The Dilemmas in Participatory Design

One of the things that made me interested in the field of design and its practices was that I have identified my works with some elements of participatory design.

I came across the idea of participatory design through the practices of the Living Lab at Malmo University documented in the book titled Making Futures — Marginal notes on Innovation, Design and Democracy (Ehn, Nilsson and Topgaard, eds., 2014). It was the time when I worked in the local educational project in Futaba district in Fukushima after the Great East Japan Earthquake and nuclear accident. I felt that the discussion in the book explained some of the elements we have valued and tried to do in the projects, though I had neither described the work as a design practice nor considered myself as a design practitioner.

It is argued that participatory design emerged in Scandinavian countries as “the workplace democracy movement” in the early 1970s, where researchers, local trade unions and workers collaboratively explored the new systems and futures of workplace which was started to be computerized (Robertson and Simonsen, 2012, p.4).

Emilson (2014), who was involved in the community projects at the Living Lab of Malmo University, mentions that participatory design emphasises on designing with people rather than for; thus it is valued on creating “social conditions”; relationships and networks among the people for the participatory processes (p.20). Although I hesitate to regard this attempt as a “prototype process” because it may affect existing relationships among the people (Emilson, 2014, p.20), thus needs more sensibility, this is what we have done first in the projects and throughout the least period, which had driven projects to move forward.

However, at the same time, the questions arise from the ethical aspects; “who should participate?” (Emilson and Hillgren,2014), who should decide that? and how to involve? Followed by the questions such as what counts as a value (Ehn, Nilsson, and Topgaard, 2014), for whom and how, these are crucial and problematic points since, in participatory processes, we have to deal with conflicts, power relations or politics among the people having different agenda and values (Emilson, 2014). Based on my experience in both business and social projects, I would say that it would become tenser in local community projects partly because most of the people live and work in the community so that their relationships might affect on their private and public lives mutually.

Through working in the community projects, I came across the cases that the people who took part in the projects were more likely to take further initiatives even they were reluctant to participate at first, while those who did not were more likely to doubt what was going on and sometimes even opposed. Robertson and Simonsen (2012) argue that involving the people “as active participants in the design project means that the process and its outcome are more likely to be accepted and sustain” (p.6).

The key takeaway from these discussions around participatory design is that in designing practices in local communities, we should be aware of the fact that we come into the complex webs of people’s relations and emotions, and keep consciously asking questions by ourselves.

Here are some of the controversial arguments about the nature of design; “Silent and ubiquitous, it is perpetually underestimated as a social, political force” (Yelavich, 2014, p.12); at the same time, design allows us to take more inclusive, collective and public approaches; in other words, it would have the potential to democratise social innovation (Ehn, Nilsson, and Topgaard, 2014).

References

Emilson, A. (2014) Designing Conditions for the Social. In: Ehn, P., Nilsson, E. M. & Topgaard, R. (eds.) Making Futures — Marginal Notes on Innovation, Design, and Democracy. Cambridge, The MIT Press, 17–33.

Emilson, A. and Hillgren, P. (2014)Connecting with the Powerful Strangers: From Governance to Agonistic Design Things. In: Ehn, P., Nilsson, E. M. & Topgaard, R. (eds.) Making Futures — Marginal Notes on Innovation, Design, and Democracy. Cambridge, The MIT Press, 63–97.

Ehn, P., Nilsson, M. E., and Topgaard, R. (2014) Introduction In: Ehn, P., Nilsson, E. M. & Topgaard, R. (eds.) Making Futures — Marginal Notes on Innovation, Design, and Democracy. Cambridge, The MIT Press, 1–13.

Yelavich, S. (2014) Introduction. In: Yelavich, S. and Adams, B. (eds.) Design as Future-Making. London, Bloomsbury, 12–17.

Related posts:

CRM or customer relationship management is an integral part of any business administration despite of its size or structure. And so, companies are now on the lookout for the best agency management…