Participatory Design Researchers Research Articles

Integrating and producing evidence through participatory design

ABSTRACT Participatory Design (PD) is increasingly applied to tackle public health challenges, demanding new disciplinary collaborations and practices. In these contexts, any proposed intervention must be supported by evidence that demonstrates it is likely to have the desired effect, particularly if it relies on investment of public funds. An evidence base can include evidence and theory from prior research, evidence generated through primary research, and evaluation. PD research generates evidence through collaboration directly with people who may use or receive an intervention, understanding their experiences and aspirations in situated contexts, without using formal abstractions or assuming evidence generated elsewhere will be directly applicable. Drawing on a case study of a collaboration with public health experts to develop an intervention using PD, we argue there is value in using existing evidence and theory to engage, inform, and inspire intended users of an intervention to participate in the design process. This article aims to support PD researchers and practitioners to consider how evidence can be integrated and produced through PD, enabling collaboration with other disciplines to produce evidence-based and theory-informed interventions to address complex public health challenges.

Architects’ professional perspectives on child- and family-friendly apartment design in Australia

ABSTRACT In recent decades, increasing numbers of families with children are living in apartments in Australian cities; negotiating family life in dwellings not designed for their specific needs. This paper describes indirect participatory design research, involving architects and researchers acting as intermediates of end users, identifying how architects see that apartment design guidelines could be reconciled with the needs of families with children. Architects in Victoria, Australia, participated in a design workshop that elicited their views on child and family needs elucidated by research with families, explored Australian and international apartment design guidelines in relation to families, and which asked in light of this evidence – what needs to change in design guidelines to inform family-friendly apartment designs? Findings reveal important similarities and critical differences between architects’ and users’ views on apartment design for families with children. The paper concludes by discussing how these differences might be reconciled to ensure future apartment designs that suit a more diverse mix of households, including families with children. The challenges are also highlighted of using indirect participatory design when direct participatory design is not possible, including sacrificing the design consensus arising from architects and end users working together.

Rationale, Design and Methods Protocol for Participatory Design of an Online Tool to Support Industry Service Provision Regarding Digital Technology Use 'with, by and for' Young Children.

Adults who educate and care for young children are exposed to mixed-messages about what is in the best interests of young children in digital society. Such mixed-messaging makes adult decision-making about technology use in the best interests of young children hard to achieve. This project addresses this problem by working with leading organisations providing services related to quality digital media production, online-safety education, digital play and digital parenting. Using a Participatory Design approach, families, educators, industry partners and researchers will conduct mixed-methods investigations concerning: Relationships; Health and Well-being; Citizenship; and Play and Pedagogy to identify practices concerning technology use ‘with, by and for’ young children. Iterative design cycles will develop an Online Tool to support organisations providing services to young children and the adults responsible for their education and care. As society becomes more digital families and educators need new knowledge about what people do in digital society to inform their decision-making. This project will support organisations to use an empirically informed approach to service provision regarding using technologies in the best interests of young children.

Navigating Matters of Concern in Participatory Design

AbstractAmong 75-90% of residents in Danish nursing homes are diagnosed with dementia. This article explore how a team of five 3rd semester bachelor's design students sought to improve quality of life for elderly people with dementia in a nursing home through a co-design process of a new sensory stimulation technology. Participatory Design researchers agree that it is important to involve diverse actors in the design process such as elderly with dementia, nursing home management, nursing staff etc. But when involving many different actors in designing new products, services and systems the challenge is to navigate the many perspectives and concerns of these actors, which is often conflicting and hence needs negotiating. ‘We draw upon the ANT framework to analyse how ‘matters of concern’ (MoCs) are negotiated and to discuss how designers navigate by staging and facilitating design interactions to support negotiation of MoCs among numerous actors during the design process.

Valuing implicit decision-making in participatory design: A relational approach in design with people with dementia

Sharing design decisions between designers and the people we design for and with, is a common aim in participatory design (PD). When working with people with dementia this rarely happens in explicit ways. Design decisions implicitly emerge from the relationships designers build with people with dementia. We argue that designers should value this relational approach and make transparent how it informs the design decisions. We were inspired by how person-centred care (PCC) is used by care practitioners to explain how they work in a relational way with people with dementia. In this paper, we explore how PCC can support PD researchers to acquire relational expertise, which we illustrate by means of a design project for and with people with dementia. • Sees relational work as a core approach in participatory design. • Advances the insight on decision-making in participatory design. • Studies how (implicit) decision-making happens through building relations. • Proposes four principles of building relational expertise in participatory design.

Utopias of Participation

This essay addresses the question of how participatory design (PD) researchers and practitioners can pursue commitments to social justice and democracy while retaining commitments to reflective practice, the voices of the marginal, and design experiments “in the small.” I argue that contemporary feminist utopianism has, on its own terms, confronted similar issues, and I observe that it and PD pursue similar agendas, but with complementary strengths. I thus propose a cooperative engagement between feminist utopianism and PD at the levels of theory, methodology, and on-the-ground practice. I offer an analysis of a case—an urban renewal project in Taipei, Taiwan—as a means of exploring what such a cooperative engagement might entail. I argue that feminist utopianism and PD have complementary strengths that could be united to develop and to propose alternative futures that reflect democratic values and procedures, emerging technologies and infrastructures as design materials, a commitment to marginalized voices (and the bodies that speak them), and an ambitious, even literary, imagination.

The positioning cards: on affect, public design, and the common

In this paper, we present a design tool, the positioning cards that we have developed, validated, and used in different projects. These cards are built to allow CI4CG and Participatory Design researchers to discuss the political alignment of design projects, in iterative processes of design involving people in the definition of the technological features to be implemented. The background of the cards is the conceptualization of contemporary participatory design as public design, engaging with societally relevant phenomena outside the traditional environment of the workplace. To engage with such an extended dimension of participatory design, we frame our contribution in the contemporary form of capitalism, stressing how contemporary capitalism dispossess the wealth created by social production. In this context, we argue, CI4CG designers need to engage deeply with the theoretical implications of their work. To support this effort, we built the cards combining a political perspective oriented toward nourishing the common—the ensemble of the material and symbolic elements tieing together human beings—with the “affect turn” in the social sciences—therefore including affective dimensions like joy, sadness, and desire in the design of CI4CG technologies. In the final part of the article we discuss how we have used the cards in four different projects.

Participatory design in education materials in a health care context

Written patient education material, for example, discharge-information is commonly used in hospital settings. Despite following guidelines on how to best present text and using patients as consultants, improvements can still be made from a patient’s perspective. Here, we describe the process of developing patient education material using a participatory design methodology, with patients, clinicians, researchers and designers working as co-designers following a structured process map. The method emphasises coping with conflicting interests and using this as a source of development. The philosophies behind action research and person-centred care were combined in a practical setting, enhancing both perspectives and generating actionable knowledge to be further used in patient involvement projects. The results reveal that predominant areas of tensions focused on power, organization, content and clinical usability. This study is one of the first to involve patients as co-designers of education materials in the health care context, and not only as consultants. Working as co-designers was found to be productive and in line with person-centred care philosophy, with focus on partnership and equality. The results of this study can therefore benefit both patients and other relevant stakeholders in the healthcare system in developing written patient education materials.

Participatory Design: Issues and Concerns

We characterize Participatory Design (PD) as a maturing area of research and as an evolving practice among design professionals. Although PD has been applied outside of technology design, here we focus on PD in relation to the introduction of computer-based systems at work. We discuss three main issues addressed by PD researchers; the politics of design; the nature of participation; and method, tools and techniques for participation. We also report on the conditions for the transfer of ’’PD results‘‘ to workers, user groups, and design professionals that have characterized PD over time and across geopolitical terrains. The topic of the sustainability of PD within an organizational context is also considered. The article concludes with a discussion of common issues explored within PD and CSCW and frames directions for a continuing dialogue between researchers and practitioners from the two fields. The article draws on a review of PD and CSCW literatures as well as on our own research and practical experiences.