Co Design / Community Collab

As we have agreed to go forward with the idea of the disposable cameras and handing them out to members of the local community, residents, shop owners and so forth here is some more research to explain the origin of the idea. I basically first heard about a similar approach in relation to codesign when we had the PDD lecture by live.work - company known for pioneering in the sector of co-,process- and service-design.

"The students completed the learning spaces survey and, as well - using a 24-exposure disposable camera - took photographs of the locations described in the learning space survey – e.g., favorite place for group work."

from: Participatory Co-Design: A Relationship Building
Approach for Co-Creating Libraries of the Future (.pdf)

Disposable camera.
Participants are sent disposable cameras and are asked to take pictures of things in their environment or things that appeal to them for certain reasons. They are asked to write comments about each picture. This technique delivers strong visual material and gives a lot of freedom to the participants. The ideal application of this method is to send disposable Polaroid cameras to the participants, because then the time between taking a picture and writing down the comments is kept short, and the reasoning is fresh.

from: Contextmapping - Experiences from Practice

Photo elicitation
In photo elicitation users can make photographs to describe their experiences in their own environment [3][10]. Later on, these photographs can be used to guide face-to-face
interviews. The photographs are particularly useful for people to recall their views and experiences and to comfort them during the interview. They are also a rich source of information. Disposable cameras, their own cameras and mobile phones that have a built-in camera can be used.

from: Enhancing Social Interaction and User Participation in the Development of Social Applications


Here disposable cameras are mentioned as part of a list for ethnographic research methods:
Interaction Design Association Discussion Boards


Further reading:

Collier, J. (1979). ‘Visual Anthropology in Wagner’, In
Images of Information. Beverly Hills, Ca: Sage.

Csikszentmihalyi, M. and Walker, M. (2003).
‘Happiness in everyday life: The uses of experience
sampling’, Journal of Happiness Studies, 4(1), pp. 185-
199