A4AberleHenrikson

A4AberleHenrikson

To-Do

1. selection process: choose one of the design methodologies (not yet taken by another group) from the list (and mark it as chosen by editing the wiki page with the list of options — “first come / first served”)
2. do research (read papers, interview software designers, analyze existing systems—hint: the abovementioned wiki site contains references to resources) and answer the following specific questions for your chosen design methodology:

Define your chosen design methodology.

"Participatory Design (known before as 'Cooperative Design') is an approach to design that attempts to actively involve all stakeholders (e.g. employees, partners, customers, citizens, end users) in the design process to help ensure that the product designed meets their needs and is usable. 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." -Wikipedia.org

Characterize your chosen design methodology.

Participatory design is characterized by the involvement of a larger group of designers that all share a part in the creation of the final product. It became popular in Scandinavia and Australia in the 60's and 70's when end-users began voicing concerns that designs were centered around the desires of the designers, rather than the people that would be using the end product. In this respect, it is similar to user-centered design in that the end-user's experience is a driving force in the design of the product. It differs in that the users themselves are actually involved in the design process to make sure that the product is being created in a way that will satisfy their needs.

Participatory design allows everyone invested in the product to make design decisions. This allows people from multiple viewpoints and areas of expertise to add constructively to the product. Participatory design is also very iterative, meaning that it exists in a loop. Designs are created via group input, prototyped and tested, then sent back to the group for analysis, restarting the process until a final product has been decided on.

What are the strengths of your selected methodology?

What are the weaknesses of your selected methodology?

One weakness of participatory design lies in the definition of "participation." There are many levels on which people can participate in the design of a product. "One can participate in providing information; in decision making; in implementation of decisions; and in evaluation of those implemented decisions" (Heeks). This leads to issues in assigning roles of participants and giving appropriate weight to the input that they have given. This may result in a disconnect in understanding between participation "groups." For example, an end-user may over or underestimate the capabilities and resources of a programming team. Depending on the levels of expertise and interest of the members in the design group, one or more of the aforementioned input groups may be under-developed.

Another issue with participatory design arises in the process of decision making. Adding more people to the design group inherently adds more opinion, and therefore more contention between opposing opinions. With contending decisions, it becomes more difficult to reach a consensus without an authority figure to have the final say.

A third weakness in participatory design is correctly analyzing the context in which participation occurs. People have varied and diverse backgrounds, a fact which is not always considered when analyzing input from a design group. Many things may be lost in translation when trying to provide input.

For what domains or problems is your selected design methodology appropriate?

For what domains or problems is your selected design methodology inappropriate?

In overly large groups or domains, participatory design is not appropriate, as all input cannot be given equal weight and consideration. The size of the group may also cause it to be overly heterogeneous, emphasizing the difficulties presented by cultural barriers.

Participatory design may also be impractical when a product or system has already been created and needs to be refined. Outside input may not consider or understand the technical limits and decisions that have been made without thorough explanation, which may impede the progress of the design process. Existing systems that are being refined have a lower tolerance to change than newly developing products, which will likely be much more open to change and redesign.

Why is design methodology important (suited) or not important (suited) for human-centered computing?

SOURCES

Participatory Design, Wikipedia.org - (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participatory_design)

Participatory Design Problems in ICT4D: The Low Self-Efficacy Issue, by Richard Heeks (2009) - (http://ict4dblog.wordpress.com/2009/01/23/participatory-design-problems-in-ict4d-the-low-self-efficacy-issue/)

The Tyranny of Participation in Information Systems: Learning from Development Projects, by Richard Heeks (1999) - (http://www.sed.manchester.ac.uk/idpm/research/publications/wp/di/documents/di_wp04.pdf)

Participatory Design: Principles and Practices, by Douglas Schuler, Aki Namioka (1993) - (http://books.google.com/books?id=nj2Y50nWjyAC)