Participatory Design Workshop
Description:
These are some of the projects and workshops I have personally been involved with
Project titled:
Virtual lab-based evaluation of mobility environment to improve first/last mile connections
Singapore Institute of Technology (SIT) project funded by the Land Transport Authority (LTA)
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Aug 2020 - Commuter Routing Mobile Application Participatory Design Workshop
47 participants
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Aug 2019 - Virtual Reality Commuter Simulation Participatory Design workshop
44 Participants
Commuter Routing Mobile Application (CRMA) Participatory Design Workshop:
Total Participants : 47
Number of sessions : 3
Date : Aug - Sep 2020
Total Period : 4 Months
This workshop was a follow up on the previous "Virtual Reality Commuter Simulation Participatory Design Workshop". Due to the Covid-19 lock downs and enhanced health and safety guidelines, I was tasked with organising an fully online workshop in collaboration with the company "Participate in Design (P!D)" who we had previously worked with this company to facilitate our previous years design workshop.
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This workshop consist of 2 category of participants, namely commuters from the public and planners employed by the Land Transport Authority (LTA). The workshop was conduct on the Zoom application.
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Using participatory design methodology, we aimed to discover what commuters would want in a mobile routing application that was not already being fulfilled or addressed by other applications in the market. Participants were split into small groups of 4 - 6 participants led by a neutral facilitator and invited to breakout rooms (Zoom feature allowing smaller discussion rooms within a group session). Participants were asked to share their experiences with existing mobile apps and discuss what they found impressive and also lacking from these apps.
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After the workshop, planners were invited to view the key takeaways from the public sessions and discussed which points they found would be most beneficial to explore and implement into the CRMA for their work.
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From this sessions, the team was able to analyse and produce 9 key findings and 7 actionable recommendations on the design and development of the CRMA .
Virtual Reality Commuter Simulation (VRCS) Participatory Design Workshop:
Total Participants : 44
Number of sessions : 2
Date : Aug 2019
Total Period : 3 Months
This workshop was co-facilitated with the company "Participate in Design (P!D)" using participatory design to understand what kind of features commuters valued in their daily commute on their first mile/last mile (FMLM) journey. The first mile/last mile journey refers to the portion of a commuters journey from their homes to the public transportation node (Bus stop, bus interchange, MRT stations) and vice versa.
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Using participatory design methodology (Not to be confused with Design Thinking Methodology*), we split the participants into groups of 5 - 7 each led by a neutral facilitator and invited them to discuss their opinions on certain commuting scenarios after a short ice breaking exercise. In the second half of the workshop, we tasked the participants to share their ideal commuting experience and share their personal experiences with pain points while commuting. This workshop included Persons with Disabilities (PWD) participants.
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At the end of the workshop we also conducted an optional Virtual Reality demo for any interested participants to try moving around in a Virtual Environment vaguely resembling the Central Business District in Singapore.
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From this sessions, the team was able to analyse and produce 7 key findings and 9 actionable recommendations on the design and development of the VRCS .
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* Design Thinking focuses on empathy where the design thinker imagines walking in the user shoes and their pain points running the risk of the design thinker imagining the wrong pain points, whereas participatory design invites the user to share their pain points, getting the information firsthand.