This paper was presented at PDC 2024 in Sarawak, Shibu, Marasia on 14th August.
Authors:
Masako Kitazaki, Department of Visual Communication Design, Musashino Art University, Japan
Riichiro Take, Converging Technology Laboratory, Fujitsu Ltd., Japan
Abstract
Companies have increasingly adopted data-driven technologies without employee consent, creating concerns about bias, deskilling, and loss of dignity. The power imbalance between employees who use data-driven applications and organizational leaders who access employee data may be more significant in Japan because of its socio-cultural environment. To encourage employees to participate in discussions about data-driven workplaces, we created a participatory speculative design workshop adapted to the Japanese working context. Our strategy included 1) removing expert designers to maintain participant engagement, 2) mixing individual and group work using different time scales and spaces to enhance discussion dynamics, and 3) holding the workshops outside a company to address embedded hierarchies. The participants created diverse fictional future stories and discussed an agenda for preferred data-driven workplaces. This paper explores the workshop’s transformative potential; it empowered participants to initiate a citizen-led participatory speculative design to discuss the social impact of data-driven workplaces with stakeholders.
The paper is available here
Masako is a designer, researcher, and educator who explores how participatory and practice-based design can support more creative, ethical, and sustainable societies.
Her current research investigates co-creative approaches rooted in local cultures and everyday practices, focusing on the dynamics that emerge when people create together. Through workshops, theatre, games, interactive media, spatial design, and designed artefacts, she explores how collaborative making fosters reflection, transformation, and new forms of collective imagination.
She conducted practice-based research at Delft University of Technology (2016–2018), working with local communities and older adults using participatory design and Research through Design approaches. In 2018, she joined the Ubiquitous Computing Research Group at the University of Lugano, Switzerland, where she conducted participatory design research with citizens in the sharing economy context. Before entering academia, she spent over fifteen years at Fuji Xerox Co., Ltd., working on service design, UX research, UI design, and graphic design for new business development.
She holds a B.A. in Visual Communication Design from Musashino Art University in Tokyo and an MSc in Design for Interaction from Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands.
URLs:
https://www.musabi.ac.jp/course/undergraduate/vcd/faculty/kitazaki_masako/
https://researchmap.jp/mkitazaki