Hey all, I’m James Hodge and I’m presenting the paper Exploring Participants’ Representations
and Shifting Sensitivities in a Hackathon for Dementia on behalf of my co-authors who
are shown on the slide.
Traditional hackathons are sprint-like design events that are a popular approach for researchers
and organisations to bring together the public to develop new paths to research, ideate and
test software or products.
Sprint-like design events are often time-constrained iterative design processes that tackle a business
or product problem.
While hackathons have been useful for fostering collaboration and learning, they also pose
challenges of longevity, compensation, accessibility, and representation.
Hackathons that aim to engage the public in sensitive design work require careful consideration,
as attendees may not have the necessary sensitivities or awareness of the issues.
Previous research has suggested ways to sensitise attendees to the event's topic, but it is
important to unpack the representations and attitudes that influence attendees and their
design outcomes to ensure future considerations for organising hackathons within sensitive
contexts.
In 2019, me and co-authors ran a hackathon as part of a long-term study on designing
VR experiences for families living with dementia, using concepts from experience-centred design.
While our previous work extended concepts from experience-centred, often requiring working
closely with participants,requests for collaboration from both local dementia community groups
and local authorities allowed us to contemplate extending this work to larger groups of people.
The hackathon was divided into two phases: a six-week pre-hackathon phase, where designers
pitched their ideas using an online platform and received feedback from people with dementia
and care partners, and a two-day hackathon event, where participants competed to create
prototypes of VR environments.
The research team partnered with several organisations for funding, expertise on dementia, VR, and
running tech-focused events.
During the pre-engagement phase, we had a six-week consultation period where we had
an online platform and in-person workshops, as well as a team formation day prior to the
hackathon.
Participants were able to submit initial ideas and receive feedback from experts to ensure
their ideas were appropriate for the needs and experiences of people with dementia and
their care partners.
Our attempts to involve people with dementia and their care partners was significantly
limited to just one care partner involvement who engaged through our online platform.
For both in-person workshops, we had no signups.
We explore this in more detail through our findings and discussion in the paper.
For the hackathon, we had 40 participants (18 women, 22 men) in attendance.
This resulted in nine teams.
Individual demographics of participants within their associated teams are summarised on this
slide.
Although no participants had the experience of being a care partner or living with dementia,
we defined and solicited participants experience with dementia in the following ways shown
on the slide.
The first morning of the event featured presentations on dementia, participatory research, and virtual
reality by invited speakers who also served as facilitators for the hackathon participants.
An online Q&A with a dementia advocate was held at midday, during which participants
could submit questions through a WhatsApp group.
Teams then began to work on their projects and could ask for additional help or critique
from facilitators through individually set up WhatsApp team groups.
Participants were also asked reflective questions and invited to share their project's progression
through submitting comments, audio recordings, and videos through a dedicated Team WhatsApp
group chat.
On the second day, teams worked on finalising their ideas and presentations with the help
of facilitators.
A template was provided to guide the teams in creating their presentations, and they
had the opportunity to receive feedback from facilitators.
The event ended with each team presenting a ten-minute presentation and five-minute
demo to four judges who explored the demos and asked further questions.
Although the initial focus was on bridging the gap between designers/developers and dementia,
challenges faced led to an opportunity to provide guidance for future researchers on
the potential effects when designing for a user group who are missing from the design
process.
The paper's introduction presented research questions that guided the analysis.
The findings comprise three themes.
Our first theme details participantsۑ motivations for participating in the event.
The second theme provides insights into participants' challenges and design techniques, given the
absence of crucial stakeholders.
Finally, our third theme unpacks the teams final prototypes to explore their new understandings
and considerations for dementia within their design.
Given the event found it challenging to represent people with dementia, over the course of the
hackathon, attendees heavily relied on interactions with facilitators, inspiration packs, and
a Q&A that we had online with someone with dementia.
Through the analysis, we noticed that participants shifted and focused on comments made by speakers
who discussed their experiences with dementia such as one team describing learning from
some of the expert facilitators, that dementia is more than focusing on memory loss and instead
their idea focused on designing experiences that are set in the present, inclusive, and
can be shared with others that are going to make a connection.
This demonstrates the team’s willingness to learn about dementia and incorporate feedback
into their design ideas.
Similarly, a team had continuous conversations with a care
partner in our online platform to gain a richer understanding of dementia from a care partner's
perspective.
Here, attendees with little experience relied on stakeholders' experiences of dementia to
construct their understanding of people with dementia – that provided key design overhauls
and subsequently more appropriate designs.
With that said, even the teams who won the 1st and 2nd prizes at the event, they still
highlighted they struggled to construct an understanding of who the user might be.
Although the winning team used personas to help decide who they were designing for, for
reasons similar to the 2nd place team, they found it hard to figure out what to design
because they can’t ask the user.
This observation highlights the value teams placed on engaging with end-users in the research.
Here the absent user prompted critical reflection from the team members and demonstrated key
evaluation points where user feedback may encourage teams to pursue their design ideas
further.
Within the paper, the findings raise important considerations for future hackathons and participant
involvement.
The discussion section considers existing literature on collaborative design events,
community building, and meeting participants where they are.
Within each subsection, we provide three commitments to mitigate stereotypes, improve recruitment
processes, and ways to ensure hackathons are more inclusive and community driven.
To conclude this presentation, I will briefly go over the nine commitments.
In the paper I discuss how people with dementia can be seen as boundary objects, such as the
concept of a "Person with Dementia," and the potential for these constructs to limit creativity
and representation.
While personas, a common design tool, can be useful in informing design, they are prone
to stereotypes that may not accurately reflect user needs and desires.
To mitigate these issues, we suggest a set of commitment to engaging with individuals
with dementia directly, avoiding stereotypes, and prioritising extended engagement to better
understand user perspectives and needs.
The hackathon event faced challenges in meaningfully engaging people with dementia, despite attempts
to involve them through planning workshops, full participation, and an online platform
called Ideaboard.
Ideaboard, which was inspired by a similar platform for community-commissioned apps,
was criticised for not being nuanced enough to represent the complicated experience of
caring for someone with dementia.
We suggest a set of commitments for future work to mitigate recruitment challenges and
involve marginalised populations such as meeting your participants where they are whether that's
online social media platforms, or in-person communities; fostering relationships and event
building through topic training.
And finally, Towards a new economy of collaboration for design events
Within the hackathon, we discuss the benefits and challenges of hackathons including the
sustainability and implementation of hackathon outcomes.
Despite the resources invested in hackathons, workable outcomes are often lacking.
While DemVR offered prizes and travel budgets to participate, issues regarding competitive
structure, and the lack of clear outcomes may not effectively address the problems faced
by people with dementia.
The authors offer three commitments to promote more inclusive and community-driven events
- such as analysing your event, finding appropriate incentives for all participants, and drawing
out the phases of hackathons to reduce the barrier of involvement.
For this presentation, that's all the time I've got - please feel free to reach out to
me via my email and please do read the paper for a much more in depth review of the hackathon.
Thank you.