Infrastructuring in participatory design

Abstract

This paper reviews literature and reflects on infrastructuring in Participatory Design (PD) with a conceptual interest. It starts with the notion of information infrastructure introduced to the PD community in the mid-1990s by Star and collaborators. It traces how the notion has been adapted, appended, and negotiated within a number of PD approaches known as "infrastructuring." Based on this review, the paper discusses a number of themes arising from these approaches that relate to salient information infrastructure characteristics and speak to the specificity of infrastructuring in PD. This paper takes stock of what has happened in conceptual terms with regard to information infrastructure and infrastructuring in the field of PD to inform continuing work.

Surfacing the arctic

“…What followed from Star's work is a fluid, processual, and emerging ontology [5] of infrastructure formation, which is well described by the concept of infrastructuring. Infrastructuring is thus an inherently political process [6,8,18], "significant in terms of understanding how certain stakeholders in a project may gain leverage or positions of power." [20, p. 252] In this sense, our use of the term 'scaling' in this paper is not intended in its quantified connotation (adding or removing sites or actors), but to focus the attention on the politics involved with it, as different phenomena become relevant in different dimensions (e.g., space, time, use, intervention, inclusions/exclusions, invisibility) for different stakeholders during infrastructuring processes [7,10].…”

“…For this paper, the two authors jointly analyzed the data retrospectively by paying attention to the dynamics through which the interests of user groups where brought forward or downplayed. Analytically, we performed a gestalt switch, or an infrastructural inversion [6], to shed light on (or surface) the effort that shaped the establishment of infrastructure for realtime environmental monitoring in the Arctic. This effort of foregrounding the background, we recognize, is a political act by the researchers, who also play a role in highlighting some actors' concerns and silencing others [25].…”

“…Call for Papers for PDC 2016 and 2018), thus "facilitating new forms of politically aware IT development practice and theory by encouraging new ways of drawing on the underlying ideals of PD." [4, p. 88] The evolving nature of design of infrastructure is captured by the notion of infrastructuring, used to describe infrastructure formation as a process of becoming that stretches across several, emergent dimensions, and human and non-human stakeholder groups [5][6][7][8]. Taking the political soul of PD as a starting point, we aim to reflect on the shifting relations among participation, infrastructuring, and politics.…”

Infrastructuring for Cultural Commons

“…Taking as a starting point previous work on the growing importance of information infrastructures as an integral part of contemporary life (Star and Ruhleder 1994;Neumann and Star 1996;Star and Bowker 2002), the argument has been made that we should consider infrastructures more in their ongoing, relational terms. Scholars in traditions such as Science and Technology Studies (STS) and Information Systems studies (IS) have proposed that infrastructures are not merely substrates that disappear or things that are built and then left behind, instead infrastructures are constantly in the process of change and becoming (Neumann and Star 1996;Star and Bowker 2002;Karasti 2014) and therefore it is critical to trace backwards and forwards the relations that are created between people, materials and structures at all levels (Star and Ruhleder 1996). To trace the implications of this relational view more accurately, Star and Bowker (2002) suggested that it is more interesting to ask 'when' something is being perceived as an infrastructure by its users, rather than 'what' an infrastructure is.…”

“…Our focus is particularly on the characteristics of the concept that has lately been referred to as cultural commons (Madison et al 2010;Hyde 2010;Hess 2012;Bertacchini et al 2012). To analyse these cases we combine this broader framing of commons with a discussion of the concepts of infrastructure and infrastructuring processes, as being central to contemporary discussions of design (Star and Bowker 2002;Karasti 2014).…”