Using Intermediary Frameworks to Facilitate Equitable Co-Design Projects

• In Event: Examining Facilitation in Research-Practice Partnerships

Abstract

Objectives
Effective facilitation relies on the tools and structures made available, which afford and constrain different forms of collaborative activity (Salomon, 1996). Frameworks created by academic researchers, however, tend to privilege their participation over that of practitioners or community partners. This paper argues that partnerships benefit from intuitive design frameworks that are not reliant on academic expertise and provides an illustrative example of such a framework.
Theoretical Framework
Conjecture mapping offers a powerful tool for participatory design research, enabling participants to articulate theoretical accounts of what motivates a project, how it should advance, and how results can be evaluated and refined (Sandoval, 2014). Articulating these aspects is especially important for facilitating partnerships, as tensions that must be addressed surface in the process (Sannino et al, 2016). To participate in conjecture mapping, however, co-designers must understand the framework of embodiments, mediating processes, outcomes, and high-level conjectures, as well as how they give rise to design conjectures and theoretical conjectures (Wilkerson, 2017). Particularly for partners from non-academic backgrounds, these theoretical demands can present a barrier to participation, leading to confusion, frustration, or disengagement (Harrington et al, 2019).
Rather than asking participants to interface directly with conjecture maps, providing an intuitive structure that is less reliant on theoretical knowledge can facilitate the conceptual work of conjecture mapping. Embedding the logic of conjecture mapping in an intermediary framework mitigates the primacy of academic knowledge, enabling partners from diverse backgrounds to collaborate more equitably and effectively. I present one example of such a framework and examine how participants use it to guide collaboration and generate theoretical rationales for design decisions.
Materials and Methods
This qualitative analysis examines videos and artifacts documenting the use of an intermediary framework in three participatory design projects. In each of these, teachers and community educators collaborated to design an educational experience. The facilitator organized the session’s activity using a template based on the framework. Completed templates and videos of the sessions were analyzed using a selective coding approach (Glaser, 2016) to progressively refine hypotheses about the framework’s influence on collaborative activity (Engle et al, 2007).
Results
Employing an intermediary framework encouraged participants to organize ideas according to conjecture map categories and to identify points of alignment across categories. The framework enabled participants to treat articulating, organizing, and relating ideas as distinct activities, thereby acting as a scaffold for advanced conceptual activity. Moreover, the framework introduced a temporal element that encouraged co-designers to attend to the sequence of elements in the design and to elaborate theoretical justifications at multiple points in the sequence.
Significance
Mitigating power dynamics is a central challenge for facilitating participatory design (Bang & Vossoughi, 2016). Design tools and frameworks that assume a theoretical foundation privilege academic researchers over the practitioners and community members that participatory design is meant to center (Penuel et al, 2011). Basing facilitation on more accessible tools therefore addresses a common source of tension, leading to deeper and more equitable participation. These insights could be applied to other frameworks and partnerships, to similar effect.

Author

• Ethan Rubin, University of California - Irvine