Workshop "Participatory & socially responsible technology development" at Mensch und Computer 2021

• Submission of a short position paper by June 11, 2021 (deadline extended!)
• Participants upload their position papers via the MuC 2021 conference tool

Participatory technology development assumes that direct cooperation between those who develop technology and those who use it leads to technical solutions that meet the needs of users. Participatory design (PD) of the Scandinavian school explicitly advocates the participation of marginalized population and user groups in technology development processes. The approach goes back to the "Cooperative System Design" of the 1970s, which pursued the political claim of workplace democratization, which was primarily promoted by trade unions, and was to be achieved by involving employees in technology development. However, what is meant by the term participation and how it is handled can vary greatly from project to project. As early as 2002, Ehn and Badham criticized the fact that the practice of participatory technology development had lost its political claim to democratization and empowerment of the respective user group and thus ultimately to social justice. PD has degenerated into a "soft technocracy of user involvement", which is primarily applied in academic technology development areas and less in companies. Current studies of participatory technology development projects support this thesis. In addition, the question arises as to how participation can be enabled in light of new socio-technical developments in areas such as artificial intelligence, automated driving, digital transformation, the Internet of Things and the associated changes to infrastructures, power relations and precarization.

Based on these challenges, together with participants from different technical contexts and disciplines, we would like to explore the potentials and limits of participatory design with regard to socially responsible technology development. The aim is to discuss the question: To what extent does user participation lead to socially responsible technology development? Based on our experiences and those of the participants, we would like to take an unvarnished look at the processes, approaches, participation and influence relationships of participatory technology development projects and discuss them on the basis of requirements such as democratic participation of all participants, equal inclusion of marginalized user and population groups, mutual learning experiences, critical reflections and controversial-constructive negotiation processes. The aim is to jointly collect criteria and define framework conditions that must be met in order for user participation to lead to socially responsible and inclusive technology.

Researchers and practitioners are invited to reflect on their experiences with user participation in technology development based on the following questions:

• What were the participation structure and interests of the project? What criteria were used to select users? Were gender and diversity aspects taken into account?
• What did the research and development process look like? Who was involved in which research and decision-making processes? 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 project evaluated with regard to the requirements of participatory design and ultimately with regard to their contribution to socially responsible technology?

Until June 11, 2021 (deadline extended): Submission of short contributions

Please create a short position paper (1-2 pages) in the format for MuC contributions. Submit the contributions via the ConfTool by the above-mentioned deadline. Contributions whose formats cannot be submitted via the conference tool can alternatively be sent to the workshop organizers, in particular Sandra Buchmüller, via e-mail. When submitting, please let us know whether you wish to publish your short paper (MuC workshop volume with ISBN).

By June 25, 2021: Notification of acceptance and feedback on the contributions

The workshop organizers will review and select the contributions and provide feedback to the participants.

By July 09, 2021: Submission of the revised, final contributions

After submission of the final contributions via the ConfTool (please note!), a detailed program for the workshop will be prepared and announced, for which the authors will be asked to prepare short presentations. In addition to discussing the contributions, we will look at the challenges of participatory, socially responsible technology design and plan the next steps for the newly founded "Participation" specialist group in the Human-Computer Interaction (MCI) department of the German Informatics Society (GI ).