Hibridações e adaptações no design participativo brasileiro na computação: um estudo exploratório e análise crítica

Abstract

Participatory Design (PD) can be considered an action research and co-design approach with a history of pursuing political change through technology, assuming that the enabling of conscious, informed, and relevant technological choice by co-designers who have the potential to shift design towards empowerment and the strengthening of democracy. Over its history, PD has been adopted by multiple academic communities around the world and, when applying foreign referentials on local research problems, researchers adapt theories and methodologies to fit them into their local realities. This process of resignifying and adapting cultural objects – in the case of PD, technical texts and other design results, by means of deviation and resignification – is termed hybridization. Assuming as a premisse that Brazilian PD in Computing is a hybrid cultural construct, this dissertation pursues a comprehensive view on the hybridization and appropriation of foreign theories and methodologies in Brazilian PD in Computing – applying the Latin American Cultural Studies by García Canclini and Martín-Barbero as lenses for analysis. I present an exploratory study focused on how the community applies and approriates Scandinavian and North-American contributions. I identify political agendas, motivations, and compare the roles of designers and partner communities in projects in the context of Brazilian PD in Computing to their roles in the Global North. This appraisal of displacements and how they modify the approach in which co-designers participate technological transformation contributes towards the evaluation of national research agendas: their objectives; success factors; and practices for involving partners.