Participatory Design in Practice

Abstract

Abstract. This paper presents a project for the social development of ICTs, which used a participatory design approach and sought to have a high social impact on a community of craftswomen (embroiderers from Cartago, Colombia). Participating in this project implied active dialogue with the community to recognize the knowledge of each participant and achieve culturally relevant representations materialized in technological artifacts. We posit dialogue, representation and recognition as key elements for developing successful participatory design. In practice, this was achieved through an iterative, incremental and open-ended methodology, whose main feature was engagement by doing. This process of design allowed engineers to recognize the craftswomen's traditional knowledge and allowed craftswomen to be less afraid of technology. The main resultant artifact was a tangible user interface that facilitates dialogue between fashion designers and embroiderers in the process of designing new embroidery patterns. This and other artifacts that emerged from the activities and dialogues, the level of engagement of the participants, and the convergence points discovered between embroidery and technology, lead us to conclude that the process presented here can be replicated with other craft communities, to reinforce these communities and assist them in generating innovation in their processes and products.

Social Technology Methods to Engage Stakeholders in Social Enterprise Planning and Promote Sustainability and Entrepreneurship

“…Mussi et al (2020) highlight, in their collaborative project experience, that this type of project provokes participation and active interaction between designers and effective users, with exchanges of expertise and search for more assertive alternatives for the project together. However, it is worth mentioning that for a participatory project to be successful, self, and mutual recognition, dialogue and representation between the parties involved must be established (Cortés-Rico & Piedrahita-Solórzano, 2015).…”

SensorMov, biblioteca nativa para interacciones tangibles con dispositivos Android

“…A partir de la comprensión del dispositivo móvil como un artefacto tecnológico que podría tender un puente entre la ingeniería en multimedia y los haceres textiles, y entendiendo la importancia de profundizar sobre el rol del cuerpo en estos saberes y en el uso del dispositivo móvil, los fundamentos metodológicos que guiaron este proyecto fueron el diseño participativo [10] y la investigación basada en el diseño constructivo [11]. Sostenida sobre esta base, se propuso una estrategia iterativa, ágil, con las siguientes fases: Reconocimiento, Ideación, Prototipado y Experimentación (Figura 1) [12]. Otras aproximaciones metodológicas para el desarrollo de interfaces tangibles pueden ser consultadas en [3]; allí se detalla el diseño de ITU en conjunción con gamificación y se contrasta con otros enfoques metódicos.…”