Participatory design
Encyclopedia
Participatory design is an approach to design
attempting to actively involve all stakeholders (e.g. employees, partners, customers, citizens, end users) in the design process in order to help ensure the product designed meets their needs and is usable
. The term is used in a variety of fields e.g. software design
, urban design
, architecture
, landscape architecture
, product design
, sustainability
, graphic design
, planning
or even medicine
as a way of creating environments that are more responsive and appropriate to their inhabitants' and users' cultural, emotional, spiritual and practical needs. It is one approach to placemaking
. It has been used in many settings and at various scales. Participatory design is an approach which is focused on processes and procedures of design and is not a design style. For some, this approach has a political dimension of user empowerment and democratization. For others, it is seen as a way of abrogating design responsibility and innovation by designers.
In several Scandinavian countries of the 1960s and 1970s, it was rooted in work with trade unions; its ancestry also includes Action research
and Sociotechnical Design.
onwards there was a growing demand for greater consideration of community
opinions in major decision-making. In Australia
many people believed that they were not being planned ‘for’ but planned ‘at’. (Nichols 2009). A lack of consultation
made the planning system seem paternalistic and without proper consideration of how changes to the built environment
effected its primary users. In Britain
‘the idea that the public should participate was first raised in 1965’ (Taylor, 1998, p. 86). However the level of participation
is an important issue. At a minimum public workshops and hearings have now been included in almost every planning endeavour. (Wheeler, 2004, p. 46) Yet this level of consultation can simply mean information about change without detailed participation. Involvement that ‘recognises an active part in plan making’ (Taylor, 1998, p. 86) has not always been straightforward to achieve. Participatory design has attempted to create a platform for active participation in the design process, for end users.
In Scandinavia
, research projects on user participation in systems development date back to the 1970s (Bødker 1996). The so-called "collective resource approach" developed strategies and techniques for workers to influence the design and use of computer applications at the workplace: The Norwegian Iron and Metal Workers Union (NJMF) project took a first move from traditional research to working with people, directly changing the role of the union clubs in the project (Ehn & Kyng, 1987).
The Scandinavian projects developed an action research
approach, emphasizing active co-operation between researchers and workers of the organization to help improve the latter's work situation. While researchers got their results, the people whom they worked with were equally entitled to get something out of the project. The approach built on people's own experiences, providing for them resources to be able to act in their current situation. The view of organizations as fundamentally harmonious —according to which conflicts in an organization are regarded as pseudo-conflicts or "problems" dissolved by good analysis and increased communication— was rejected in favor of a view of organizations recognizing fundamental "un-dissolvable" conflicts in organizations (Ehn & Sandberg, 1979).
In the Utopia project (Bødker et al., 1987, Ehn, 1988), the major achievements were the experience-based design methods, developed through the focus on hands-on experiences, emphasizing the need for technical and organizational alternatives (Bødker et al., 1987).
The parallel Florence project (Gro Bjerkness & Tone Bratteteig) started a long line of Scandinavian research projects in the health sector. In particular, it worked with nurses and developed approaches for nurses to get a voice in the development of work and IT
in hospitals. The Florence project put gender on the agenda with its starting point in a highly gendered work environment.
The 1990s led to a number of projects including the AT project (Bødker et al., 1993) and the EureCoop/EuroCode
projects (Grønbæk, Kyng & Mogensen, 1995).
In recent years, it has been a major challenge to participatory design to embrace the fact that much technology development no longer happens as design of isolated systems in well-defined communities of work (Beck, 2002). At the dawn of the 21st century, we use technology at work, at home, in school, and while on the move.
Many groups and projects throughout Scandinavia apply participatory design research methods on a regular basis, and, hence, are part of the development and appropriation of the methods, as well as of disseminating the methods to industrial practice. Among the more prominent has been the Center for User-oriented IT-Design (CID) at the Royal Institute of Technology
. With his background in the Utopia project, Yngve Sundblad and a number of collaborators have developed a platform for a number of projects where industrial partners as well as partners from the labor movement and NGOs participated.
create opportunities for rigorous participation in the design and creation of place
, believing that it is the essential ingredient for successful environments. Rather than simply consulting the public, PPS creates a platform for the community to participate and co-design
new areas, which reflect their intimate knowledge. Providing insights, which independent design professionals such as architects or even local government planners may not have.
Using a method called Place Performance Evaluation or (Place Game), groups from the community are taken on the site of proposed development, where they use their knowledge to develop design strategies, which would benefit the community.
‘’Whether the participants are schoolchildren or professionals, the exercise produces dramatic results because it relies on the expertise of people who use the place every day, or who are the potential users of the place.’’ This successfully engages with the ultimate idea of participatory design, where various stakeholders who will be the users of the end product, are involved in the design process as a collective.
Similar projects have had success in Melbourne
, Australia particularly in relation to contested sites, where design solutions are often harder to establish. The Talbot Reserve in St Kilda
faced numerous problems of use, such as becoming a regular spot for sex workers and drug users to congregate. A Design In, which incorporated a variety of key users in the community about what they wanted for the future of the reserve allowed traditionally marginalised voices to participate in the design process. Participants described it as ‘a transforming experience as they saw the world through different eyes.’ (Press, 2003, p. 62). This is perhaps the key attribute of participatory design, a process which, allows multiple voices to be heard and involved in the design, resulting in outcomes which suite a wider range of users. As planning affects everyone it is believed that ‘those whose livelihoods, environments and lives are at stake should be involved in the decisions which affect them’ (Sarkissian and Perglut, 1986, p. 3)
. It has particular currency to planners and architects, in relation to placemaking
and community
regeneration
projects. It potentially offers a far more democratic approach to the design process as it involves more than one stakeholder. By incorporating a variety of views there is greater opportunity for successful outcomes. Many universities and major institutions are beginning to recognise its importance. The UN, Global studio involved students from Columbia University
, The University of Sydney
and The University of Rome to provide design solutions for Vancouver
’s downtown eastside, which suffered from drug and alcohol related problems. The process allowed cross-discipline participation from planners, architects and industrial designers, which focused on collaboration and the sharing if ideas and stories, as opposed to ridged and singular design outcomes. (Kuiper, 2007, p. 52)
Swanton Street redevelopment project received over 5000 responses from the public allowing them to participate in the design process by commenting on seven different design options. While the City of Yarra
recently held a ‘Stories in the Street’ consultation, to record peoples ideas about future of Smith Street. It offered participants a variety of mediums to explore their opinions such as mapping, photo surveys and storytelling. Although local councils are taking positive steps towards participatory design as opposed to traditional top down approaches to planning, many communities are moving to take design into their own hands.
Portland, Oregon
city repair project is a form of participatory design, which involves the community co-designing problem areas together to make positive changes to their environment. It involves collaborative decision-making and design without traditional involvement from local government or professionals but instead runs on volunteers from the community. The process has created successful projects such as intersection repair, which saw a misused intersection develop into a successful community square.
Peer-to-peer urbanism is a form of decentralized, participatory design for urban environments and individual buildings. It borrows organizational ideas from the open-source software movement, so that knowledge about construction methods and urban design schemes is freely exchanged.
-speaking world, the term has a particular currency in the world of software development, especially in circles connected to Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility
(CPSR), who have put on a series of Participatory Design Conferences. It overlaps with the approach Extreme Programming
takes to user involvement in design, but (possibly because of its European trade union
origins) the Participatory Design tradition puts more emphasis on the involvement of a broad population of users rather than a small number of user representatives.
Participatory design can be seen as a move of end-users into the world of researchers and developers, whereas empathic design
can be seen as a move of researchers and developers into the world of end-users. There is a very significant differentiation between user-design and User-centered design
in that there is an emancipatory theoretical foundation, and a systems theory bedrock (Ivanov
, 1972, 1995), on which user-design is founded. Indeed, user-centered design is a useful and important construct, but one that suggests that users are taken as centers in the design process, consulting with users heavily, but not allowing users to make the decisions, nor empowering users with the tools that the experts use. For example, Wikipedia
content is user-designed. Users are given the necessary tools to make their own entries. Wikipedia's underlying wiki
software is based on user-centered design: while users are allowed to propose changes or have input on the design, a smaller and more specialized group decide about features and system design.
Participatory work in software development has historically tended toward two distinct trajectories, one in Scandinavia and northern Europe, and the other in North America. The Scandinavian and northern European tradition has remained closer to its roots in the labor movement (e.g., Beck, 2002; Bjerknes, Ehn, and Kyng, 1987). The North American and Pacific rim tradition has tended to be both broader (e.g., including managers and executives as "stakeholders" in design) and more circumscribed (e.g., design of individual features as contrasted with the Scandinavian approach to the design of entire systems and design of the work that the system is supposed to support) (e.g., Beyer and Holtzblatt, 1998; Noro and Imada, 1991). However, some more recent work has tended to combine the two approaches (Bødker et al., 2004; Muller, 2007).
Design
Design as a noun informally refers to a plan or convention for the construction of an object or a system while “to design” refers to making this plan...
attempting to actively involve all stakeholders (e.g. employees, partners, customers, citizens, end users) in the design process in order to help ensure the product designed meets their needs and is usable
Usability
Usability is the ease of use and learnability of a human-made object. The object of use can be a software application, website, book, tool, machine, process, or anything a human interacts with. A usability study may be conducted as a primary job function by a usability analyst or as a secondary job...
. The term is used in a variety of fields e.g. software design
Software design
Software design is a process of problem solving and planning for a software solution. After the purpose and specifications of software are determined, software developers will design or employ designers to develop a plan for a solution...
, urban design
Urban design
Urban design concerns the arrangement, appearance and functionality of towns and cities, and in particular the shaping and uses of urban public space. It has traditionally been regarded as a disciplinary subset of urban planning, landscape architecture, or architecture and in more recent times has...
, architecture
Architecture
Architecture is both the process and product of planning, designing and construction. Architectural works, in the material form of buildings, are often perceived as cultural and political symbols and as works of art...
, landscape architecture
Landscape architecture
Landscape architecture is the design of outdoor and public spaces to achieve environmental, socio-behavioral, or aesthetic outcomes. It involves the systematic investigation of existing social, ecological, and geological conditions and processes in the landscape, and the design of interventions...
, product design
Product design
-Introduction:Product design is the process of creating a new product to be sold by a business or enterprise to its customers. It is concerned with the efficient and effective generation and development of ideas through a process that leads to new products.Product designers conceptualize and...
, sustainability
Sustainability
Sustainability is the capacity to endure. For humans, sustainability is the long-term maintenance of well being, which has environmental, economic, and social dimensions, and encompasses the concept of union, an interdependent relationship and mutual responsible position with all living and non...
, graphic design
Graphic design
Graphic design is a creative process – most often involving a client and a designer and usually completed in conjunction with producers of form – undertaken in order to convey a specific message to a targeted audience...
, planning
Planning
Planning in organizations and public policy is both the organizational process of creating and maintaining a plan; and the psychological process of thinking about the activities required to create a desired goal on some scale. As such, it is a fundamental property of intelligent behavior...
or even medicine
Medicine
Medicine is the science and art of healing. It encompasses a variety of health care practices evolved to maintain and restore health by the prevention and treatment of illness....
as a way of creating environments that are more responsive and appropriate to their inhabitants' and users' cultural, emotional, spiritual and practical needs. It is one approach to placemaking
Placemaking
Placemaking is a term that began to be used in the 1970s by architects and planners to describe the process of creating squares, plazas, parks, streets and waterfronts that will attract people because they are pleasurable or interesting...
. It has been used in many settings and at various scales. Participatory design is an approach which is focused on processes and procedures of design and is not a design style. For some, this approach has a political dimension of user empowerment and democratization. For others, it is seen as a way of abrogating design responsibility and innovation by designers.
In several Scandinavian countries of the 1960s and 1970s, it was rooted in work with trade unions; its ancestry also includes Action research
Action research
Action research or participatory action research – is a reflective process of progressive problem solving led by individuals working with others in teams or as part of a "community of practice" to improve the way they address issues and solve problems. Action research is done simply by action,...
and Sociotechnical Design.
Definition
In participatory design participants (putative, potential or future) are invited to cooperate with designers, researchers and developers during an innovation process. Potentially, they participate during several stages of an innovation process: they participate during the initial exploration and problem definition both to help define the problem and to focus ideas for solution, and during development, they help evaluate proposed solutions.History
From the 1960s1960s
The 1960s was the decade that started on January 1, 1960, and ended on December 31, 1969. It was the seventh decade of the 20th century.The 1960s term also refers to an era more often called The Sixties, denoting the complex of inter-related cultural and political trends across the globe...
onwards there was a growing demand for greater consideration of community
Community
The term community has two distinct meanings:*a group of interacting people, possibly living in close proximity, and often refers to a group that shares some common values, and is attributed with social cohesion within a shared geographical location, generally in social units larger than a household...
opinions in major decision-making. In Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
many people believed that they were not being planned ‘for’ but planned ‘at’. (Nichols 2009). A lack of consultation
Public consultation
Public consultation, or simply consultation, is a regulatory process by which the public's input on matters affecting them is sought. Its main goals are in improving the efficiency, transparency and public involvement in large-scale projects or laws and policies...
made the planning system seem paternalistic and without proper consideration of how changes to the built environment
Built environment
The term built environment refers to the human-made surroundings that provide the setting for human activity, ranging in scale from personal shelter and buildings to neighborhoods and cities that can often include their supporting infrastructure, such as water supply or energy networks.The built...
effected its primary users. In Britain
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
‘the idea that the public should participate was first raised in 1965’ (Taylor, 1998, p. 86). However the level of participation
Participation (decision making)
Participation in social science refers to different mechanisms for the public to express opinions - and ideally exert influence - regarding political, economic, management or other social decisions. Participatory decision making can take place along any realm of human social activity, including...
is an important issue. At a minimum public workshops and hearings have now been included in almost every planning endeavour. (Wheeler, 2004, p. 46) Yet this level of consultation can simply mean information about change without detailed participation. Involvement that ‘recognises an active part in plan making’ (Taylor, 1998, p. 86) has not always been straightforward to achieve. Participatory design has attempted to create a platform for active participation in the design process, for end users.
History in Scandinavia
Participatory design was actually born in Scandinavia and named Cooperative Design. However, when the methods were presented to the US community 'cooperation' was a word that didn't resonate with the strong separation between workers and managers - they weren't supposed to discuss ways of working face-to-face. Hence, 'participatory' was instead used as the initial Participatory Design sessions weren't a direct cooperation between workers and managers, sitting in the same room discussing how to improve their work environment and tools, but there were separate sessions for workers and managers. Each group was participating in the process, not directly cooperating. (in historical review of Cooperative Design, at a Scandinavian conference).In Scandinavia
Scandinavia
Scandinavia is a cultural, historical and ethno-linguistic region in northern Europe that includes the three kingdoms of Denmark, Norway and Sweden, characterized by their common ethno-cultural heritage and language. Modern Norway and Sweden proper are situated on the Scandinavian Peninsula,...
, research projects on user participation in systems development date back to the 1970s (Bødker 1996). The so-called "collective resource approach" developed strategies and techniques for workers to influence the design and use of computer applications at the workplace: The Norwegian Iron and Metal Workers Union (NJMF) project took a first move from traditional research to working with people, directly changing the role of the union clubs in the project (Ehn & Kyng, 1987).
The Scandinavian projects developed an action research
Action research
Action research or participatory action research – is a reflective process of progressive problem solving led by individuals working with others in teams or as part of a "community of practice" to improve the way they address issues and solve problems. Action research is done simply by action,...
approach, emphasizing active co-operation between researchers and workers of the organization to help improve the latter's work situation. While researchers got their results, the people whom they worked with were equally entitled to get something out of the project. The approach built on people's own experiences, providing for them resources to be able to act in their current situation. The view of organizations as fundamentally harmonious —according to which conflicts in an organization are regarded as pseudo-conflicts or "problems" dissolved by good analysis and increased communication— was rejected in favor of a view of organizations recognizing fundamental "un-dissolvable" conflicts in organizations (Ehn & Sandberg, 1979).
In the Utopia project (Bødker et al., 1987, Ehn, 1988), the major achievements were the experience-based design methods, developed through the focus on hands-on experiences, emphasizing the need for technical and organizational alternatives (Bødker et al., 1987).
The parallel Florence project (Gro Bjerkness & Tone Bratteteig) started a long line of Scandinavian research projects in the health sector. In particular, it worked with nurses and developed approaches for nurses to get a voice in the development of work and IT
Information technology
Information technology is the acquisition, processing, storage and dissemination of vocal, pictorial, textual and numerical information by a microelectronics-based combination of computing and telecommunications...
in hospitals. The Florence project put gender on the agenda with its starting point in a highly gendered work environment.
The 1990s led to a number of projects including the AT project (Bødker et al., 1993) and the EureCoop/EuroCode
Eurocode
Eurocodes are a set of harmonized technical rules developed by the European Committee for Standardisation for the structural design of construction works in the European Union.The purposes of the Eurocodes are:...
projects (Grønbæk, Kyng & Mogensen, 1995).
In recent years, it has been a major challenge to participatory design to embrace the fact that much technology development no longer happens as design of isolated systems in well-defined communities of work (Beck, 2002). At the dawn of the 21st century, we use technology at work, at home, in school, and while on the move.
Many groups and projects throughout Scandinavia apply participatory design research methods on a regular basis, and, hence, are part of the development and appropriation of the methods, as well as of disseminating the methods to industrial practice. Among the more prominent has been the Center for User-oriented IT-Design (CID) at the Royal Institute of Technology
Royal Institute of Technology
The Royal Institute of Technology is a university in Stockholm, Sweden. KTH was founded in 1827 as Sweden's first polytechnic and is one of Scandinavia's largest institutions of higher education in technology. KTH accounts for one-third of Sweden’s technical research and engineering education...
. With his background in the Utopia project, Yngve Sundblad and a number of collaborators have developed a platform for a number of projects where industrial partners as well as partners from the labor movement and NGOs participated.
Community Planning and Placemaking
Major international organizations such as Project for Public SpacesProject for Public Spaces
Project for Public Spaces is a nonprofit organization based in New York dedicated to creating and sustaining public places that build communities. Planning and design rooted in the community form the cornerstone of PPS’s work. Building on the techniques of William H...
create opportunities for rigorous participation in the design and creation of place
Location (geography)
The terms location and place in geography are used to identify a point or an area on the Earth's surface or elsewhere. The term 'location' generally implies a higher degree of can certainty than "place" which often has an ambiguous boundary relying more on human/social attributes of place identity...
, believing that it is the essential ingredient for successful environments. Rather than simply consulting the public, PPS creates a platform for the community to participate and co-design
Co-Design
Co-design is a philosophy in the American pragmatist tradition, which argues that all people have different ideals and perspectives and that any design process needs to deal with this. Co-Design traces its roots to Immanuel Kant, who in the Critique of the Pure Reason observed that to put a...
new areas, which reflect their intimate knowledge. Providing insights, which independent design professionals such as architects or even local government planners may not have.
Using a method called Place Performance Evaluation or (Place Game), groups from the community are taken on the site of proposed development, where they use their knowledge to develop design strategies, which would benefit the community.
‘’Whether the participants are schoolchildren or professionals, the exercise produces dramatic results because it relies on the expertise of people who use the place every day, or who are the potential users of the place.’’ This successfully engages with the ultimate idea of participatory design, where various stakeholders who will be the users of the end product, are involved in the design process as a collective.
Similar projects have had success in Melbourne
Melbourne
Melbourne is the capital and most populous city in the state of Victoria, and the second most populous city in Australia. The Melbourne City Centre is the hub of the greater metropolitan area and the Census statistical division—of which "Melbourne" is the common name. As of June 2009, the greater...
, Australia particularly in relation to contested sites, where design solutions are often harder to establish. The Talbot Reserve in St Kilda
St Kilda, Victoria
St Kilda is an inner city suburb of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 6 km south from Melbourne's central business district. Its Local Government Area is the City of Port Phillip...
faced numerous problems of use, such as becoming a regular spot for sex workers and drug users to congregate. A Design In, which incorporated a variety of key users in the community about what they wanted for the future of the reserve allowed traditionally marginalised voices to participate in the design process. Participants described it as ‘a transforming experience as they saw the world through different eyes.’ (Press, 2003, p. 62). This is perhaps the key attribute of participatory design, a process which, allows multiple voices to be heard and involved in the design, resulting in outcomes which suite a wider range of users. As planning affects everyone it is believed that ‘those whose livelihoods, environments and lives are at stake should be involved in the decisions which affect them’ (Sarkissian and Perglut, 1986, p. 3)
In the Built Environment
Participatory design has many applications in development and changes to the built environmentBuilt environment
The term built environment refers to the human-made surroundings that provide the setting for human activity, ranging in scale from personal shelter and buildings to neighborhoods and cities that can often include their supporting infrastructure, such as water supply or energy networks.The built...
. It has particular currency to planners and architects, in relation to placemaking
Placemaking
Placemaking is a term that began to be used in the 1970s by architects and planners to describe the process of creating squares, plazas, parks, streets and waterfronts that will attract people because they are pleasurable or interesting...
and community
Community
The term community has two distinct meanings:*a group of interacting people, possibly living in close proximity, and often refers to a group that shares some common values, and is attributed with social cohesion within a shared geographical location, generally in social units larger than a household...
regeneration
Urban Regeneration Company
Urban Regeneration Companies are private companies in the United Kingdom that seek to achieve a radical physical transformation of their areas through masterplanning and co-ordinating financial assistance to developers from both the public and private sector....
projects. It potentially offers a far more democratic approach to the design process as it involves more than one stakeholder. By incorporating a variety of views there is greater opportunity for successful outcomes. Many universities and major institutions are beginning to recognise its importance. The UN, Global studio involved students from Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
, The University of Sydney
University of Sydney
The University of Sydney is a public university located in Sydney, New South Wales. The main campus spreads across the suburbs of Camperdown and Darlington on the southwestern outskirts of the Sydney CBD. Founded in 1850, it is the oldest university in Australia and Oceania...
and The University of Rome to provide design solutions for Vancouver
Vancouver
Vancouver is a coastal seaport city on the mainland of British Columbia, Canada. It is the hub of Greater Vancouver, which, with over 2.3 million residents, is the third most populous metropolitan area in the country,...
’s downtown eastside, which suffered from drug and alcohol related problems. The process allowed cross-discipline participation from planners, architects and industrial designers, which focused on collaboration and the sharing if ideas and stories, as opposed to ridged and singular design outcomes. (Kuiper, 2007, p. 52)
From community consultation to community design
Many local governments particularly in Melbourne, Australia require community consultation in any major changes to the built environment. Community involvement in the planning process is almost a standard requirement in most strategic changes. The City of MelbourneCity of Melbourne
The City of Melbourne is a Local Government Area in Victoria, Australia, located in the central city area of Melbourne. The city has an area of 36 square kilometres and has an estimated population of 93,105 people. The city's motto is "Vires acquirit eundo" which means "She gathers strength as she...
Swanton Street redevelopment project received over 5000 responses from the public allowing them to participate in the design process by commenting on seven different design options. While the City of Yarra
City of Yarra
The City of Yarra is a Local Government Area in Victoria, Australia, located in the inner eastern and northern suburbs of Melbourne. It has an area of 19.5 square kilometres, and at the 2006 census it had a population of 69,330...
recently held a ‘Stories in the Street’ consultation, to record peoples ideas about future of Smith Street. It offered participants a variety of mediums to explore their opinions such as mapping, photo surveys and storytelling. Although local councils are taking positive steps towards participatory design as opposed to traditional top down approaches to planning, many communities are moving to take design into their own hands.
Portland, Oregon
Portland, Oregon
Portland is a city located in the Pacific Northwest, near the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers in the U.S. state of Oregon. As of the 2010 Census, it had a population of 583,776, making it the 29th most populous city in the United States...
city repair project is a form of participatory design, which involves the community co-designing problem areas together to make positive changes to their environment. It involves collaborative decision-making and design without traditional involvement from local government or professionals but instead runs on volunteers from the community. The process has created successful projects such as intersection repair, which saw a misused intersection develop into a successful community square.
Peer-to-peer urbanism is a form of decentralized, participatory design for urban environments and individual buildings. It borrows organizational ideas from the open-source software movement, so that knowledge about construction methods and urban design schemes is freely exchanged.
In software development
In the EnglishEnglish language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
-speaking world, the term has a particular currency in the world of software development, especially in circles connected to Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility
Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility
Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility is a global organization promoting the responsible use of computer technology. in 1983 . It educates policymakers and the public on a wide range of issues...
(CPSR), who have put on a series of Participatory Design Conferences. It overlaps with the approach Extreme Programming
Extreme Programming
Extreme programming is a software development methodology which is intended to improve software quality and responsiveness to changing customer requirements...
takes to user involvement in design, but (possibly because of its European trade union
Trade union
A trade union, trades union or labor union is an organization of workers that have banded together to achieve common goals such as better working conditions. The trade union, through its leadership, bargains with the employer on behalf of union members and negotiates labour contracts with...
origins) the Participatory Design tradition puts more emphasis on the involvement of a broad population of users rather than a small number of user representatives.
Participatory design can be seen as a move of end-users into the world of researchers and developers, whereas empathic design
Empathic design
Empathic design is a user-centered design approach that pays attention to the user's feelings toward a product. The empathic design process is sometimes mistakenly referred to as Empathetic design.- Characteristics of empathic design :...
can be seen as a move of researchers and developers into the world of end-users. There is a very significant differentiation between user-design and User-centered design
User-centered design
In broad terms, user-centered design or pervasive usability is a design philosophy and a process in which the needs, wants, and limitations of end users of a product are given extensive attention at each stage of the design process...
in that there is an emancipatory theoretical foundation, and a systems theory bedrock (Ivanov
Kristo Ivanov
Kristo Ivanov is a Swedish-Brazilian information scientist and systems scientist of ethnic Bulgarian origin. He is professor emeritus at the Department of informatics of Umeå University in Sweden.-Biography:...
, 1972, 1995), on which user-design is founded. Indeed, user-centered design is a useful and important construct, but one that suggests that users are taken as centers in the design process, consulting with users heavily, but not allowing users to make the decisions, nor empowering users with the tools that the experts use. For example, Wikipedia
Wikipedia
Wikipedia is a free, web-based, collaborative, multilingual encyclopedia project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its 20 million articles have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world. Almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the site,...
content is user-designed. Users are given the necessary tools to make their own entries. Wikipedia's underlying wiki
Wiki
A wiki is a website that allows the creation and editing of any number of interlinked web pages via a web browser using a simplified markup language or a WYSIWYG text editor. Wikis are typically powered by wiki software and are often used collaboratively by multiple users. Examples include...
software is based on user-centered design: while users are allowed to propose changes or have input on the design, a smaller and more specialized group decide about features and system design.
Participatory work in software development has historically tended toward two distinct trajectories, one in Scandinavia and northern Europe, and the other in North America. The Scandinavian and northern European tradition has remained closer to its roots in the labor movement (e.g., Beck, 2002; Bjerknes, Ehn, and Kyng, 1987). The North American and Pacific rim tradition has tended to be both broader (e.g., including managers and executives as "stakeholders" in design) and more circumscribed (e.g., design of individual features as contrasted with the Scandinavian approach to the design of entire systems and design of the work that the system is supposed to support) (e.g., Beyer and Holtzblatt, 1998; Noro and Imada, 1991). However, some more recent work has tended to combine the two approaches (Bødker et al., 2004; Muller, 2007).
Distributed participatory design
Distributed Participatory design (DPD) is a design approach and philosophy that supports the direct participation of users and other stakeholders in system analysis and design work. Nowadays design teams most often are distributed, which stress a need for support and knowledge gathered from design of distributed systems. Distributed Participatory design aims to facilitate understanding between different stakeholders in distributed design teams by giving each the opportunity to engage in hands-on activities.See also
- Empathic designEmpathic designEmpathic design is a user-centered design approach that pays attention to the user's feelings toward a product. The empathic design process is sometimes mistakenly referred to as Empathetic design.- Characteristics of empathic design :...
- User-centered designUser-centered designIn broad terms, user-centered design or pervasive usability is a design philosophy and a process in which the needs, wants, and limitations of end users of a product are given extensive attention at each stage of the design process...
- User innovationUser innovationUser innovation refers to innovation by intermediate users or consumer users , rather than by suppliers ....
- PermaculturePermaculturePermaculture is an approach to designing human settlements and agricultural systems that is modeled on the relationships found in nature. It is based on the ecology of how things interrelate rather than on the strictly biological concerns that form the foundation of modern agriculture...
- Design ThinkingDesign thinkingDesign Thinking refers to the methods and processes for investigating ill-defined problems, acquiring information, analyzing knowledge, and positing solutions in the design and planning fields...
External links
- Web Page on Participatory Design on the site of CPSRComputer Professionals for Social ResponsibilityComputer Professionals for Social Responsibility is a global organization promoting the responsible use of computer technology. in 1983 . It educates policymakers and the public on a wide range of issues...
. Links to various papers and information about Participatory Design conferences. - Institute for Participatory Design Participatory Design theory and practice, interesting project examples from Germany.
- Participle Creating new types of public services (London).
- Human Centered Design Toolkit IDEOs free toolkit
- We build the parts you build the product Fast Company Magazine
- The World Seed Project
- Technical report on participatory theory and methods emphasizing hybridity (methods and work practices that share attributes of multiple domains or disciplines).