4.7 Ethics
For the Hublink project, standard Bournemouth University procedures regarding ethics were followed. The ethics questionnaire was completed and the reflective and evaluative interviews, both those in groups and the one to one interviews with partners were preceded by the
distribution of participant information sheets and interviewees signed standard BU consent forms. These are available to view on request. Where participants have been named and directly quoted from these interviews in this thesis, this has been approved by them
subsequently. Because the participant have had access to the entire case study document, as discussed in the previous section (4.6) where I highlight the importance of participant checking for validity of this research, they have had access to check their quotes in the context of the case study.
Sensitive personal data about Local Link clients is held in Hublink and the development team recognise this responsibility. Real and the consortium partners are the registered data controllers for the project and specified and have oversight of data protection compliance. No personal data stored in Hublink is exposed in this publication or any other research outputs and no personal data relating to Local Link clients has been stored on the developers' own computers during this research.
However, as this methodology chapter points out, as a participatory project there are ethical matters that go beyond compliance to standard procedures. While this chapter has laid out a position in which the co-owned, collaborative production is treated separately from the research aspects of the project, it has also been important for the collaborative relationship and
consistency of values of transparency and control that the participants have awareness of and access to the research aims and outcomes of this project, and some control over how they are represented.
To achieve this consistency I have followed the following protocols. Firstly, in discussions and meetings with anybody connected with the project, whether core participants or Hublink users I have informed them that my development and support work is part of an academic project, outlined the general theme and offered further information on request. Real have also informed their partners of the research in several emails during the course of the project. Secondly, I have given access to core participants to the academic outputs of the research where it directly concerns their participation, and sought their comments. The case study paper presented to the Participatory Design Conference (PDC) in 2014 (Haskel and Graham 2014) was circulated to the participants before submission to gain permission to name individuals in quotes and to allow them an opportunity to feed back any comments on the arguments made. Part of circulating this document to participants included an introduction to the PDC itself which provided an
opportunity to introduce and position the PD community for the participants. For the presentation of the case study at that events I used both attributed quotes and photographs of core participants as I wanted to emphasise our co-ownership of the project and their
contribution. I sought and gained permission from each individual to include their photograph and again explained the context. As mentioned in the previous section, the study part of this thesis was circulated to participants in June 2016 to review and for their comment. The case
study part of the thesis was circulated together with a version of the thesis introduction that set out the academic perspectives that underpin this work.
Though participants have different levels of interest in the academic outputs of this work, through this communication about the academic outputs around the Hublink project I believe I achieved consistency of approach to participation between the values of CI/PD and my
methodology.
4.8 Method and presentation: the challenge of 'writing up'
My own voice and perspective is by not means the only point of view or evidence contained in this research. As described in the previous section, this project has included purposeful gathering views of a number of participants at different points in time. These views have been collected via interviews and questionnaires as well as documented in notes and observation through the course of the work. Through this data, different perspectives voices and perspectives add to the project description. In addition there are quite a large number of relevant artefacts – often but not always in digital form – that have been essential in the development of this project and which help present a picture of the processes.
The methodologies discussed and evaluated take clear positions on issues such as multiple voices, relevance and accessibility to participants, and triangulation. In presenting the project for an academic context, I have struggled with methodological considerations combined with concerns about writing style, structure and presentation. I have also wanted to achieve consistency between the project write-up and the theoretical and ethical underpinnings of the project as a whole both in terms of approach to participation and in terms of the key themes identified.
In summary therefore, I wanted my project write up to achieve the following: • The verbatim presence of participant voices
• An accurate reflection of the mood and spirit of the collaboration as well as the facts • A reflection of the collaborative, creative nature of the project
• An account that participants find accurate
• An accessible and if possible interesting document for participants to read and check • A reflection of the situated nature of the project, but nevertheless one connected to
broader issues and the literature
To present these sources in ways that are clearly identifiable, I have adapted the format of the 'weave', a format developed by the Journal of Artistic Research that encourages the use of multiple columns in a landscape format so that different kinds of texts and images can be seen in parallel and connected (Journal of Artistic Research 2015). I have used the column format to include complementary elements (the right column) to an overall narrative (the left column). The right column might include visual or textual artefacts from the design or production process, but also includes extended, direct quotes from participants. This gives the freedom to juxtapose voices from different people at different times, as well as incorporate the textual and visual materials that were part and parcel of the collaborative work. The line spacing in this entire document is less than recommended for a thesis to allow for a sufficient amount of text on each of these landscape pages.
Within the extended quotes, visual means are used to distinguish the different kinds of reflection as follows: