Participatory design (PD) has expanded from workplace democratisation to non-work settings and to “fringe” groups who lack social power for a variety of reasons (e.g. age, disability, culture). This includes children, older adults, people with cognitive impairments such as dementia, neurodiverse people, people with motor impairments, people with visual impairments, Deaf people, and people with communication difficulties.

PD can provide unique benefi ts in designing technology for “fringe” groups, including deeper understandings of users and contexts of use, leading to products which better fit their purpose, increased ownership and adoption of technology, and higher user satisfaction. Involvement in PD can create opportunities for some user groups (e.g. children) to develop increased self-esteem and confi dence, and collaborative, communication and problem solving skills. PD has been shown to enhance lives, and alter social attitudes. However, PD with new user groups brings specifi c needs and challenges. Some groups (e.g. children, minority cultures, people with a disability) require particular accommodations, or the creation or adaption of PD approaches to empower them to express their ideas and maximise their contribution to design; however the PD community faces a challenge in identifying the appropriateness of existing tools to new contexts and user groups.

This is a one-day workshop organised as part of the Interact2019 conference held in Paphos, Cyprus between the 2nd and 6th of September 2019. It aims to bring together researchers who have created or adapted PD approaches for a speci c “fringe” group, and researchers who have undertaken PD with “fringe” groups, to reflect on the groups’ needs/abilities and any PD approaches they used. Created or adapted PD approaches for working with particular “fringe” groups will be shared and used as a starting point for adaptation to other, more or less similar, “fringe” groups.

Prospective participants are invited to prepare a four-page position paper following the Springer LNCS Series format, and apply with it for the workshop by using this registration form. Position papers should describe your use, adaptation and/or creation of PD methods, techniques or tools with particular “fringe” groups, and provide details of context of use, procedure, results, challenges and lessons learned.

Applications will be evaluated based on the relevance of the prospective participants’ experience and interests in the workshop theme, quality of their position paper, and spread of the “fringe” groups.

Authors of accepted position papers will be invited to extend their position papers to submit to a special issue of an HCI-related journal.