Thanks to everyone who came to see the presentation at Web Directions South yesterday, and sorry we weren’t able to have a bit more discussion at the end of the session — some great questions and ideas came up that I would have liked to explore further.  I’ve posted the presentation to Slideshare:

Or you can download a PDF of the presentation, along with notes (PDF 14.4 MB), including pointers to the various sites and articles I mentioned in the presentation.

As I hope is obvious from our work and the posts on this site, we’re very passionate about engaging people in the process of design, so we were  delighted to be able to contribute a small something to the participatory design community as a sponsor of the Participatory Design Conference for 2010, being held in Sydney (in part co-ordinated by our friend and colleague @pennyhagen).

The “prototype” programme is now up, and it’s looking like it’s going to be a great set of sessions.  And the industry day seems like a great opportunity for those of us in the design field to connect with the academic world of participatory design.  I know that I’ve certainly benefited tremendously from the academic literature on the topic (esp. during the preparation of my recent paper), so am looking forward to more cross-pollination of ideas at the conference…

I caught this video from Worrell Design (via @metarand) last week and I wanted to post it here because I think it is a great overview of the value of user research and collaborative design, with a specific focus on health care.

A lot of what’s covered in the video applies in a multitude of sectors and circumstances. While some of the video hints at some great technology ideas, these are only made possible by understanding the social aspects of the provision of health care — that is the relationship between practitioner and patient, and the other challenges, motivations, needs and wants that revolve around managing health.

I also think it highlights the challenges that many organisations and sectors face as the people formerly known as “consumers” are wresting back control using social and personal technologies, becoming active participants in the process.

In any case, well worth a watch…