Titulo Estágio
Designing for Cross-cultural and Multilingual Collaborations
Local do Estágio
CISUC Interactive Media Lab
Enquadramento
In an interconnected and eventually fragmented world, the need to understand and collaborate between cultures has never been more critical. In an era marked by information overload (Han, 2022), the “non-things” dominate the digital space, emptying our relationship with the world and with other humans. Online platforms, as a means of connecting people, are not designed to facilitate exchanges that move beyond superficial interactions that challenge or even break cultural stereotypes.
This scenario hinders genuine encounters with otherness and impoverishes attention and presence in human interactions. With this in mind, the motivation for this project lies in the creation of a digital environment dedicated to how the reconfiguration of the digital space can favor meaningful intercultural encounters, through the creation and mediation of a collaborative environment that values diversity, cultivate empathy, break down cultural barriers and empower the co-creation of knowledge that integrates the multiplicity of visualization, contributing to an interconnected and empathetic global community.
Objetivo
Based on the notion of a Common Information Spaces (CIS), developed by Bannon and Bødker (1997), this platform aims to think about how a digital space can actually support cooperation between agents from different cultures, as active participants in the interpretation and negotiation of meanings.
In intercultural contexts, the challenge intensifies as meanings carry different references, requiring a space that welcomes this diversity without trying to erase it. Rather than starting from a pre-defined solution, the focus is on a participatory research process in which the participants themselves will help identify needs, barriers and possibilities for creating the space. This research seeks to explore, through participatory and iterative methods, forms of mediation, representation and interaction that best favor dialogue and respect for diversity for intercultural crossing and co-authorship.
The development will be based on collaborative sessions in which participants from varied cultures will be invited to experiment with different ways of expressing and organising knowledge. By documenting and analysing these interactions, the project seeks to understand the challenges, barriers and opportunities that arise in trying to build prototypes of increasing fidelity that ultimately demonstrate a digital space that fosters meaningful cultural exchanges.
Plano de Trabalhos - Semestre 1
A1. (Sep-Nov) State-of-the-art research - research and document the relevant SoA, publications and software review; detailed characterization of the problem to be solved stating specific goals and requirements;
A2. (Nov-Dec) Design Proposal - conception of the interaction design proposal, grounded on cultural research and ethnographic studies (including interviews) to gather multicultural perspectives, obstacles, needs and opportunities;
A3 (Dec-Jan) Writing and preparation of the intermediate version of the dissertation document.
Plano de Trabalhos - Semestre 2
A4. (Jan-April) Prototyping - preparation, design and implementation of a series of co-design workshops to design a proof-of-concept prototype, tuning or corrections based on evaluation results;
A5. (April-May) Evaluation - definition of evaluation criteria and method; performance of evaluation and analysis of results;
A6. (June - July) Statement of Learning - production of dissertation with process report and reflection on knowledge production, which might result in a paper production.
Condições
N/A
Orientador
Mariana Seiça & Catarina Parente
marianac@dei.uc.pt 📩