PDC2014 My Dream World Workshop

“My Dream World 2: Constructing the service prototype with Namibian Youth”

October 3rd
This workshop with Namibian youth is part of phase 2 of the “my dream world” project and exhibition that presents youths’ views on advancing their own services. A one-day workshop and a joint exhibition with Namibian youths will be carried out. It aims to establish new participatory and empowering service design tools to be utilized by the target group. Using service design tools youths are able to handle and find solutions that support their career path and coping in a difficult employment and educational situation. It also helps them to find ways to participate in the development of their own community and in the associated discourse through the means of art and design. Participants are selected on the basis of a one page position paper/motivation which has to be emailed to the workshop organizers.

Organizers: Satu Miettinen, Vikki Du Preez, Shilumbe Chivuno-Kuria, Hedvig Iipito
Contact: Satu Miettinen ( satu.miettinen(*)ulapland.fi )

The cultural project My Dream World 2 will carry out a workshop and a joint exhibition with Namibian  youths. It aims to establish new participatory and empowering service design tools to be utilized by the target group. Using service design tools youths are able to handle and find solutions that support their career path and coping in a difficult employment and educational situation. It also helps them to find ways to participate in the development of their own community and in the associated discourse through the means of art and design.

Together with Namibian youths, the project carries out a service design workshops to build a prototype/simulation of a new service that will radically change society. The prototype/simulation is used to test various service concepts through innovative and creative methods. The prototype enables youths to participate in and create a dialogue with society and interest groups linked to the new service concept. The prototype is part of the My Dream World exhibition that presents youths’ views on advancing their own services and youths’ solutions in the area of service design. Further, the exhibition brings out perspectives and solutions that youths have found to problems impeding their career paths and lives. Owing to their functionality, the methods of art and design in the development of services and in the construction of participation and dialogue are often easier to approach and understand by youths than traditional, representational methods.

The workshops develop methods that help youths to promote the participation of other youths and interest groups in the development of their community services by means of art and creativity. The goal of the project is to find new ways to promote the participation of youths in reforming the service structure of their communities and to emphasize the role of youths as developers of their own communities. Together with the youths, the workshop produces a plan to adopt the developed tools and methods into the practices of the youths and their community.

Call For Participation

Important dates
June 17, 2014: Call for participation
July 22, 2014: Submission deadline for workshop participants
July 28, 2014: Participants notification
October 2014: Workshop held in Windhoek, Namibia

How to participate

The Namibian workshop is implemented together with the Polytechnic of Namibia, RLabs Namibia, College of Arts and/or Ombetja Yehinga. Number of youth will be identified to participate. Further more interested PDC participants can apply to take part in the workshop to take place just before the PDC conference. A one page position paper/motivation will have to be written for acceptance. In the position paper describe your approach to service and social design work with the youth. Further explain how you will benefit from the workshop experience.

Please e-mail the submissions and ask any questions at: satu.miettinen@ulapland.fi

Bios of the organizers

Satu Miettinen (satu.miettinen@ulapland.fi) works as a professor of applied art and design at the University of Lapland. For several years she has been working with service design research and writing. She is actively working with service design research in the area of social and public service development. Her research interest is in developing artistic and drama based methods in the area of service design. She is working in the steering groups of several service design research projects: developing public services for the elderly, developing service prototyping, service design and commercializing sleep. She has been the research lead and director in several service design research projects. In the past she has worked as a project manager and specialist in the areas of crafts development, cultural and creative tourism in several international and European Union-funded projects during the period 1997–2006. Satu Miettinen also works actively in the area of social design in Namibia and in South Africa. You can find more information at: www.satumiettinen.com 

Vikki du Preez (DuPreezV@cput.ac.za) is a design theory lecturer and postgraduate supervisor at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology. She has a Masters in Design and a Post Graduate Diploma in Higher Education and Training. Her interest in the user experience and service design fields, has resulted in the number of international research projects. As an advocate of service design, she consults and develops practical framework for the development of services and the use of service design methods in research and the traditional design process. She has collaborated on two design textbooks and has presented at numerous design and education conference.

Shilumbe Chivuno-Kuria (schivuno@polytechnic.edu.na) is a lecturer in the Software Engineering Department, School of Computer Science and Informatics at the Polytechnic of Namibia. She is a research partner in the cluster “Community Centred Localization as a New Approach to Human Computer Interaction” which has been active since 2008. Her research interest include cross-cultural HCI research focusing on cultural communication structures design for Indigenous Knowledge systems and appropriate interface design for youth and rural communities.

Hedvig Iipito-Mendonca (iipitoh@polytechnic.edu.na) is pursuing a research based Masters Degree in IT with the Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT). She is currently working on her research project title Mobile-based service to promote reproductive health for youth-at-risk with the use service design methods and tools. She obtained her Honours degree in Business Computing from the Polytechnic of Namibia where she is currently employed as a Junior Lecturer in the Computer Science Department. She has been involved in a project to design/create a mobile application to collect crime data for the police with the Polytechnic of Namibia. She has also taken part in several service design activities at CPUT. In addition, she was also part of the UFISA (User Centered Design for Innovative Services and Applications) intensive course 2013 in Cape Town.