What Is Participation? Design Leads the Way to a Cross-Disciplinary Framework

Abstract

IntroductionIn this paper we present a way of thinking that clarifies concepts of participation not only across diverse design areas but across other disciplines, allowing clearer comparisons and cross-referencing. We see this clarification as a significant first step to remove multidisciplinary barriers to the productive building of a knowledge base around participation concepts. We suggest that design is the best field to lead this elimination of barriers, and we show specific connections to several other disciplines.Ideas about participation have been actively developed by designers for many years, through the separate traditions of user-centered design and participatory design, and more recently through various schools of co-design and human-centered design. All of these terms now carry multiple interpretations. The importance and role of the participation of "others" in design has been debated in multiple contexts involving functionality, culture, usefulness, social responsibility, identity, design education, and sustainability. 1 Yet consideration of participation is important not only within the field of design. Participation has become a focus of debate among academics and practitioners in very diverse fields. One driver is the growing numbers of peoples of the world who demand active involvement in the planning and implementation of initiatives affecting their lives. In the health sector, participatory approaches to both research (e.g., community-based participatory research) and service planning have become commonplace. In international development, 1980s discourses of participation have now become mainstream.2 "Sustainable"' development has embraced participation as a core ideal, both as a human rights issue and as a means of increasing the efficacy of interventions. Mainstream processes of formal monitoring and evaluation are also becoming more participatory, as non-governmental and civil society organizations take increasingly active roles in defining appropriate indicators and assessment strategies.4 Even environmental management is now characterized by a more "adaptive co-management" of natural resources. 5In most cases, conversations about participation were initiated at the periphery of disciplines (often as a reaction against "top-down" practices). In the field of design, however, different aspects of participation have been under direct and conscious consideration for some time. Designers thus now have an opportunity to potentially lead new discussions across other fields, if they are able to draw together their understandings of participation into a consolidated knowledge base that can seed and stimulate ideas elsewhere. A major challenge in the theoretical study of participation is that it does not yet have a dedicated academic literature of its own; instead, it exists in "clumps" of literature in diverse disciplines. We propose here to start conversations that link these disciplines to design, and to begin to build an explicit home for interdisciplinary research and scholarship on partic...

Implications of the Bioinclusive Ethic on Collaborative and Participatory Design.

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Bringing the “Missing Pillar” into Sustainable Development Goals: Towards Intersubjective Values-Based Indicators

“…The ESDinds project, which aimed to develop values-based indicators and assessment tools for civil society organizations promoting education for sustainable development, was funded by the European Union Seventh Framework Programme (FP7) from 2009-2011 [79][80][81][82][83]. The project brought together representatives of two academic research institutions and four civil society organizations (CSOs) as equal partners, and was innovative in the extent of decision-making power granted to the CSO partners within the research consortium.…”

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“…Reasons for encouraging public participation are derived from the considerations of ethical, political and knowledge values, in which the value of knowledge contribution is of most importance to deal with local environmental and social problems by inquiring and learning from "the bottom" of urban life (Andersson, 2008). It continues to be argued that is crucial to listen to and learn from the public to achieve a more diversified and enlarged context for collaboration and decision-making (Guy and Marvin, 2007;Harder et al, 2013). This study attempts to build an understanding of how a basis for public participation can be created through understanding of the manifestations of the social system.…”

“…Active public participation is crucial for environmental management in planning and implementation of initiatives (Harder et al, 2013;Selman and Parker, 1997;Taylor, 2000). asserted that people need to be the focus of a city and achieving a sustainable urban system is a major commitment that involves strong support by people.…”