Important Dates

Session 1: (40 mins)

Introduction of participants and sharing of past experience in participatory research. This will be a conversational session over light refreshments. We will try to identify the modes of inquiry generally used and the limitations thereof. We will be asking participants beforehand to get illustrative examples (photographs, documents, toolkits etc.) of their prior work to share with the group. We want to participants to get comfortable with each other so that they are able to build trust and share personal experiences.

Session 2: (20 mins)

Briefing from organizers on using artefacts as probes in participatory research. We will also share the objectives of the workshop in order to focus the discussion on the specific Research Questions.

Session 3: (120 min)

We will break into two groups for this session. This session will have an exploratory artefact-making workshop with the participants. The group will discuss their common experiences with public transport and collectively brainstorm on the barriers to female adoption of public transport. They will then frame a design brief for themselves within the broader areas of gender and public transport and develop a series of artefacts that address the issues identified by them. Simple and familiar materials that the participants would have encountered previously will be made available. Tools to work with these materials will be provided in a table setting where everyone has equal access to them. There will be conversation triggers in the form of objects, infrastructure, signage etc. that are associated with public transport. As the participants co-create their design solutions, the artefacts they create will serve to spark as well as spur the discussion on gender and public transport further, bringing to fore the difficult-to-articulate underlying reasons.

Session 4: (60 mins)

The two groups will present design briefs and outcomes with each other. This session will entail reflection and documentation of experience of use of prototypes as probes to uncover tacit insights of users. We hope to summarize the various dimensions of working with prototypes in a co-creation workshop, while also reflecting on techniques, potentials and constraints of prototyping. We will further share conclusions and next steps for the workshop.