Do you have a stake in the final design outcome?
Participatory design describes a collaborative approach to the design of products, services, spaces, or systems that includes the range of stakeholders in the creative process.
People who have a stake in the final design outcome are invited to be part of the design team at points when decisions critical to them are being made. Practitioners of participatory design believe that an approach based in creative collaboration between producers, designers, and end users will inherently lead to results that are more effective, more appropriate, and more desirable.
The historical roots of participatory design lie in Scandinavia, with the introduction of technology into the workplace in the 1970s. The goal was to democratize the process of workspace design, ensuring that trade unions were included in the creation of systems that would affect their members. In order to formulate goals and negotiate implementation strategies in the best interest of the workers, trade union representatives needed to work closely with management and technical designers to understand the implications and possibilities of the new technologies.
Formative projects from this period were the NJMF project in Norway (Nygaard 1979), the Swedish DEMOS project (Ehn and Sanberg 1979), and later the Danish DUE project (Kyng and Mathiassen 1982). In the 1990s, participatory design methods came into wider usage in the United States, and also were applied to a wider range of design challenges.
As design teams adopted the methodology to develop products within and for a commercial context, the motives in many cases became de-coupled from the philosophy and political views of earlier practitioners. No longer understood solely as a tool for democratization, participatory design became seen by newer practitioners as a way to more quickly conceive of and refine products, environments or services that were desirable to end users (in some cases workers) and also good fits for the capabilities of the organization.
In part, this shift can be attributed to differences between the socio-economic and political contexts of Europe and the United States, but it is also likely related more generally to decreasing levels of union influence in the workplace. Most recently, the approach has been applied to effect shifts in organizational cultures. With these types of projects, participatory design methods provide a supporting framework for solutions that originate primarily from the members of the organizations, or the “users” themselves, with the participatory design practitioners acting mainly as process support.
Over time, a common set of methods has been developed to facilitate group ideation, communication, and collaboration. The five most common are: collaborative design sessions (also called “future workshops”), scenario prototyping, rapid prototypes, lockups, and contextual inquiry. The “collaborative design session” is a key component of any participatory design project; it is a group work session that brings people involved in the project together to reflect, prioritize, examine, and then collaboratively invent, prototype, and refine solutions.
Generally several of these sessions will be held over the course of a project. One technique often used during collaborative design sessions is “scenario design,” or enactments by the participants of various possible situations in which a design might be put into play (Scenario Planning). “Rapid prototypes” or “mockups” allow participants to evaluate rough versions of how a solution might be configured and to discuss implications and refinements (Prototype, Rapid Prototyping).
“Design games” are sometimes employed as a way to frame a discussion or exploratory session: game rules and pieces help keep the context or solution elements in mind, and may include objects, photos, words, or video. “Contextual inquiry” is a method often employed by design team members who are less familiar with the context for which the group is creating solutions. This method helps to sensitize designers to the context, and also to frame or bring to the group’s attention to key aspects of the situation that present design challenges and opportunities.