Nov 9th — PhD-led Session

This is the summary for week 11 “PhD-led Session” of Seminar 3 Advanced Interaction & Service Design Concepts / Design Theory & Practice. The aim of this course is to engage in critical discourses in design and explore and reflect on the implications of designing in the world, the agency of designed artifacts, and their effects not only in human systems but also in environmental ones.

We are currently covering the third module of our course called Research x Design. The students would conduct a pilot study, topics of their choice. At the end of the semester, they will present their studies and hold a Participatory event.

This week was facilitated by the first year PhD cohort. They held a workshop to talk about Stakeholders, Positionality, Values. The prompt was a conflict where landlords proposed to use facial recognition for security, while residents were not comfortable about the decisions. The students were asked to identify stakeholders and classify them as direct, indirect, and invisible. The common direct stakeholders included landlords and residents. The other direct stakeholder that provoked discussions was CEO of the management company. Although he or she did not give a specific order, he or she still provided a general guideline for this decision.

Key takeaways from the participants included “even if people agreed on the same premise, they could classify stakeholders completely differently”.