The course addresses the role of interaction design for collaborative media, including design of innovative media “texts” as well as designing for collaboration and community. Academic maturity is ramped up by focusing on the fundamental craft skills of academic writing and reflection on research methods and results.

The course covers topical areas in interaction design for collaborative media, including key design elements in designing for prosumers, designing participatory media and designing grassroots media. Concerning analytical and critical perspectives, the course offers an introduction to media and communication studies as applied to interaction design and collaborative media, as well as analytical/critical concepts concerning, e.g., emergence, critical mass and virality.

On the level of methodology, the course focuses on intervention- and community-oriented design methods and techniques such as envisioning, mashups, social interventions, community-based participation and co-determination, and perpetual-beta development approaches.

Repertoire and theory

1. Building a repertoire of important design elements in collaborative media and multi-user interaction.

2. Developing familiarity with introductory media and communication perspectives on interaction design.

Skills and techniques

3. Displaying ability to execute interaction design techniques suitable for the design of collaborative media.

4. Displaying ability to execute further skills required in the craft of academic knowledge construction, and specifically to write short academic texts.

Reflection and criticism

5. Displaying some ability to analyze and criticize collaborative media and multi-user interaction using relevant analytical/critical concepts.

6. Displaying some ability to reflect on academic research methodology and epistemology.

Work in multidisciplinary teams on pertinent design topics within collaborative media, including innovative media “texts” and re-mediations as well as designing for community and collaboration. Writing individual academic short papers on the work. Critical review of academic publications in collaborative media and of fellow students’ papers, with special emphasis on research methodology and epistemology.

Learning outcomes concerned with designing and critiquing collaborative media (1–3, 5) are assessed in oral group examinations (studio crits). The learning outcomes that have to do with academic craft (4 , 6) are assessed in individual writing assignments, individual critical reviews and group review seminars.

Literature is to be selected in consultation with the lecturer/supervisor.

The literature will be chosen from the books and articles listed in the literature list. Excerpts will be shared as digital documents and some of the books are available as e-books at via the university library.

Note on literature: all books are available in the Malmö University library. Some are e-books, but the ones that are not available as e-books exist in 5 copies at the library. This means that each group should be able to borrow a book and share it.

Bellacasa, M. P. de la (2017) Matters of Care - Speculative Ethics in More Than Human Worlds. University of Minnesota Press. https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/matters-of-care

Binder, T., Michelis, G. D., Ehn, P., Jacucci, G., Linde, P., Wagner, I. (2011) Design things. The MIT Press.

Botsman, R. (2017) Who can you trust - how technology brought us together and why it might drive us apart. PublicAffairs.

Carr, N. (2011) The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brain. W. W. Norton & Company.

Clarke, R., Briggs, J., Light, A., Wright, P. (2016) Situated encounters with socially engaged art in community-based design. In the international conference of Designing Interactive Systems 2016. pp. 521-532.

Dalsgaard, P., Halskov, K., Basballe, D. A., (2014) Emergent boundary objects and boundary zones in collaborative design research projects. In the international conference of Designing Interactive Systems 2014. pp. 745-754.

Dijk, J van (2013) The culture of connectivity - a critical history of social media. Oxford University Press.

Escobar, A. (2018) Designs for the Pluriverse: Radical Interdependence, Autonomy, and the Making of Worlds. Duke University Press.

Fuchs, C. (2017) Social media - a critical introduction. Sage publications. 2nd edition.

Halse, J., Brandt, E. Clark, B. and Binder, T. (2010) Rehearsing the future. Danish Design School Press.

Light, A. and Briggs, J. (2017) Crowdfunding Platforms and the Design of Paying Publics. Proc. CHI’17

Morgan, W. J. & Guilherme, A. (2012) I and Thou: The educational lessons of Martin Buber's dialogue with the conflicts of his times. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 44(9), 979-996.

Mortensen, J. N. (2014) The common good: an introduction to personalism. Vernon Press.

Sanchez, R. & Heene, A. (2004) The new strategic management - organization, competition, and competence. John Wiley & Sons Inc.

Sanders, E. B. N., Stappers, P. J. (2012). Convivial design toolbox: Generative research for the front end of design. BIS.

Sartre, J-P. 1946, (1948 English version). Existentialism is a humanism (introduction) (theme: philosophy / existentialism)

Simonsen, J. and Robertson, T. (2013) Routledge International Handbook of Participatory Design. Routledge. Taylor & Francis Group.

Roseland, M. (2000) Sustainable community development: integrating environmental, economic, and social objectives. Progress in Planning, 54, 73-132.

Plenary discussion and individual written evaluation, focusing on the learning outcomes and the means for achieving them (learning activities, resources, course organization etc.).