Participatory Design Process in Future Technologies

Participatory design (PD) is characterized as an approach to involve users in the design process. Hence it is referred to as ‘design for use before use’ [1]. Different stakeholders could also be involved in the design process. The users including stakeholders might be present at different points in the design process (focus groups, interviews, etc.) or some stakeholders might stay as co-designers throughout the process.

The evolution of PD happened when workers demanded improved working conditions. They challenged the asymmetrical power and demanded their voices be heard at the societal level. It can be seen how PD gathered its roots from the political economy and sense of democracy [2].

In 2014, Facebook used PD to make profile contextual to a user. A Facebook profile changes its content based on who is viewing it. With an intention to know what people find useful when they look at their friend’s profile, a UX team, printed dummy pages of profiles of known and unknown people to users, and asked them to comment and mark what they think is important. The derived insights were then tested against their logs in user behavior analytics. The new design is then tested inhouse with Facebook employees and then launched into the market for certain users only. It is an iterative process until the user response is satisfactory, then the design is launched to everyone [3].

PD is a great tool to understand what the user wants. Involving users in the design process generates insights that might be missed otherwise. But PD is relatively easy when working with small sample size. It is difficult to say extrapolated insight would satisfy all the other users who weren’t part of the process as PD becomes difficult with more people. Like in the case of Facebook, after the primary insights are generated, it is validated against an algorithm for user behavior analytics. The data against which it is being tested upon would have been generated in a different context which is not derived from a PD practice. Then, would the insight generated by PD in the first place, be validated correctly? Will it still be a democratic practice without the influence of politics?

Having said that, considering PD on a large scale, Github would be a great example of things working out through PD. Developers collaborate on a problem simultaneously, updating their software regularly and opening it for everyone to edit and use. This is a better example of participatory design, which is involving users, developers who can all collaborate and design with users, develop on it further. This is a better democratic model. So would be Linux.

The level at how much ‘participation’ the stakeholders are allowed in the design process, makes PD less or more democratic. At the end of the day, stakeholders involved in the making of design would sensitize designers and also might create a sense of ownership in users too, as they were part of designing.

If the process was truly democratic, the product would definitely yield better satisfaction.

References:

[1] Pelle Ehn, 2008, Participation in Design Things, School of Arts and Communication, Malmö University.

[2] Maja van der Velden, Participatory Design and Design for Values

[3] https://www.fastcompany.com/3029488/how-facebook-used-ux-research-to-personalize-the-way-we-see-each-other