Comments on Making Emotional Connections Through Participatory Design

Arvind Lodaya — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 19:43:04 GMT

I am about to commence an exploration of “design by users” approach for first-time users of mobile telephones in rural India. I find this article very useful and one of the few that actually asserts the belief that people are creative and can become key drivers of new innovation. This contradicts the widely-held belief that users don’t know what they really need or want – it is (only) the designer who has this insight/ability. Of course, the challenge lies in designing the tools & techniques to involve and enable the users to design in such a way that it dovetails into the conventional corporate R&D processes. I would welcome any suggestions or references in this regard: email me at lodaya_at_gmail.com please. Big thanks to Marty and Preetham for flagging this important and unattended opportunity.

Drue Miller — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 00:47:07 GMT

Great article! I’d like to hear more about projects that used participatory design for other things (aside from getting a better understanding of your users, has anyone used this to pin down requirements or design a UI?)

brandy — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 00:47:07 GMT

I have recently been active in a participatory design study, we used the results from this study to drive our design, we looked for patterns and built upon those. It’s been a wonderful, conducive experience. It has driven the structure of the site for the most part.

Jess — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 00:47:07 GMT

Hey Liz,

I didn’t think that you really intended this technique to produce “final design” – I am concerned about ‘participatory design’ as a lable in general (and recently posted to CHI-WEB trolling for discussion on if participatory design is really design). Maybe you could weigh in there as well?

Liz Sanders — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 00:47:06 GMT

Jess,
Good point about the title. We usually call what we do “Participatory Design Research” as we do not believe that users are designers. We do believe that users are creative and can express their dreams when we give them a chance to do so.

Liz

Jess — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 00:47:06 GMT

Participatory Design or Participatory Discovery? I’m digging the article, and think it’s a great improvement over traditional focus groups. But I still see it as expressing preferences…in this technique how do we ground preference to *goals* (since the two don’t always correlate). Also, how do we take the need expressed in a participant’s suggested design and separate it from the “embodiment of the ideal”, where said user-designed embodiment may not be ideal?

When I use this concept I think I might call it “Participatory Discovery” so that the chance of management thinking designers aren’t needed anymore is lessened (think “hey, the users can design everything”).