-phones, social networks, computer
supported cooperative work and distributed working tools. By ‘reflecting
connectedness’ in PD, we acknowledge influential relations across
continents, societies, people, disciplines and time, beyond the direct
involvement of stakeholders.  While PD has evolved as a discipline on its
own, we should continuously reflect on interrelations of theories and
practices within and across the field and thereby enriching PD within a
wider context.  We must further engage in critical debates of what it means
to design within and for a multilayered network, such as the on-line world
versus off-line interactions, the blurring distinction of designers and
users, researchers and artists, design and research ‘in the wild’,
designing for social justice, inclusiveness, and sustainability. We invite
authors to deliberate on these relations within and beyond the field of PD,
which affect its conceptualization and practices all over.

The 2014 PDC seeks to attract submissions from different disciplines,
academics, practitioners and artists in form of tutorials, workshops,
doctorial consortiums, participatory art encounters, papers, and industry
cases.

Important dates:

Conference dates: 6. – 10. October 2014

Full papers 28 February 2014

Short papers 10 March 2014

Workshop proposals 10 March 2014

Tutorials 10 March 2014

Doctorial Consortium 10 March 2014

Industry Cases 10 March 2014

pArt Installations 10 March 2014

Nomination to the Artful Integrators Award 10 March 2014

Acceptance Notification   13 June  2014

PDC’14 invites submissions in the following categories:
Research papers: (full papers - maximum 10 pages). Research papers should
report on original research which advances Participatory Design (PD) and
reflect on state of the art themes in our field. As a single track
conference, and the only one exclusively dedicated to PD, PDC Research
papers have a broad impact on the development of PD theory, approaches and
practices. Research papers will be published in the ACM International
Conference series. Each submitted paper will be double blind reviewed by at
least 3 reviewers. Each submission will be managed by a meta-reviewer to
ensure that feedback is relevant, the learning experience significant and
the process fair. Please make sure your submission is correctly anonymized.
Accepted papers should be revised according to the review reports and the
language should be checked by a native English speaker.

Short papers: (short papers – maximum 4 pages). Short papers should present
original, unpublished ideas and research that advances the field of
Participatory Design (PD) and reflect on its potential future developments.
As discussed in parallel, thematic sessions, PDC Short Papers can benefit
from a clear scope and are expected to contribute to the emergence of new
possibilities for PD. Compared to Research Papers, Short Papers may offer a
more limited discussion of related work, or they may, for example, provide
a novel design, method or theoretical concepts, without a full evaluation
or with less detailed explanation. Short Papers are reviewed to the same
standard of scientific quality as Research Papers, but the contribution is
more focused and clear-cut. Each submitted short paper will be double blind
reviewed by at least 3 reviewers. Please make sure submissions are
anonymous. Accepted papers should be revised according to the review
reports and the language should be checked by a native English speaker.

Interactive Workshops: (maximum 2 pages) The workshop proposal should
describe half day or full day sessions on topics that include methods,
practices, and other areas of interest related to Participatory Design
(PD). They should support an interactive format wherein active
participation is possible, beyond a presentation format. These formats
could include a mapping of a problem definition, small discussion groups,
etc. The proposal must be written in a format that can be used for
recruitment via the web. It should justify the need for the workshop and
should contain a title, goals, format, method or technique, its relevance
to PD and a schedule. Intended participants and how they will be recruited
should also be described. In the recruitment procedure important dates
should be clearly communicated to the participants (see timing). Also, it
should be clear to the organizers and the participants what the maximum
amount of participants is for the workshop and what the workshop duration
is (half day or full day). Finally, the workshop proposal should include a
clear statement about the expected outcomes of the workshop (e.g. journal
publication, research proposal, exhibition, etc.).
Tutorials: (2 page proposal) Half day and full day sessions for teaching
conceptual frameworks, methods/techniques, and novel approaches in
Participatory Design (PD). The proposal should contain a title, goals,
method or technique, relevance to PD and a schedule. Please describe in the
proposal any handouts that you intend to make available.

Industry Cases: (2-4 page case description) should report on the use of
participatory methods, tools, and/or practices within commercial,
non-profit, or governmental organizations. We are interested in a broad
range of submissions that explore what a participatory approach means to
different practitioners and audiences and may include ideas, approaches,
projects, experimentations or reflections on participation. We encourage
submissions from practitioners who might not ordinarily attend the
Participatory Design (PD) conference but who are grappling with the
complexities of participation or who are experimenting with novel
approaches. Cases should highlight the benefits, challenges, and outcomes
from the application of participatory approaches and should provide
concrete lessons for others who are interested in applying PD in their
organizations. Each submitted case will be peer reviewed for applicability
to the PD community.

Doctoral consortium: (4 page proposal) The doctoral consortium is a
full-day session intended for PhD students working within the field of
Participatory Design (PD). It will provide students with an opportunity to
discuss issues of concern to them in their studies and receive extensive
feedback from the session co-chairs and other student participants.
Enrolment is limited and selection will be based on the quality of
application submissions, taking into account how the research is related to
PD. The aim will be to include a spread of students with different
disciplinary emphases, at different stages of study, and coming from
different cultural backgrounds. The proposal should give an overview of the
PhD project, including research motivations, questions, methods, status of
current work, major findings and plans for further research. Accepted
applicants will be asked to provide a revised and elaborated research
summary (4 pages), and to participate in some pre-workshop on-line
discussions.

Art installations: (2 page proposal) Interdisciplinary collaborations have
often yielded surprising yet astonishing results, leading both research and
knowledge to new heights. PDC has a long history of incorporating
participatory art installations to inspire and innovate. Artists and
designers working with any form of interactive participatory methods are
invited to submit their projects. The works can take inspiration from
visual and digital media, performance arts, installations, communication
technologies, touch, sound and any other genres that allow participants to
take part or become part of the art piece. Projects should address/explore
the theme ‘reflecting connectedness’. Please submit a 2 page proposal of
the art work, in which the project is described (incl. sketch/design), the
relation to PD, and specific requirements for display. Alternatively
artists can submit audio or video files describing the project.

The Artful Integrators’ Award: We welcome nominations for the sixth Artful
Integrators’ Award, to be presented at PDC 14 in Namibia. The Award is
intended to recognize outstanding achievement in the area of participatory
design of information and communications technologies. Where traditional
design awards have gone to individual designers and/or singular objects,
the Artful Integrator’s Award emphasizes the importance of collaborative
participation in design, and a view of good design as the effective
alignment of diverse collections of people, practices and artefacts.

Submission and formatting guidelines

The submissions in all categories are subject to double-blind peer review.
For previous PDC conferences, the acceptance rate for research papers has
been about 25% and for the other submission categories about 50%.All
submissions should follow thePDC paper template to be found on the
conference website (www.pdc2014.org).

The PDC 2014 proceedings will be published as part of the International
Conference Proceedings Series published by ACM and available online from
the ACM Digital Library. Accepted research papers will comprise Volume I of
the Proceedings of the 13th Participatory Design Conference. Volume II of
the proceedings will comprise the accepted papers in the other submission
categories. Authors of accepted papers will need to complete the ACM
copyright form as a condition of inclusion in the proceedings.Only PDF
files (.pdf) may be submitted and submissions are only accepted through the
PDC conference management system.

Heike Winschiers-Theophilus, Vincenzo D'Andrea & Ole Sejer Iversen

PDC’14 chairs.