| Participatory design in community computing contexts: tales from the field | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 1-10 | |
| Cecelia B. Merkel; Lu Xiao; Umer Farooq; Craig H. Ganoe; Roderick Lee; John M. Carroll; Mary Beth Rosson | |||
| As technology becomes more embedded in our daily lives, there is a great
deal of hope about the use of information technology to achieve positive
community outcomes like increasing access to local information, promoting civic
engagement, and creating avenues for collaboration and communication. While
these technologies provide opportunities for community groups to achieve their
own goals, most community computing studies describe community members in
fairly passive ways as users of existing systems rather than as meaningful
contributors to the design process. The Civic Nexus project is a three year
participatory design project that involves working with community groups to
increase their capacity to solve local community problems through the use of
leading edge computing tools. Our view of participatory design is one in which
community members take control of the design process in terms of both directing
what should be done and maintaining the technology infrastructure. In this
paper, we describe our process of participatory design with three community
groups and present associated challenges for designers engaging in
participatory design in community computing contexts. Keywords: community computing, community information systems, participatory design,
social impact | |||
| The promise and perils of a participatory approach to developing an open source community learning network | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 11-19 | |
| Robert Luke; Andrew Clement; Randall Terada; Dominic Bortolussi; Cameron Booth; Derek Brooks; Darcy Christ | |||
| This paper describes and analyses the early developmental stages of a
community learning network based in an urban community and social service
agency. With government funding, the community organization contracted with a
small software firm to design and implement participatively a web-based
'community portal' using open source software and techniques. While adopting
these progressive development ideals has brought notable benefits, they have
also posed significant challenges for the parties involved. In particular,
mis-matched expectations, budget squeezes, and slipped schedules have been
attributed to the approach being too participatory and too open. We examine
these claims and offer insights into community-oriented, participatory, open
source development projects. Keywords: community informatics, community learning networks, open source,
participatory design, social services | |||
| Artful infrastructuring in two cases of community PD | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 20-30 | |
| Helena Karasti; Anna-Liisa Syrjänen | |||
| In this paper, we use the notions of artful integrations and infrastructure
to analyze two cases of community Participatory Design 'in the wild'. Though
the communities are quite different on the outside, they bear surprising
similarities when it comes to collaboration in technology design. We identify
several features of how the community members artfully integrate their everyday
materials, tools, methods and practices into collaborative processes of
infrastructuring. The notions of 'artful integrations' and 'infrastructure'
sensitize our analysis towards a more conceptual understanding on information
system development as multi-relational: socio-material, socio-historical and
processual. We conclude by suggesting some refinements to the notions in the
context of community PD. Keywords: artful integrations, community design, dog breeding, ecology, information
management, infrastructure, participatory design | |||
| Participatory programming and the scope of mutual responsibility: balancing scientific, design and software commitment | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 31-41 | |
| Catherine Letondal; Wendy E. Mackay | |||
| Over the past seven years, we have been conducting a variety of
participatory design activities with research biologists, programmers, and
bioinformaticians at the Institut Pasteur in Paris. We first describe the
history of these activities and how they have created the beginnings of a
participatory design culture. We introduce participatory programming, which
integrates participatory design and end-user programming, and examine how it
acts as a medium for forging scientific ideas. Finally, we reflect on three
poles of activity: the computational medium, scientific hypotheses and
participatory design. Keywords: co-adaptation, end-user programming, participatory design, participatory
programming, responsibility, software commitment, software evolution, software
psychology, tailoring | |||
| Contextuality of participation in IS design: a developing country perspective | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 42-52 | |
| S. K. Puri; Elaine Byrne; Jose Leopoldo Nhampossa; Zubeeda B. Quraishi | |||
| Participatory approaches to information systems design have evolved over
approximately the last three decades, mainly in Scandinavia, Europe, and lately
in the US. However there has been limited and peripheral research and debates
over participatory design approaches and techniques in developing country
settings. This paper explores three case studies in developing countries where
participatory approaches have been used in the design and implementation of
health information systems. The investigation reveals the politics of design,
the nature of participation, and the methods, tools and techniques for carrying
out design projects are shaped with respect to the diversity of the
socio-economic, cultural and political situations faced in each of these
settings. Though common strategies, such as capacity development, could be
found that cut across the three case studies it is the importance of the
contextual nature of participatory design that emerges most strongly. There is
no single algorithmic best practice regarding participatory design in
information systems which is applicable to all situations. Keywords: community IS, developing countries, health information systems,
participatory design | |||
| Participatory health information systems development in Cuba: the challenge of addressing multiple levels in a centralized setting | | BIBA | Full-Text | 53-64 | |
| Jørn Braa; Ola Hodne Titlestad; Johan Sæbø | |||
| This paper will address issues of user participation in a large centralistic organization. It is based on one year experience of developing a computerized health information system within the Cuban health services. Relevant literature suggests that participative methods may be less feasible in centralistic environments. This paper confirms this by describing how participation in Cuba is restricted by political and organizational constraints. There is however documented that participatory approaches may be very rewording where such constraints are overcome. Experiences from a broad range of health units and organizational levels in the Cuban project show a trend of weakening centralistic control with regard to hierarchical level and geographic distance, and thus more autonomous organizational units and participating individuals at lower level farther from Havana. The research reported is carried out within a framework of a larger network of similar health information projects being carried out in Africa and Asia, and the case of Cuba is being compared with experience from these countries. | |||
| Making sense of imbrication: popular technology and "inside-out" methodologies | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 65-73 | |
| Nancy Campbell | |||
| We describe a model popular technology education program based on feminist
and Freirian principles. Participatory design and research methodologies that
position facilitators and participants as co-producers were the basis for a
series of collective research projects, which we then analyze for their
contribution to the field of participatory design. Finally, we suggest that the
democratization of technological citizenship can be best extended not through
narrowly construed "technology training" programs but through "popular
technology," an empowering and visionary combination of popular education and
participatory research and design that emphasizes critical technological
literacy. Keywords: participatory action research (PAR), popular technology education,
technological citizenship | |||
| Examining a planning discourse: how a manager represents issues within a planning frame and how the others could do the same | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 74-82 | |
| Jarmo Sarkkinen | |||
| The aim of Participatory Design (PD) is to involve the users in the design.
Even though the research has shown the success of PD projects in empowering
users, little has been said about PD practices within accountable
organizations. To transfer PD practices to these business organizations, we
need to understand design as an institutional discourse. This paper discusses a
sequence of organizational planning interaction and demonstrates how a manager
represents the issues within a planning frame and why other participants are
unable to act within this frame. The users and even the designer were
marginalized from the planning activity. It is postulated that balancing the
existing institutionalized power relationships may be laborious within this
kind of context. For this reason, it is, instead, argued that we could approach
this task implicitly by strengthening diverse frames and, in this way, to pave
the way for a more grounded heterogeneous planning discourse inside accountable
organizations. This process could be supported by a human mediator, a frame
advocate. Keywords: discourse, frame, planning, representation | |||
| Experience clip: method for user participation and evaluation of mobile concepts | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 83-92 | |
| Minna Isomursu; Kari Kuutti; Soili Väinämö | |||
| This paper describes experiences from using a field testing technique for
collecting user experience information for evaluating mobile applications used
in everyday life. Our technique is based on the usage of mobile camera phones
that are used for capturing video and audio during the use of the mobile
application. The users helped researchers in collecting user experience
material by shooting the video clips themselves. To our surprise they also
started to participate actively by presenting "miniplays" in the clips to make
their point clear. Our results show that with this technique we can get richer
emotional material and more versatile usage situations than with traditional
observation methods, and additionally there is clearly a yet unexplored
potential to develop a more systematic design method around participation. Keywords: mobile application, participatory design, use of video, user experience,
user participation | |||
| On the spot experiments within healthcare | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 93-101 | |
| Erling Björgvinsson; Per-Anders Hillgren | |||
| This paper reports the value of On the Spot Experiments with self-produced
content and the use of technology within healthcare. On the Spot Experiments
are experiments conducted in the setting of on going clinical work and patient
care. We begin by relating our work to approaches within ethnography and work
place studies which link ethnography and design. Thereafter we describe how we
have carried out On the Spot Experiments in two projects where we have explored
the possibilities of self-produced learning material. The first project
described is within an intensive care unit setting where the staff and
designers explored the making of self-produced videos on different procedures
and their use in handheld computers. The second project described focuses on
patient learning at a hand surgery clinic where we explored the possibilities
of individualised video training instructions. In both cases the On the Spot
Experiments have shown fruitful results in different aspects of clinical work
and how the use of content and technology might affect this work. A key factor
has been exploring what relevant content could be. We conclude by outlining
some qualities and limits of doing On the Spot Experiments. Keywords: ethnography, experiments, healthcare, interaction design, patient learning,
usefulness | |||
| The impact of participation in information system design: a comparison of contextual placements | | BIBA | Full-Text | 102-111 | |
| Magnus Irestig; Henrik Eriksson; Toomas Timpka | |||
| To compare the outcomes of participatory and user-centered contextual design, case study methods and the Activity Checklist derived from Activity Theory are used to analyze two system prototypes developed in the same organizational setting. Systematic differences between the prototypes are identified regarding focus on tool, organization, individual, and relation to current power structures and organizational practices. The resulting participatory design prototype reflected a sharper focus on collective use, social processes and to pragmatically fit into the organization whereas the user-centered prototype focused on individual use, the computer system and solutions that require substantial changes in work procedures. The differences between the prototypes are discussed and related to the specific aspects of the design methods. | |||
| Personas is not applicable: local remedies interpreted in a wider context | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 112-120 | |
| Kari Rönkkö; Mats Hellman; Britta Kilander; Yvonne Dittrich | |||
| One of the major problems with participatory design is that it is extremely
difficult to apply it to current developments. Software development for the
mass market is one aspect of current developments which has been addressed. The
problem of how to apply participatory design invariably leads to questioning
its relevance to present-day circumstances. It is suggested that new patterns
of dominance must be revealed. The usability method known as 'personas' has
been demonstrated to remedy the problems of including social and political
issues in mass market software developments. This paper demonstrates how the
application of personas to a mass market software development project failed
because of patterns of dominance in the telecom branch which were unrecognised
at the time. The identifying of these patterns of dominance contributes to a
better understanding of some of the new patterns of power and domination in
mass-market software developments that PD stands before. Keywords: interaction design, mass-market software development, participatory design,
patterns of domination, personas | |||
| Facilitating collaboration through design games | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 121-131 | |
| Eva Brandt; Jörn Messeter | |||
| In recent years both companies and research communities call for
collaborative work practices and user-centered approaches in various design
fields. There are several challenges and issues to take into consideration. For
instance there is a need to find ways of collaborating across various
competences, interests, responsibilities and perhaps professional languages
both within one organization, between several organizations and between the
organizations and a group of (potential) users. It is necessary to find ways to
learn about users and the contexts of use, and to create a common understanding
of the development task. This paper presents a set of four design games, which
offers solutions to the challenges mentioned. The design games have been
developed in the Space Studio during several projects and years. Here
experiences are discussed on the basis of two research projects carried out in
collaboration with industrial partners and potential users, and use of the
games in three educational settings.
The overall aim of the design games is to help facilitate a user-centered design process for cross-disciplinary design groups early in the design process. Framing collaborative design activities in a game format, arguably improves idea generation and communication between stakeholders. By shifting focus to the game, power relations and other factors that might hamper idea generation, are downplayed. Keywords: collaborative design, design games, empowerment, stakeholders | |||
| Socio-technical walkthrough: designing technology along work processes | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 132-141 | |
| Thomas Herrmann; Gabriele Kunau; Kai-Uwe Loser; Natalja Menold | |||
| How can the documentation of concepts for complex socio-technical systems,
such as the adoption of groupware, be incorporated into practices of PD?
Documents are important in supporting participants in their decision-making and
in serving as a guidance for the ongoing project. To create such documents a
mix of abstract graphical models and illustrative material can be used. There
is evidence which suggests that they can be successfully employed if they are
embedded into a communication process which is facilitated in a specific
manner: The socio-technical walkthrough (STWT) that supports a participatory
process during which concepts of such systems are (re-)considered step by step.
A case study describes the challenges and benefits of the STWT paying special
attention to aspects such as facilitating strategies, required preparation,
training, characteristics of the diagrams, and accompanying work. Keywords: diagrams, modeling, participatory design, socio-technical systems | |||
| The workplace as a learning laboratory: the winding road to E-learning in a Norwegian service company | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 142-151 | |
| Anders I. Mørch; Bård Ketil Engen; Hege-René Hansen Åsand | |||
| Over a 1 1/2 year period, we have participated in the introduction of
E-learning in a Norwegian service company, a petrol station division of an oil
company. This company has an advanced computer network infrastructure for
communication and information sharing, but the primary task of the employees at
the petrol stations is serving customers. We identify some challenges to
introducing E-learning in this kind of environment. A primary emphasis has been
on using participatory design techniques in the planning and early
implementation phases of a system prototype. The system development process was
evolutionary, starting bottom-up (user participation) and ending top-down
(centralized initiatives). We describe a conceptual framework for analyzing the
adoption process. The framework has three dimensions: technology, pedagogy and
organization. We use video recordings and interview data in the analysis.
Preliminary findings indicate difficulties with respect to appropriateness of
new technology and lateral cooperation. This paper provides insight into the
successful co-existence of old and new technologies and multiple information
seeking strategies. Keywords: e-learning, learning-on-demand, organization of work, role-playing,
workplace learning | |||
| Social creativity: turning barriers into opportunities for collaborative design | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 152-161 | |
| Gerhard Fischer | |||
| Design is a ubiquitous activity. The complexity of design problems requires
communities rather than individuals to address, frame, and solve them. These
design communities have to cope with the following barriers: (1) spatial
(across distance), (2) temporal (across time), (3) conceptual (across different
communities of practice, and (4) technological (between persons and artifacts).
Over the last decade, we have addressed these barriers and have tried to create
socio-technical environments to turn them into opportunities for enhancing the
social creativity of design communities. Keywords: artful integration, collaborative design, design, social creativity, social
distance, spatial distance, technological distance, temporal distance, turning
barriers into opportunities | |||
| Lost in translation: a critical analysis of actors, artifacts, agendas, and arenas in participatory design | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 162-172 | |
| Rogério DePaula | |||
| As computer technologies start to permeate the everyday activities of a
continuously growing population, social and technical as well as political and
legal issues will surface. Participatory design is asked to take a more
critical view of participation, design, technology, and the arenas in which the
network of actors and artifacts dialectically construct the social orders. This
paper has a much more modest aim of that to contribute the discussion of
participation and design in part by a more indepth understanding of the
translation problem among different actors who directly participate in
participatory design activities. This problem takes place when different actors
come to participate in the design activities and when they are to decide
whether to adopt and use a designed artifact. By analyzing a multi-year-long
effort to understand and provide social and technical means for the use of
educational computer technologies in special education, this paper aims to shed
new light on the understanding of this problem. The arenas of participation
framework is employed to frame the different social orders in which actors act,
carry out their work practices, participate in design processes, and ultimately
make use of this artifact. While fundamental to the democratization of the
design of sociotechnical solutions, participatory design may not be sufficient
to reveal all sociopolitical issues of work practices that surface in its
adoption and use. It is necessary to take into account the different arenas in
which their design and use are carried out. Keywords: Web2gether, actor-network theory, adoption, arenas for participation,
collaboration, legal aspects, participatory design, privacy, social networks,
special education, translations | |||
| From small scale to large scale user participation: a case study of participatory design in e-government systems | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 173-182 | |
| Anne-Marie Oostveen; Peter van den Besselaar | |||
| Most experiments with participative design are with small scale, stand alone
and not very strategic applications of ICT in organizations. However, modern
ICT applications are increasingly based on complex and large scale network
technologies. What PD issues arise in this type of projects? What methods can
be used for user participation? And, what does this imply for PD strategies? Keywords: democracy, international e-government, large technical systems,
participatory design, user involvement | |||
| The weight of space: participatory design research for configuring habitable space for new arrival women in Hong Kong | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 183-192 | |
| Jackie Yan-Chi Kwok | |||
| When arriving to Hong Kong from China, the first difficulty of the new
arrival women of the grassroots class is usually environmental stress. Their
socio-economic situations often limit their expectations related to their
living space. In order to enable the women to voice their views, our research
group has organized participatory design research to invite new arrival women:
(1) to offer comments of their existing living environment; (2) to give design
directions of their preferred housing environment; and (3) to propose policy
suggestion to the Government in respect to housing and community/neighbourhood
planning. This paper introduced five research methods that our research group
have conducted: (1) site observation and direct observation; (2) photovoice;
(3) semi-structured interview; (4) visual simulation modeling workshops (for
interior and exterior environment); and (5) in-depth interview. The paper
wishes to demonstrate the validity of the methods used to promote participatory
democracy in the context of urban living environment. Keywords: gender issue in planning, habitable space, new arrival women, participatory
design, photovoice research, visual simulation modelling | |||
| Ways of grounding imagination | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 193-203 | |
| Monika Büscher; Mette Agger Eriksen; Jannie Friis Kristensen; Preben Holst Mogensen | |||
| This paper discusses and evaluates use of different participatory design
methods in relation to addressing the challenge of grounding imagination. It
presents reflections on the use of three participatory design methods, deployed
in the WorkSpace project: future laboratories, in-situ prototyping experiments
and bricolage. The analysis examines how the methods differ, and how they
complement one another, in relation to supporting the process of grounding
imagination. The paper introduces 'future laboratories' as a participatory
design method, specifically aiming at promoting interdisciplinary collaboration
and grounded imagination. Keywords: PD methods, analytical triangulation, bricolage, future laboratory,
grounding imagination, in-situ prototyping experiments | |||
| Introducing participatory design in museums | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 204-213 | |
| Gustav Taxén | |||
| This paper describes how a set of participatory design methodologies have
been introduced to and adopted for museum exhibition design. It provides a
brief historical account of museums and reviews some current trends in museum
exhibition design. Furthermore, the paper outlines a number of reasons why
participatory methods may be appropriate for museums, and two such methods are
described: one for evaluation of exhibits, and one for exhibition concept
development. Evaluation of the methodologies suggests that they are efficient;
both in terms of resources and in the richness of the data they produce. In
addition, it appears that they are capable of both supporting and extending
established museum design practices. Keywords: concept development, evaluation, museums, participatory design | |||
| Participatory design with individuals who have amnesia | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 214-223 | |
| Mike Wu; Brian Richards; Ron Baecker | |||
| We present experiences and insights into participatory design with
individuals who have anterograde amnesia and therefore have extreme difficulty
storing new memories. We discuss our design of the design process, and present
a set of techniques used to support memory during and between design sessions.
From this experience, we identify cognitive assumptions of participatory design
that break down when working with amnestics. We generalize these ideas into an
analytical framework for researchers and practitioners who intend to use
participatory design with persons having various kinds of cognitive
impairments. We illustrate the framework by analyzing a cognitive deficit
unrelated to memory that we encountered, and an unanticipated benefit from what
at first appeared to be a liability in working with this design team. Keywords: anterograde amnesia, assistive technologies, cognitive prosthetics, memory
aids, participatory design, personal digital assistants, user centred design,
users with disabilities | |||
| Technology trouble? talk to us: findings from an ethnographic field study | | BIBA | Full-Text | 224-234 | |
| Ellen Balka; Nicki Kahnamoui | |||
| The notion that the design of technology is only fully completed when in use [23] is shared by many who now investigate user participation in design and the domestication of new technologies. Taking this idea as our starting point, we developed a research to action project with a major Canadian hospital. Our goals were to address technology implementation issues that arose as most units in the hospital moved to a new building, in which most technology (ranging from wired beds to drug dispensing machines) was new. This paper reports our findings from this project. Emphasis is placed on how institutional arrangements influenced the range of socio-technical possibilities that could be pursued [7]. Work practice problems are discussed in relation to the meso or organizational contexts, including organizational, vendor and staff actor networks. | |||