Participatory design

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Participatory design is an approach to design that attempts to actively involve the end users in the design process to help ensure that the product designed meets their needs and is usable. It is rooted in work with trade unions in several Scandinavian countries in the 1960s and 1970s; its ancestry also includes Action research and Sociotechnical Design.^[1]

In the English-speaking world, the term has currency mainly in the world of software development, especially in circles connected to Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility (CPSR), who have put on a series of Participatory Design Conferences. It overlaps with the approach Extreme Programming takes to user involvement in design, but (possibly because of its European trade union origins) the Participatory Design tradition puts more emphasis on the involvement of a broad population of users rather than a small number of user representatives.

In participatory design end-users (putative, potential or future) are invited to cooperate with researchers and developers during an innovation process. Potentially, they participate during several stages of an innovation process: they participate during the initial exploration and problem definition both to help define the problem and to focus ideas for solution, and during development, they help evaluate proposed solutions.

Participatory design can be seen as a move of end-users into the world of researchers and developers, whereas empathic design can be seen as a move of researchers and developers into the world of end-users. There is a very significant differentiation between user-design and User-centered design in that there is an emancipatory theoretical foundation and a systems theory bedrock on which user-design is founded. Indeed, user-centered design is a useful and important construct, but one that suggests that users are taken as centers in the design process, consulting with users heavily, but not allowing users to make the decisions, nor empowering users with the tools that the experts use. For example, Wikipedia content is user-designed. Users are given the necessary tools to make their own entries. Wikipedia's underlying wiki software is based on user-centered design: while users are allowed to propose changes or have input on the design, a smaller and more specialized group decide about features and system design.

[edit] History in Scandinavia

In Scandinavia, research projects on user participation in systems development date back to the 1970s (Bødker 1995). The so-called "collective resource approach" developed strategies and techniques for workers to influence the design and use of computer applications at the workplace: The Norwegian Iron and Metal Workers Union (NJMF) project took a first move from traditional research to working with people, directly changing the role of the union clubs in the project (Ehn & Kyng, 1987). The Scandinavian projects developed an "action research" approach, emphasizing active co-operation between researchers and workers of the organization to help improve the latter's work situation. While researchers got their results, the people whom they worked with were equally entitled to get something out of the project. The approach built on people's own experiences, providing for them resources to be able to act in their current situation. The view of organizations as fundamentally harmonious—according to which conflicts in an organization are regarded as pseudo-conflicts or "problems" dissolved by good analysis and increased communication—was rejected in favor of a view of organizations recognizing fundamental "un-dissolvable" conflicts in organizations (Ehn & Sandberg, 1979).

In the Utopia project (Bødker et al., 1987, Ehn, 1988), the major achievements were the experience-based design methods, developed through the focus on hands-on experiences, emphasizing the need for technical and organizational alternatives (Bødker et al., 1987).

The parallel Florence project (Gro Bjerkness & Tone Bratteteig) started a long line of Scandinavian research projects in the health sector. In particular, it worked with nurses and developed approaches for nurses to get a voice in the development of work and IT in hospitals. The Florence project put gender on the agenda with its starting point in a highly gendered work environment.

The 1990s led to a number of projects including the AT project (Bødker et al., 1993) and the EureCoop/EuroCode projects (Grønbæk, Kyng & Mogensen, 1995).

In recent years, it has been a major challenge to PD to embrace the fact that much technology development no longer happens as design of isolated systems in well-defined communities of work (Beck, 2002). At the dawn of the 21st century, we use technology at work, at home, in school, and while on the move.

Many groups and projects throughout Scandinavia apply participatory design research methods on a regular basis, and, hence, are part of the development and appropriation of the methods, as well as of disseminating the methods to industrial practice. Among the more prominent has been the Center for User-oriented IT-Design (CID) at the Royal Institute of Technology. With his background in the Utopia project, Yngve Sundblad and a number of collaborators have developed a platform for a number of projects where industrial partners as well as partners from the labor movement and NGOs participated.

[edit] Notes and References

1. ^ Web Page on Participatory Design on the site of CPSR. Accessed 13 April 2006.

• Banathy, B.H. (1992). Comprehensive systems design in education: building a design culture in education. Educational Technology, 22(3) 33-35.
• Beck, E. (2002).P for Political - Participation is Not Enough. SJIS, Volume 14 - 2002
• Bødker, S. (1996). Creating conditions for participation: Conflicts and resources in systems design, Human Computer Interaction 11(3), 215-236
• Bødker, S., Christiansen, E., Ehn, P., Markussen, R., Mogensen, P., & Trigg, R. (1993). The AT Project: Practical research in cooperative design, DAIMI No. PB-454. Department of Computer Science, Aarhus University.
• Bødker, S., Ehn, P., Kammersgaard, J., Kyng, M., & Sundblad, Y. (1987). A Utopian experi¬ence: In G. Bjerknes, P. Ehn, & M. Kyng. (Eds.), Computers and democracy: A Scandinavian challenge (pp. 251–278). Aldershot, UK: Avebury.
• Carr, A.A. (1997). User-design in the creation of human learning systems. Educational Technology Research and Development, 45 (3), 5-22.
• Carr-Chellman, A.A., Cuyar, C., & Breman, J. (1998). User-design: A case application in health care training. Educational Technology Research and Development, 46 (4), 97-114.
• Ehn, P. & Kyng, M. (1987). The Collective Resource Approach to Systems Design. In Bjerknes, G., Ehn, P., & Kyng, M. (Eds.), Computers and Democracy - A Scandinavian Challenge. (pp. 17–58). Aldershot, UK: Avebury
• Ehn, P. (1988). Work-oriented design of computer artifacts. Falköping: Arbetslivscentrum/Almqvist & Wiksell International, Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates
• Ehn, P. and Sandberg, Å. (1979). God utredning: In Sandberg, Å. (Ed.): Utredning och förändring i förvaltningen[Investigation and change in administration]. Stockholm: Liber.
• Grønbæk, K., Kyng, M. & P. Mogensen (1993). CSCW challenges: Cooperative Design in Engineering Projects, Commu­ni­ca­tions of the ACM, 36, 6, pp. 67-77
• Grudin, J. (1993). Obstacles to Participatory Design in Large Product Development Organizations: In Namioka, A. & Schuler, D. (Eds.), Participatory design. Principles and practices (pp. 99-122). Hillsdale NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
• Kyng, M. (1989). Designing for a dollar a day. Office, Technology and People, 4(2): 157-170.
• Reigeluth, C. M. (1993). Principles of educational systems design. International Journal of Educational Research, 19 (2), 117-131.
• Schuler, D. & Namioka, A. (1993). Participatory design: Principles and practices. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
• Von Bertalanffy, L. (1968). General systems theory. New York: Braziller.

[edit] External links

• Web Page on Participatory Design on the site of CPSR. Links to various papers and information about Participatory Design conferences.
• The World Seed Project
• Technical report on participatory theory and methods emphasizing hybridity (methods and work practices that share attributes of multiple domains or disciplines).