This was a presentation of a paper with the same title in the European Academy of Design. 21.04.15 Paris. France. This paper was written with Helena Sustar and Michail Galanakis.

1. Designing
with
Immigrants:
When
emo2ons
run
high
Mariana
Salgado
Helena
Sustar
Michail
Galanakis
Arki Research group
Encore research group
Department of Media/
Department of Design
Aalto University
Department of Geography
Helsinki University
21.04.2015
EAD
Conference.
Paris.
France

2. While design researchers have started to understand the
impact the phenomenon of immigration has in their fields,
the actual input of immigrants in setting any design
agenda is marginal. By engaging immigrants in design
processes, we emphasise our responsibility as designers for
social inclusion.

3. How to engage immigrants in
participatory design research?

4. Compara2ve
analysis
1

5. MIGRATION STORIES FROM EAST HELSINKI: OUR CITY
A series of workshops and other events in which different
immigrant communities were explicitly invited to take
part in the design process.

6. Participants in the workshop: 15 women who knew each other well.
Food! an integral part of the workshop’s planning and realization.

8. Using props (cards) made
participants’ life stories
easier to narrate/express/
write/
visualize.

9. Participants have to think of a favourite object before the interview, an
object evocative of the person’s home country. Telling the story about
the object selected served as an icebreaker.
MIGRATION JOURNEYS TO HELSINKI: STANDING IN SOMEONE’S SHOES

10. Immigrant customer journey in the early stage of integration in Finland
The study revolved around four themes: experiences before moving to the country,
experiences upon arrival, interaction with services, and integration.

11. Seven immigrants (two men and five women) were
interviewed

12. How they were using services related to their move and how they
felt about those services?

13. Analysis
2

14. We wanted to compare the
techniques applied while we
worked with our participants
and our own experiences
We went through the
activities together, we
listened to our
recordings and diaries
from these encounters

15. Discussion
3

16. A jolly atmosphere was the result of more than just
sticking to specific techniques, and that in itself
afforded rich data.

17. In both cases, strong emotions were triggered due to several factors: the
visualisations, the relationships amongst participants, the overall atmosphere, the
open-ended nature of the questions, and the content of the discussion, namely
migration stories.

18. While the techniques and context of our fieldwork
encouraged reflection on the personal lives of participants,
we are not sure how to utilise these reflections for the benefit
of the participants themselves. We do know, however, how
to use these reflections as input in the design process

19. Emotions, even when they are controversial, are
unavoidable. As design researchers we must look into
other fields to learn how to deal with, and report on
emotions, rather than to “push them under the
carpet”.

20. Participatory design activities are particularly useful in
interactions with immigrants because they are largely visual,
rather than language based. Non-language communication is a
key not only because participants are communicating in a
language that is not their own, but also because of the
emotional nature of the issue of immigration.

21. Paying attention to issues of trust, empathy, personal and
professional relationships and ethics are key to enriching design
visions.

22. References
Beyer, H., & Holtzblatt, K. (1999). Contextual Design. Interactions, 1999 - dl.acm.org
Björgvinsson, E., Ehn, P., & Hillgren, P-A. (2012). Agonistic participatory design: working
with marginalized movements. Co-Design: International Journal of CoCreation in Design and
the Arts. 8: 2-3, 127-144.
Dindler, C., & Iversen, O.S. (2014). Relational Expertise in Participatory Design. In the
proceedings of Participatory Design Conference, Windhoek, Namibia.
Brand, E., Binder, T., & Sanders, E.B.-N. (2013). Tools and techniques. Ways to engage
telling, making and enacting. In Routledge International Handbook of Participatory Design.
Simonsen, J. and Robertson, T. (eds). Routledge, New York, USA.
Clarke, R., & Wright, P. (2012). Evocative of Experience: Crafting cross-cultural digital
narratives through stories and portraits. NordCHI’12, Copenhagen, Denmark.
Crossley, L. (2003). Building Emotions in Design. The Design Journal, volume 6, issue 3.
Denborough, D. (2008). Collective narrative practice: Responding to individuals, groups and
communities who have experienced trauma. Adelaide, Australia: Dulwich Centre
Publications.
Fuad-Luke, D. (2012) How Was It for You? OurCity-OutReach and the City of Helsinki.
Retrieved on 26.02.2014, from http://bit.ly/1mUmlNi
Huybrechts, L, Dressen, K., & Schepers, S., (2012). Mapping design practices: on risk,
hybridity and participation. Proc. Participatory Design Conference, 2012, Roskilde , Sweden,
pp. 29-32

23. Hynes, T. (2003). The issue of “trust” and “mistrust” in research with refugees: choices,
caveats and considerations for researchers. New issues on refugee research. The UN refugee
agency, UK.
Kalantidou, E., & Fry, T. (2014). Design in the Borderlines. Routledge. UK.
Keshavarz, M., & Mazé, R. (2013) 'Design and Dissensus: Framing and Staging Participation
in Design Research', Design Philosophy Papers, 1: unpaginated.
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Fieldstudio, UK. Retrieved on the 1.09.2014 from
http://www.lucykimbell.com/stuff/Fieldstudio_SocialDesignMethodsMenu.pdf
Light, A., & Akama, Y. (2012). The Human Touch: Participatory practice and the role of
facilitation in designing with communities. In the proceedings of the Participatory Design
Conference, Roskilde, Denmark.
McDonald, S. (2003). Answering questions and asking more: reflections on feminist
participatory research. Resources for Feminist Research, 30(1/2): 77-100.
Lammers, E. (2005). Refugees, asylum seekers and anthropologists: the taboo on giving.
Global Migration Perspectives. Global Commission on International Migration. Switzerland.
Rizzo, A., & Galanakis, M. (2014) Transurbanism – Towards a new Transdisciplinary
Approach in Urban Planning (Honourable Mention at the Young Planning Professionals
Award 2012). In D. Iossifova (Ed.), Architecture & Planning in Times of
Scarcity: Reclaiming the Possibility of Making. Manchester: SoftGrid Ltd, 144-157.
Salgado, M., & Galanakis, M. (2014). “… so what?”- Limitations of Participatory Design on
Decision-making in Urban Planning. Proceedings of the Participatory Design Conference
2014, 06-10 October 2014, Windhoek, Namibia, 5-8.
Stickdorn, M., & Schneider, J. (2010) This is Service Design Thinking: Basics - Tools - Cases,
BIS publishers, Amsterdam, Netherlands, 158 - 161.

24. Twi7er:
@salgado
Blog:
h7p://pinatasdigitales.wordpress.com/
Arki
blog:
h7p://arki.mlog.taik.fi/
Slideshare:
h7p://www.slideshare.net/marianasalgado

25.
Thank
you!
Mercí!
mariana.salgado@aalto.fi
http://www.slideshare.net/mariana.salgado
Pictures in this presentation are part of the two projects presented here.