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

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

Participatory technology development assumes that direct collaboration 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 populations and user groups in technology development processes. The approach goes back to the "Cooperative System Design" of the 1970s, which pursued the primarily union-driven political claim of workplace democratization and was to be redeemed through the inclusion of workers* in technology development. However, what is hidden behind the term participation and how it is handled can vary greatly from project to project. Ehn and Badham already criticized in 2002 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. Recent studies of participatory technology development projects support this thesis. Furthermore, the question arises how participation can be enabled in the face of new socio-technical developments in areas such as artificial intelligence, automated driving, digital transformation, Internet of Things and the associated changes in infrastructures, power relations and precarization.

Based on these challenges, we would like to explore the potentials and limitations of participatory design with regard to socially responsible technology development together with participants from different technical contexts and disciplines. 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 demands 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 goal is to 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 was the project's participation structure and balance of interests? 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 knowledge and decision-making processes? How much influence or decision-making power did the users have?
• Which methods were used? How did they influence, enable or prevent participation and influence?
• How are the process and project evaluated with regard to the demands of participatory design and ultimately with regard to their contribution to socially responsible technology?

By June 11, 2021 (deadline extended): Short paper submission.

Please prepare a short position paper (1-2 pages) in the format for MuC contributions. Submit papers via the ConfTool by the deadline listed above. Papers whose format cannot be submitted via the conference tool can alternatively be sent to the workshop organizers, in particular Sandra Buchmüller, via email. When submitting, please let us know if you would like to publish your short paper (workshop volume of MuC with ISBN).

Until June 25, 2021: Notification of acceptance as well as feedback on the contributions.

Review, selection of contributions and feedback to the participants will be done by the workshop organizers.

Until 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 address the challenges of participatory, socially responsible technology design as well as plan the next steps for the newly formed "Participation" expert group in the Human-Computer Interaction (MCI) division of the Gesellschaft für Informatik (GI).