Contact quality in participation: a "sensethic" perspective

Abstract

We investigate the concept of participation from the perspective of the quality of the contact in communicative interactions between participants. We argue for the need for an academic-personal competence that qualifies the human contact central in all Participatory Design (PD) activities as a way to contribute to "an era of participation." We describe a contact perspective in PD developed through a collaboration with body-oriented psychotherapeutic research that has specialized experiences in investigating open-minded contact and authentic meetings as body-related experiences.

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