The Possibility of the Virtual Focus Group: Communicating Agency Toward Equitable Participation Beyond the COVID-19 Pandemic

The modes of design practice are shifting in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. We now learn, research, and teach through virtual platforms more integrally and intensively than ever. This moment begs for introspection and the reconsideration of ‘conventional’ workflows in the discipline of architecture. The authors of this paper are members of an interdisciplinary research team who discuss how they adapted their research methodologies with a virtual toolkit, developing focus group sessions with multi-family building residents and graduate students. The authors reflect on the benefits and limitations presented by digital tools and consider how hybridized opportunities suggest tailored approaches that facilitate the communication of agency to a representative and complex public. Participatory design frameworks ground the conversation, allowing the authors to position their methodology as an essential step to establishing equitable grounds for participation in the future.

https://doi.org/10.35483/ACSA.AIA.Inter.21.19

Volume Editors
Rico Quirindongo & Georgeen Theodore

ISBN
978-1-944214-39-5