Abstract

Insights into the ideas and experiences of people and communities affected by policy implementation enable policymakers to design systems and interventions. This is particularly pertinent in areas such as rural connectivity, where policy is often implemented by civil servants living in urban areas with limited experiences or understanding of the unique challenges presented by the rural terrain to digital infrastructure. Drawing on proposals for the value of design in policy settings by Whicher (2020) this paper illustrates practical examples of the use of design in particular in the areas of “changing the nature of evidence” and “more meaningful public consultation” and was conducted as part of a wider government response to the unique challenges presented by rural communities. The researchers used methods based in design research; textile thinking, games design; and ethnographic approaches. Design research approaches were used to learn from rural communities resulting in insights, observations, anecdotes and ideas that were embedded into artefacts and used to generate discussion about strategy to support the rollout of broadband in remote areas. The researchers uncovered new ways to present the nuanced details of the findings that are generated by the use of these methods, enabling policymakers access to rural lived experiences.

Keywords

rural digital policy, design research, tangible data interaction, data materialisation

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

Conference Track

Research Paper

Share

COinS
 
Jun 25th, 9:00 AM

Exploring contexts for data materialisation in post-pandemic research activities with rural communities

Insights into the ideas and experiences of people and communities affected by policy implementation enable policymakers to design systems and interventions. This is particularly pertinent in areas such as rural connectivity, where policy is often implemented by civil servants living in urban areas with limited experiences or understanding of the unique challenges presented by the rural terrain to digital infrastructure. Drawing on proposals for the value of design in policy settings by Whicher (2020) this paper illustrates practical examples of the use of design in particular in the areas of “changing the nature of evidence” and “more meaningful public consultation” and was conducted as part of a wider government response to the unique challenges presented by rural communities. The researchers used methods based in design research; textile thinking, games design; and ethnographic approaches. Design research approaches were used to learn from rural communities resulting in insights, observations, anecdotes and ideas that were embedded into artefacts and used to generate discussion about strategy to support the rollout of broadband in remote areas. The researchers uncovered new ways to present the nuanced details of the findings that are generated by the use of these methods, enabling policymakers access to rural lived experiences.

 

To view the content in your browser, please download Adobe Reader or, alternately,
you may Download the file to your hard drive.

NOTE: The latest versions of Adobe Reader do not support viewing PDF files within Firefox on Mac OS and if you are using a modern (Intel) Mac, there is no official plugin for viewing PDF files within the browser window.