Participation and Design: An Extended View

Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW), 2016

The paper explores what exactly it is that users participate in when being involved in participatory design (PD), relating this discussion to the CSCW perspective on collaborative design work. We argue that a focus on decision-making in design is necessary for understanding participation in design. Referring to Schön we see design as involving creating choices, selecting among them, concretizing choices and evaluating the choices. We discuss how these kinds of activities have played out in four PD projects that we have participated in. Furthermore, we show that the decisions are interlinked, and discuss the notion of decision linkages. We emphasize the design result as the most important part of PD. Finally, participation is discussed as the sharing of power, asking what the perspective of power and decision-making adds to the understanding of design practices.

Proceedings of ACM CHI 2013, 2013

The term 'participation' is traditionally used in HCI to describe the involvement of users and stakeholders in design processes, with a pretext of distributing control to participants to shape their technological future. In this paper we ask whether these values can hold up in practice, particularly as participation takes on new meanings and incorporates new perspectives. We argue that much HCI research leans towards configuring participation. In exploring this claim we explore three questions that we consider important for understanding how HCI configures participation; Who initiates, directs and benefits from user participation in design? In what forms does user participation occur? How is control shared with users in design? In answering these questions we consider the conceptual, ethical and pragmatic problems this raises for current participatory HCI research. Finally, we offer directions for future work explicitly dealing with the configuration of participation.

Computer Supported Cooperative Work, 1998

We characterize Participatory Design (PD) as a maturing area of research and as an evolving practice among design professionals. Although PD has been applied outside of technology design, here we focus on PD in relation to the introduction of computer-based systems at work. We discuss three main issues addressed by PD researchers; the politics of design; the nature of participation; and method, tools and techniques for participation. We also report on the conditions for the transfer of “PD results” to workers, user groups, and design professionals that have characterized PD over time and across geopolitical terrains. The topic of the sustainability of PD within an organizational context is also considered. The article concludes with a discussion of common issues explored within PD and CSCW and frames directions for a continuing dialogue between researchers and practitioners from the two fields. The article draws on a review of PD and CSCW literatures as well as on our own research and practical experiences.

Proceedings of the Conference on Computer Support for Collaborative Learning Foundations for a CSCL Community - CSCL '02, 2002

The purpose of the present study was to analyze whether and how students working in the collaborative learning environment (Future Learning Environment, FLE2) were able to share their design process with the intended user of the product. We organized a collaborative design course in which six teams of first-year university-level textile students (N=24) solved an authentic and complex design task --designing bags of EuroCSCL conference --with the help of FLE2-environment. The design course was based on the idea of participatory design process. The methods of social network analysis were applied to study interaction between the students, teacher and the users in the FLE2 database. A more detailed qualitative content analysis was carried out by analyzing the design thinking, design activities, and interaction between the students' and teacher's and the users' statements posted to the FLE2 database by two of the design teams. The results indicated that in the more successful group, there was more active dialogue between students and expert users (i.e., avid conference-goers). In the case of this team, the expert user took a role of co-designer by participating in the design process through evaluating ideas produced by students. In the case of the less successful team, the teachers and users took the role of organizing students' process of working with FLE2 and their collaborative designing. This group did not deliberately test their ideas with the expert user.

Proceedings of the eighth conference on Participatory design Artful integration: interweaving media, materials and practices - PDC 04, 2004

To compare the outcomes of participatory and user-centered contextual design, case study methods and the Activity Checklist derived from Activity Theory are used to analyze two system prototypes developed in the same organizational setting. Systematic differences between the prototypes are identified regarding focus on tool, organization, individual, and relation to current power structures and organizational practices. The resulting participatory design prototype reflected a sharper focus on collective use, social processes and to pragmatically fit into the organization whereas the user-centered prototype focused on individual use, the computer system and solutions that require substantial changes in work procedures. The differences between the prototypes are discussed and related to the specific aspects of the design methods.

Proceedings of the Tenth Anniversary Conference on …, 2008

This paper discusses the design of things. This is done in an attempt to conceptually explore some of the political and practical challenges to participatory design today. Which things, and which participants? The perspective is strategic and conceptual. Two approaches are in focus, participatory design (designing for use before use) and meta-design (designing for design after design). With this framing the challenge for professional design to participate in public controversial things is considered.

CoDesign, 2015

This article starts from the paradox that, although participation is a defining trait of participatory design (PD), there are few explicit discussions in the PD literature of what constitutes participation. Thus, from a point of departure in Actor-Network Theory (ANT), this article develops an analytical understanding of participation. It is argued that participation is a matter of concern, something inherently unsettled, to be investigated and explicated in every design project. Specifically, it is argued that (1) participation is an act overtaken by numerous others, rather than carried out by individuals and (2) that participation partially exists in all elements of a project. These traits are explicated in a design project called 'Teledialogue', where the participants are unfolded as networks of reports, government institutions, boyfriends, social workers and so on. The argument is synthesised as three challenges for PD:

This paper explores the design collaboration between designers and expert users in the specific case of new surgical instrument design. To this end, two design evaluation meetings were studied. Decision and interaction analysis methods were applied to compare the effectiveness of the design team on discussing and solving design issues with and without active participation of the expert user. The observations showed that, in the absence of the user, the designers were unable to make decisions about technical solutions relating to usability issues, and the expert user's comments during the subsequent meeting significantly altered their decisions. These two observations indicate that the use of a support tool could have a significant role to help asynchronous communication in such a design process.

Design Studies, 1985

1988

Computer support for design as cooperative work is the subject of our discussion in the context of our research program on Computer Support in Cooperative Design and Communication. We outline our theoretical perspective on design as cooperative work, and we exemplify our approach with reflections from a project on computer support for envisionment in design -the APLEX and its use. We see envisionment facilities as support for both experiments with and communication about the future use situation. As a background we sketch the historical roots of our program -the Scandinavian collective resource approach to design and use of computer artifacts, and make some critical reflections on the rationality of computer support for cooperative work.

CoDesign, 2017

This special issue on participatory design in an era of participation presents emerging topics and discussions from the thirteenth Participatory Design Conference (PDC), held at Aarhus University in August 2016. The PDC 2016 marked the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Participatory Design conference series, which began in 1990 with the first biannual conference in Seattle. Since then, the PDC conferences have continued to bring together a multidisciplinary, international community of researchers and practitioners around issues of cooperative design. The theme for the 2016 PDC conference was 'Participatory Design in an Era of Participation'. Critical and constructive discussions were invited on the values, characteristics, politics and future practices of participatory design in an era in which participation has now become per

1988

Computer support for design as cooperative work is the subject of our discussion in the context of our research program on Computer Support in Cooperative Design and Communication. We outline our theoretical perspective on design as cooperative work, and we exemplify our approach with reflections from a project on computer support for envisionment in design -the APLEX and its use. We see envisionment facilities as support for both experiments with and communication about the future use situation. As a background we sketch the historical roots of our program -the Scandinavian collective resource approach to design and use of computer artifacts, and make some critical reflections on the rationality of computer support for cooperative work.

Design Studies, 2000

T he proliferation of computer media and networking has the potential to make fundamental changes in the methods, models and techniques employed to educate and train design students and professionals. The easy access to the internet requires a reconsideration of the desktop Computer Aided Instruction and Computer Aided Learning (CAT/CAL) paradigms. Analyzing the role and impact of computers in the ongoing changes in education, Lockard, Abrams and Many 1 specify two types of CAI/CAL applications. Applications classified as Type I employ