Participatory Design
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Participatory design is a design method in which a team of people who represent the stakeholders in a product design effort—users, designers, and developers—work together to create product designs that reflect the way customers will actually use the product. Users play a central role in participatory design sessions, telling designers about their environments and tasks. When users participate in the design process, the result is both better product designs and shorter product development cycles.
In a participatory design session, the facilitator doesn’t use a formal script or predefined tasks, as in usability testing. Rather, each session is built around a list of topics, issues, and questions for all participants. The facilitator stimulates discussion and supports a dialogue among all the participants, ensuring that both planned and impromptu topics are covered.
When groups of stakeholders work on a design, they often use traditional tools like colored index cards, sticky notes, felt pens, flip charts, scissors, and tape. These simple tools help bridge the gulf between developers and users, reduce issues of “ownership” and leadership, demystify technology and methodology, and encourage communication and creativity. No participant feels intimidated by unfamiliar technology or software.
During design sessions, participants may break into two or more smaller groups to brainstorm ideas that are then presented to the larger group for discussion, evaluation, and possible refinement. The facilitator moderates the design presentations, asks follow-up questions, summarizes key features of each design, and notes reactions to the designs.
At the close of a participatory design session, the team has produced one or more paper prototypes of a user interface, consisting of sketches or block diagrams of screens or web pages and textual descriptions of interface behavior.
A clear record of the design process is just as important as the paper prototype produced by the team. The session may be recorded as a video showing discussion, activities, and final results. A video camera positioned directly over the community work surface can record all the elements tried—and rejected or retained—as the paper prototype gradually takes shape, and still photography can be used to capture key stages in design.
When to Choose This Method
Participatory design can be used to:
- Explore possible design solutions—In this kind of design session, teams create designs completely from scratch or using industry-standard design elements.
- Verify proposed designs—In this kind of design session, teams build screens or pages from components supplied to them by the product designers or developers.
Samples
For help with defining a participatory design project or if you have questions about Tec-Ed's services, please contact Barbra Wells at barbra@teced.com.
