The Designer's Role in Revitalized Participatory Design Agendas

Abstract

Over the last four decades, Participatory Design (PD) gained traction in Human Computer Interaction (HCI) communities around the world. The discipline became recurrent in HCI publications, the tools and methods it offers present alternatives in attempts to design with persons, and not only for them. The PD research community is challenged by the notion that current practices focus on the production of artifacts, rather than designing for democracy and empowerment of partner communities. Countering technocratic trends, researchers around the world seek to renew the discipline by proposing alternative research agendas, towards a critical and politically engaged discipline. Designers present themselves as actors and actresses in these processes, and understanding how they operate can inform future works on how design practices can promote empowerment despite the power gap between participants and designers. This paper explores papers from the 2018 Participatory Design Conference (PDC), seeking state-of-the-art on how researchers perceive themselves in their practices, and proposes a set of suggestions on how to plan participation in a situated manner.