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Participation & (Re)settlement: Envisioning mobile services with young forced migrants
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Resumo(s)
In recent years, digital services have played a crucial role in the forced migration
phenomenon worldwide. Researchers and practitioners in Human-Computer Interaction
(HCI) and Information Science (IS) have explored the impact of digital solutions
and proposed new approaches to tackle the specific conditions of forced migration.
Nonetheless, several of the currently available digital services developed for this
purpose have had limited participation of this group in their development process.
Digital services could benefit from forced migrants’ participation during their design
and development process. It could enhance the services to address more effectively
forcibly displaced communities’ needs and challenges in the different phases of their
involuntary displacement.
This thesis focuses on the role and adaptation of participatory design (PD) approaches
to create “safe spaces” where young forced migrants can be co-researchers
on and co-designers of mobile (geospatial) services to support them upon arrival
and during the first stages of their (re)settlement in the host cities. In such particular
context, the current research has three main contributions. First, it identified a set of
initial challenges and needs of forced migrants upon arrival and in the first stages of
their (re)settlement in Münster, North-Rhine Westphalia, Germany. Second, it proposed
adaptations on PD’s practices to effectively encourage young forced migrants’
participation codesigning their digital services. Lastly, it developed two augmented
geovisualizations prototypes to assist with their navigation of host cities in such
situation. The proposed PD adaptations combined core concepts and strategies
from participatory research (PR), didactics, and PD such as “safe spaces”, didactic
reduction, reflective thinking, and workshops. The open-source prototypes are
based on combinations of static and dynamic geospatial augmentations (images and
augmented reality) which were combined with digital maps. These solutions were
tailored based on the feedback from the forcibly displaced populations participating.
Their main aim was to ease forced migrants arrival in host cities by supporting their
spatial familiarization with unknown urban environments.
Overall, the contribution of this thesis advances on the generation of participatory
approaches for forced migrants to design their digital services and technologies
while supporting host cities in their processes towards generating more inclusive
urban environments for all of its citizens.
Descrição
A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor in Information Management, specialization in Geographic Information Systems
Palavras-chave
Digital services Human-Computer Interaction Information Science