Spinuzzi Methodology of Participatory Design s5 PDF
Spinuzzi Methodology of Participatory Design s5 PDF
Spinuzzi Methodology of Participatory Design s5 PDF
SUMMARY
The Methodology of
Participatory Design
CLAY SPINUZZI
INTRODUCTION
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Participatory designs object of study is the tacit knowledge developed and used by those who work with technologies. Its important to understand this focus because
tacit knowledge, which is typically difficult to formalize
and describe, has tended to be ignored by the theory of
cognition that has tended to dominate human-computer
interaction: information processing cognitive science
(Winograd and Flores 1986; Nardi 1996; Nardi and Engestrom 1999).
In practice, this theory tends to lead to a rationalist
approach to design, which generally assumes that there is
one best way to perform any activityan assumption it
shares with Taylorism. This rationalist approach was something to which early participatory designers reacted
strongly. They were heavily influenced by Marxist critiques
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centered skill has always been learned through experience (on-the-job training, apprenticeships, sports practice, and so forth). Actions work better than words when
it comes to learning and communicating these skills.
(Zuboff 1988, p. 188)
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retical reflection (as opposed to detached theoretical reflections a posteriori) (Ehn 1989, p. 13). As discussed
above, this activist brand of research has an explicit
political-ethical orientation: to empower workers to take
control over their work. Unlike Donald Normanwho
argues that the designer should be a dictator (Grossman
2002)participatory designers see themselves as facilitators who attempt to empower users in making their own
decisions (Clement 1994).
To achieve that goal, participatory design emphasizes
co-research and co-design: researcher-designers must
come to conclusions in conjunction with users. So participatory design involves redesigning workplaces and work
organization as well as work tools. And it is iterative,
allowing workers and researchers to critically examine the
impacts of these incremental redesigns in progress.
Research design Participatory design is still developing and consequently its research design tends to be
quite flexible. For instance, the early Scandinavian work
tended to rely on union-sponsored workshops and
games involving heavy direct interaction between designers and users, while later work in the U.S. has tended
to supplement targeted interaction with less intrusive
methods such as observation and artifact analysis. But
three basic stages are present in almost all participatory
design research:
Stage 1: Initial exploration of work
In this stage, designers meet the users and familiarize themselves with the ways in which the users
work together. This exploration includes the technologies used, but also includes workflow and work
procedures, routines, teamwork, and other aspects
of the work.
Stage 2: Discovery processes
In this stage, designers and users employ various
techniques to understand and prioritize work organization and envision the future workplace. This stage
allows designers and users to clarify the users goals
and values and to agree on the desired outcome of
the project. This stage is often conducted on site or
in a conference room, and usually involves several
users.
Stage 3: Prototyping
In this stage, designers and users iteratively shape
technological artifacts to fit into the workplace envisioned in Stage 2. Prototyping can be conducted on
site or in a lab; involves one or more users; and can
be conducted on-the-job if the prototype is a working prototype.
The stages can be (and usually should be) iterated
several times. Together, they provide an iterative coexploration by designers and users.
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Participatory design has strengths, but as with other research approaches, those strengths come with tradeoffs.
Limitations of methodology Since participatory design aims to ground changes in traditional craft skills as a
way of empowering workers, some argue that participatory
design does not lend itself to radical change of the sort that
sometimes must characterize new systems (Beyer and
Holtzblatt 1998). In fact, participatory designers have been
cautioned to think of their work as evolution, not revolution (Sumner and Stolze 1997). This gradualist tendency
can lead to tunnel vision, in which particular stakeholders
are served while others are left to fend for themselves
(Bjerknes and Bratteteig 1995; Bdker 1996). In response,
some participatory designers have worked to bring in new
accounts of stakeholders that can support more complex
projects (Bdker 1996; Muller 2003).
Another limitation is that some strains of participatory
designparticularly later work that emphasizes functional
empowerment over democratic empowerment, such as cooperative prototyping (Bdker and Grnbk 1991) have
a tendency to focus too narrowly on artifacts rather than
overall workflow, presuming that fine-tuning the artifact
will necessarily result in empowering changes to the overall work activity (Spinuzzi 2002c). Finally, as participatory
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Rigor is difficult to achieve because researchers cede considerable control to their participants and share a design
language with those participants which must by its nature
be imprecise. On the other hand, the proof is in the pudding, so to speakthe design artifact both encapsulates the
research results (as the material trace left by the design
efforts) and elicits them (both during design sessions and
afterwards, as it is introduced into the environment to be
used as a stable work artifact). Wall and Mosher demonstrate that the same design artifacts can be used as records
of a field study; tools for analysis; communication tools for
a language game in which researcher-designers and users
participate; and focal artifacts for co-design and codevelopment (1994). Rigor becomes something different in
participatory design research: a desirable goal, but subordinated to users control and aims.
Practical limitations In addition to the methodological
and methodical critiques is the practical one: participatory
design research takes an enormous amount of time, resources, and institutional commitment to pull off. That
institutional commitment in particular can be hard to come
by. From the standpoint of a profit-oriented business, participatory design seems to provide little structure and no
deadlines (Wood and Silver 1995, pp. 322323). Researchers find that they have to cede considerable control to
workers, who must be committed to the process and cannot be coerced. For example, Bertelsen (1996) ruefully
recounts how some of his participants simply failed to
show up for a future workshop, compromising the design
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CONCLUSION
Although participatory design is often portrayed as a research orientation or a field, understanding it as a methodology leads us to better understand its promises and constraints, its limitations and its criteriaand, I think, also
leads us to greater respect for the careful work that goes
into developing a participatory design study. Thats especially important for technical communicators. We are, after
all, in a design-oriented field (Kaufer and Butler 1993) and
we have drawn heavily on design-oriented research methodologies, methods, and techniques such as usability
testing.
If we understand participatory design as an orientation, we are tempted to articulate a few general principles and retrofit our existing techniques to accommodate
them. But if we understand it as a methodology, we are
able to draw on a coherent body of methods and techniques operating within a general research design under
common methodological premises. That is, we are able
to conduct studies that have a great deal in common with
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