Participatory Futures of Intercultural Meaningful Social Interactions

My research explored how Intercultural meaningful social interactions (IMSI) could be enabled in public places through technology. The research methodology combined participatory design, participatory futures, and storytelling techniques to explore what are the possibilities for design and technology to promote this kind of interaction in public places of Istanbul.

Summary

The problem

The problem we focused on was the avoidance of intercultural (i.e., migrants and locals) social interactions due to biases and stereotyped perceptions of others. This could highly impact the inclusion of immigrants in their hosting society.

Why IMSI?

Interacting with people that are different from the self is important for social integration and to create healthier social fabrics. Still, studies show that as humans we tend to interact more with people that are similar to ourselves in beliefs, identity, culture, etc. tending to avoid the ones perceived as different, which promotes segregation.

Meaningful social interactions are thought to be promoting of social integration and diversity in society. Hence, this kind of interaction could be suitable to promote social inclusion of migrants to a new society.

Relevance

In HCI meaningful interactions have been mostly explored in user-product interaction as a way of promoting product attachment.

Between the reduced body of work that has focused on meaningful interaction between human intercultural contexts has not been explored. Still, meaningful interactions, to be meaningful, require to be explored concerning its context and participants' needs and assets. Hence the relevance of this research is to unpack what are intercultural meaningful interactions and explore ways of facilitating them in public places.

The research

The research that drives this study is how can design promote more meaningful social interaction between intercultural strangers in public places of Istanbul?

So far, the research methodology has included qualitative and exploratory methods associated with participatory research. The aim has been to understand, from a participant's perspective, their perceptions about IMSI and their previous experiences to build a conceptualization of this kind of interaction.

Current studies are focusing on applying participatory futures workshops to explore how design and technology could facilitate this kind of interaction.

Outcomes

With this research we were able to identify different aspects of IMSI that were relevant to design to promote this kind of interactions. We compiled these aspects and created workshop structures for every designer and person to be able to come up with their own ideas.

If you would like to access the booklet explaining these aspects and how to conduct participatory workshops to co-create ideas, get in touch!

Related publications

María Laura Ramírez Galleguillos, Aya Eloiriachi, and Aykut Coşkun. 2022. Beneath Walls and Naked Souls: Factors influencing Intercultural Meaningful Social Interactions in Public Places of Istanbul. In Proceedings of the Participatory Design Conference 2022 - Volume 1 (PDC '22). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 194–205. https://doi.org/10.1145/3536169.3537793

Ramírez Galleguillos, M., Eloiriachi, A., Serdar, B., & Coşkun, A. (2022). Design Strategies to Promote Intercultural Meaningful Social Interactions. Proceedings of the Design Society, 2, 2203-2212. doi:10.1017/pds.2022.223

Ramírez Galleguillos, M. L., Eloiriachi, A., Serdar, B., & Coşkun, A. (2021). Tell me your story, I’ll tell you what makes it meaningful’’: Characterization of Meaningful Social Interactions Between Intercultural Strangers and Design Considerations for Promoting Them. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. HCI International.

Ramírez Galleguillos, M.L, and Coşkun, A. "How Do I matter? A Review of the Participatory Design Practice with Less Privileged Participants." Proceedings of the 16th Participatory Design Conference 2020-Participation (s) Otherwise-Volume 1. 2020
Ramírez Galleguillos, M.L, Sekerli, E. and Coskun, A. "Ignite, Share and Reflect: Design Tactics to Foster Social Interactions Between Migrants and Locals in Istanbul." IASDR 2019, Design revolutions, 2019.