Challenges and Opportunities in Contemporary Participatory Design

Abstract

At the core of Participatory Design is the direct involvement of people in the co-design of tools, products, environments, businesses, and social institutions. In particular, Participatory Design has developed a diverse collection of principles and practices to encourage and support this direct involvement. Many of the design tools and techniques generated to further this process have become standard practice for the design and development of information and communications technologies and increasingly other kinds of products and services. These design tools and techniques include various kinds of design workshops in which participants collaboratively envision future practices and products; scenarios, personas and related tools that enable people to represent their own activities to others (rather than having others do this for them); various forms of mock-ups, prototypes and enactment of current and future activities used to coordinate the design process; and iterative prototyping so that participants can interrogate developing designs and ground their design conversations in the desired outcomes of the design process and the context in which these will be used. 1 Participatory Design has also pioneered and developed some of the basic research questions, methods, and agendas that have recently been taken up by design research in more traditional design environments (e.g., innovation through participation). 2 Increasingly, participatory designers have sought to develop processes to enable active stakeholder participation in the design of the tools, environments, businesses, and social institutions in which these information and communication technologies are embedded. These widened contexts have been reflected in the themes of recent Participatory Design conferences and in the substantive focus of the research presented in them. Participatory Design: A Brief OverviewThe beginnings of contemporary Participatory Design lie primarily in the restless and exhilarating days of the various social, political and civil rights movements the 1960s and 1970s. People in many western societies demanded an increased say in the decisions that affected many different aspects of their lives. Some designers and design researchers participated very directly in these activities and 1 Jesper Simonsen and Toni Robertson, eds., Routledge International Handbook of Participatory Design (London: Routledge, 2012). 2 Jesper Simonsen et al., eds., Design Research: Synergies from Interdisciplinary Perspectives (London: Routledge, 2010).

Participatory Design in Emerging Civic Engagement Initiatives in the New Public Sector

“…Moreover, contemporary ICT solutions are often different, also affecting PD. While the past decades and the second and third PD generation much focused developing ICT artefacts and (large-scale) systems from scratch current applications are extensively built on available offthe-shelf technologies requiring ICT reconfiguration rather than development [4]. Finally, the past decade has seen a rapid spread of mobile applications in terms of cellphones, tablets and applets that are accessible anywhere, not the least relevant as an enabler of citizens engagement.…”

“…[2], [3]. Especially in recent years, some traits of PD seem to have become synonymous with a more neutral form of "user-centered" design, concentrating on more local issues of usability and user satisfaction and sometimes bringing in commercial agile methods [4], [5], [6]. Other PD traits have moved away from an exclusive design/technology/ICT artifact focus and include, for example, a change in the mindset of participants and improvements in collaborative work [7].…”

The OCareCloudS project: toward organizing care through trusted cloud services

“…The role of user researchers in this process is to facilitate a process of 'mutual learning' between user and designer or developer [16]. User researchers need to understand the domain as well as the targeted users and make this knowledge accessible to developers and engineers.…”

Everyoone has a part to play : games and participatory design in healthcare

“…According to the International Handbook of Participatory Design, continuous reflection about how and by whom participation is established and accomplished, distinguishes participatory design from other user centred approaches (Robertson & Simonsen, 2012). While co-design and participatory design are often used interchangeably, codesign "carries perhaps a bit lighter weight on the political attitude" (Matelmäki & Sleeswijk Visser, 2011, p.3).…”

“…Currently designers aim to enable stakeholders to participate in the design process of not only work tools, but also environments, businesses, and social institutions (Robertson & Simonsen, 2012). Furthermore, there is a reorientation of the field towards everyday life and the public sphere, while it is according to Björgvinsson (2010, p. 42) "open to interpretation", "whether there is more democracy at work".…”