Participatory Design for Sustainable Development

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Participatory Design for Sustainable Development

• Matthew Kam
• Feb 7, 2003

2
Carroll Reading

• Participatory design
• Users actively help to set design goals and plan
  prototypes
• Should aim for long-term collaboration
• Jean Piagets developmental theory
• But theres mutual learning on part of designers

3
Four Stages

• Practitioner-informant
• Analyst
• Designer
• Coach

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Practitioner-Informant

• Interviewed the teachers
• Felt they had little to contribute, relatively
  passive and compliant role
• Main role was to provide domain information
• Primary concern was to help out in project as
  long as they do not diminish students learning
  opportunities
• Helped out as personal commitment some
  conflation with monetary rewards later
• Does this weaken the motivation for participatory
  design?
• Had difficulties envisioning ideas in concrete
  teaching contexts
• How to train teachers to evaluate design ideas
  critically at this stage?

5
Analyst

• Teachers were remarkably effectively in analyzing
  videotaped class sessions
• Became more active advocates of importance of
  real classroom situations
• Not only inform designers, but also make
  proposals
• Also reflected / re-examined own teaching
  practices
• Analysts need to understand problem domain in
  context of system capabilities

6
Designer

• Took initiative to develop prototypes, with
  scaffolding from designers
• Generated ideas for general functions and
  specific features
• Embraced Virtual School in their pedagogy
• But wasnt clear how they become bought-in
• Was it the analysis phase?
• How?
• Inter-disciplinary cooperation

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Coach

• Inspired fellow teachers
• Benefited from externalizing / reconstructing
  experiences in Virtual School
• Teacher autonomy as key to long-term
  sustainability in such collaborations
• How were teachers able to identify patterns of
  utility?

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Other Issues

• Can developmental process be accelerated?
• What impediments to team integration by teachers
  were identified? How were they resolved?
• Framed participatory design largely as a learning
  process
• Still, omitted mutual learning on part of
  designers, and teamwork dynamics

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Sawhney Reading

• Remote participatory design
• Made possible by ThinkCycle collaboratory
• Focus on knowledge-intensive work
• Aims to cross social and institutional boundaries
• To what extent does being an open collaboratory
  help?

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Case for Collaboratories

• SETI_at_Home, etc.
• Leverage on under-used home computers
• But limited applications and problems
• OpenLaw
• Generated public awareness and interest
• ThinkCycle
• Shared online space for engineers, domain
  experts, and stakeholders to exchange and
  construct ideas for design solutions in critical
  problem domains

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Impediments to Remote Collaboration

• Olsons work
• Readiness to collaborate
• Culture of cooperation
• Trust and other common ground
• Incentive structure for all parties involved
• How about language and cultural barriers?
• Ability to use collaborative tools and knowledge

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ThinkCycle Creation Process

• Concept prototype
• Post problems and solutions
• Many bugs
• Not scalable (serialized objects)
• Early functional prototype
• Design that Matters class to get end-users,
  generate content, etc.
• Post work artifacts like files, images, etc.
• 16 months of iteration to get user interface
  right!

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Online Community Issues

• Affordances for social awareness
• Integrating info from multiple modes of
  communication and work environments
• Low bandwidth
• SoapBox Informal, impromptu interactions were
  the norm
• Unmoderated discussions -gt greater participation
• Contrast with junk posts on some un-moderated
  newsgroups
• Structure for content
• Privacy and security
• Vandal peer reviews

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In Practice

• ThinkCycle largely used for
• Design memory
• Solicit feedback from online community
• How about group cohesion?
• Posts drop when insufficient public interest
• Co-located members work f2f more instead
• Topics do not define communities
• Action projects, DyD conference and SoapBox
  discussions more likely to sustain community

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Other Issues

• Roles of online members in ThinkCycle
  collaboratory?