Here, we provide an overview of the various techniques that constitute the Talisman approach., including pre-session and in-session activities making use of participants’ materials. While we provide suggestions for use, communities can pick and choose which techniques to use in their process, as well as modify the techniques based on their design goals.
The Talisman prompt is a customizable brief that lends itself to the design topic at hand and supports participants to choose the personal objects they want to bring in. It is meant to be shared with participants prior to the session. The prompt follows a “Mad Libs” style where communities can “fill in the blanks,” or alternatively modify it as they wish. We provide this prompt just as a starting point.
To help us with planning and to make the session more personal, we’re asking everyone to bring in something from your life that represents (design topic). You will be able to share this with the group. This can be a physical object like a handmade item or book, or it can be digital like a photo or audio recording, or something else we haven’t thought about! We’re not looking for anything in particular, so feel free to be as creative as you wish, and you can bring in more than one thing to share! We’ll be doing a “show and tell” and then using whatever you all bring in for inspiration and brainstorming.
IMPORTANT: By (date), please email/text the facilitator the thing(s) that you will be sharing with the group on Saturday. Please include a 1-2 sentence description, photo, or link in your message.
We developed a series of discussion-based design activities to support participants to bring in and engage with their personal objects in co-design. Design activities are structured so as to build on another, but communities may modify the activities or order of the activities as they see fit. We call these activities the “4 C’s”:
The Talisman Padlet aims to support users to bring in and utilize their objects in hybrid or Distributed Participatory Design (DPD), as opposed to Participatory Design held in-person. We recommend Padlet as it provides various affordances not found in alternative tools and digital whiteboards, such as accommodating a range of media types and providing safeguards to prevent erasure of users’ content. We also recommend that the Padlet be used in tandem with video conferencing software such as Zoom or Google Meet.
We created a template in Padlet that is freely available. You can make a copy of a Padlet to use as a template for your own work by clicking “Remake” on the right-hand side of the canvas. You can find the Padlet template here.
Prior to the design session, facilitators can send their participants the prompt as well as a link to the Talisman Padlet. Participants can choose any file type to share, and are instructed to click a “+” button in the bottom right-hand corner of the shared canvas to upload their materials. We created a video recording demonstrating how users can upload their objects to the Talisman Padlet, as well as examples of different types of media they could upload. You can find the video below:
For more information on the Talisman approach and related work, you can read the following papers: