Participatory Design and Community Engagement: From Smart Textiles to Elders and Tech

Please join us on Feb 7, at 11:30 in Sage 5711 for our STS Colloquium with Dr. Kelly Joyce. This talk discusses three examples to illustrate Dr. Joyce's approach to participatory design and community engagement. First, she works on a series of smart textile projects. The work highlights the differences between engineering and healthcare cultural contexts. As a Science and Technology Studies (STS) scholar on a multi-disciplinary team, she identified and investigated a variety of stakeholders’ perspectives and integrated them into the design process. Second, Dr. Joyce will describe research in visual STS, from her study of MRIs in the 2000s to face mask signage during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. In the latter project, she proposes a visual-intersectional approach to understanding relationships between the public and science. Finally, her past and future research on aging and technology will be discussed. Much of the current research on robots and sensors does not consider elders’ experiences or perspectives. In her new project, she collaborates with elders in three sites to bring forward elders’ priorities and knowledge in the design and development process. Each site will be in a different location (state and/or nation) to highlight how differences in policies support or hinder design that matters.