Within the available literature on Participatory Design (PD), methods and tools for participation often occupy a predominant position when discussing PD theory and practice, leaving aside considerations about the meaning and importance of participation itself. Evidence of this was provided by Halskov & Hansen [6] who reviewed the publications in the Participatory Design Conference (PDC) proceedings over the span of ten years (2002-2012) and identified how participation has been defined and conducted in experimental design cases. The authors encountered three vague definitions: Participation is seen as implicit, as the point of view of the users or as a mutual-learning experience. In other cases, designers leave the concept of participation unclear in their publications. Halksov and Hansen warn us that in PD, “the concept of participation might be taken for granted, possibly making discussions of what is meant by ‘participation’ seem superfluous” [6].
Some researchers have developed frameworks for re-thinking participation. References to this include the work of Sherry Arnstein [2] in 1969, who published “A Ladder of Citizen Participation” as a typology that distinguishes various roles of citizens in determining the course of participatory projects. Other examples include Andersen et al. [1] and their use of Actor-Network Theory as a resource for framing notions of participation. Saad-Sulonen et al. [10] propose a number of temporal lenses for reconfiguring participation. These examples use analysis as the tool that allows them to develop such frameworks. Apart from advancing the question of participation and shedding light into the possibilities of its meaning, the conceptual and methodological gaps in these works open important avenues for exploration. One of them is the opportunity to incorporate the lived experiences and feelings of researchers and designers as sites for meaning-making, beyond the formality of project descriptions. The second avenue is the decentralization of the discussion from Europe and Scandinavia towards contexts where participation materializes in different ways and departs from other systems of knowledge.
I use a distinction offered by Shapiro [11] between a ‘weak’ and a ‘strong’ view of participation, to find ways in which this concept could be further examined. According to the author, the ‘weak’ view of participation is pragmatic, in other words, it refers to the involvement of people in a design process as a channel to learn about their lives and therefore achieve the success of design projects. Under this logic, participation becomes cumulative. Diversely, the ‘strong’ view departs from an understanding of human practices as inherently social, developed in constant calibration with others and dependent on the specific context of influence. Under this view, participation is therefore difficult to replicate.
By coupling the ‘strong’ view of participation with feminist research practices, this interactive workshop intends to open a fertile ground for advancing the discussion around the meanings of participation. Since the early 1980s, feminist scholars have positioned research relationships as social relationships, indicating the transcendence of participating, beyond mere inclusivity [5]. The concepts of friendship, rapport, interpretation, and power are at the core of feminist research practices. Additionally, the ‘strong’ view of participation could also be complemented by the work of Eevi E. Beck [4] who advocates for a linkage between participation and concerns about power and dominance.
A commitment to feminist research methods demands an actual physical engagement with the questions that surround one’s practice, beyond the theorization of frameworks. Specifically, the methods of feminist reflexivity and positionality provide a useful guide for crafting meanings of participation in design. Reflexivity can be widely understood as the recognition of how aspects of one’s identity or social location can affect one’s vision of the social world. It is a conscious attempt to explicitly identify power relations in the research process by placing the researcher in the same critical space as the subject of research [7]. On the other hand, positionality encourages an understanding of truth as situated in and emergent from particular involvements and relationships, not only from some essential or innate characteristics of the individual [3]. “The relationships in research define the individual's perspective and provide the location for meaning, identity, and political commitment” [3].
By bridging participatory design and feminist research theory and practices, I aim to de-focus the attention from the interactions with participants as the space where definitions of participation emerge, and rather shift the focus to the lived experiences and inward space of researchers and designers, as the site of meaning construction and decision-making during a participatory process. The personal transformations of designers are often underestimated in the documentation of participatory projects, but as Markussen has pointed out, even when designers and users equally take part in shaping the design, it is, however, the designers who account for the design process [9]. The methods of reflexivity of positionality can help us uncover such nuances.
Definitions vs Posibilities
In the context of design research, there may not be a final definition of participation, but rather an ongoing refinement of its meaning. Positionality sets an ideal of self-critical commitment, considering the truths upon which we act subject to further refinement, amendment, and correction [3]. At the same time, no single definition of participation can account for the entire participatory experiences of one researcher. As Herr and Anderson have discussed in the context of Action Research, “one’s positionality doesn’t fall out in neat categories and might even shift during the study. Researchers will have to figure out the nuances of how they position themselves with regard to their setting and participants” [8]. Moreover, and as Beck [4] and Andersen et al. [1] have pointed out, notions of participation must avoid the creation of standards for “good” participation, as participation materializes differently in every context.
One of the motivations for conducting this interactive workshop is to bridge design theory and feminist research practices, and to illuminate the concept of participation in design, by engaging in a reflective process that is mediated by dialogue and creativity. Participation here is understood as both a practical and a conceptual tool. At the practical level, participation materializes when establishing contact with groups and communities. On the other hand, re-thinking its underlying role as a theoretical or conceptual tool can provide meaning and critical foundations to our creative practice. For this workshop I propose participation as a lens, an instrument that helps us open our vision regarding notions of ethics, participatory mechanisms, challenges and limits, with the aim of delineating possibilities (not static definitions) that emerge from the lived experiences of PD students or practitioners, and are in dialogue with concepts that are currently permeating the contemporary academic production on participatory design, such as decolonization and communalization.
The methodological contribution of this workshop is the creation of pedagogies that enable a meaningful dialogue between participants and their individual worlds, in parallel to their interventions with communities. It also seeks to accommodate a variety of academic practices with different social commitments, student engagements and experiences from pedagogy or activism. More generally, this workshop contributes to the field of participatory design, feminist research and action-research, by systematizing the learnings into workable meanings of participation, that can be further revisited and transformed.
Departing from the conceptual background described above, this workshop materializes in the form of a collective accordion book that documents several meanings, possibilities and definitions of participation. The shape and materiality of such a book allows participants to visualize their thinking processes by extending ideas outwards, folding and creating constellations of meaning. The format and media are not restricted to written definitions and encourage verbal, corporeal, visual and experimental mediums of expression.
Leveraging the fact that PDC2020 will be held in Colombia, this interactive workshop allows conversations between design practices in different settings, bringing to light the ones rooted in the Colombian context, as they have not been visible in the literature of the field.
REFERENCES
[1] Lars Bo Andersen, Peter Danholt, Kim Halskov, Nicolai Brodersen Hansen and Peter Lauritsen. 2015. Participation as a matter of concern in participatory design. CoDesign, 11(3-4), 250–261. doi: 10.1080/15710882.2015.1081246
[2] Sherry R. Arnstein. (1969). A Ladder Of Citizen Participation. Journal of the American Institute of Planners, 35(4), 216–224. doi: 10.1080/01944366908977225
[3] Katharine T. Bartlett. 1990. Feminist Legal Methods. Harvard Law Review, 103(4), 829–888. https://doi.org/10.2307/1341478
[4] Eevi E. Beck. 2002. P for Political: Participation is Not Enough. Scandinavian Journal of Information Systems. 14 (1)
[5] Rosalind Edwards and Melanie Mauthner. 2012. "Ethics and Feminist Research: Theory and Practice." Ethics in Qualitative Research. Miller, Tina, editor, et al.2nd ed London: SAGE Publications Ltd, pp. 14-28. SAGE Research Methods. Web. 1 Dec. 2019, doi: 10.4135/9781473913912.
[6] Kim Halskov and Nicolai Brodersen Hansen. 2015. The diversity of participatory design research practice at PDC 2002–2012. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 74 , 81-92. doi:10.1016/j.ijhcs.2014.09.003
[7] Sandra Harding. 1987. Feminism and Methodology, Buckingham: Open University Press
[8] Kathryn Herr and Gary L. Anderson. 2005. The continuum of positionality in action research. In Herr, K., & Anderson, G. L. The action research dissertation: A guide for students and faculty (pp. 29-48). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, Inc. doi: 10.4135/9781452226644
[9] Randi Markussen. 1996. Politics of intervention in design: Feminist reflections on the Scandinavian tradition. AI & Society,10 (2), 127-141. doi:10.1007/bf01205278
[10] Joanna Saad-Sulonen, Eva Eriksson, Kim Halskov, Helena Karasti and John Vines. 2018. Unfolding participation over time: temporal lenses in participatory design. CoDesign, 14(1), 4–16. doi: 10.1080/15710882.2018.1426773
[11] Dan Shapiro. 2010. A modernized participatory design? A reply to Kyng. Scandinavian Journal of Information Systems. 22 (1)
Some researchers have developed frameworks for re-thinking participation. References to this include the work of Sherry Arnstein [2] in 1969, who published “A Ladder of Citizen Participation” as a typology that distinguishes various roles of citizens in determining the course of participatory projects. Other examples include Andersen et al. [1] and their use of Actor-Network Theory as a resource for framing notions of participation. Saad-Sulonen et al. [10] propose a number of temporal lenses for reconfiguring participation. These examples use analysis as the tool that allows them to develop such frameworks. Apart from advancing the question of participation and shedding light into the possibilities of its meaning, the conceptual and methodological gaps in these works open important avenues for exploration. One of them is the opportunity to incorporate the lived experiences and feelings of researchers and designers as sites for meaning-making, beyond the formality of project descriptions. The second avenue is the decentralization of the discussion from Europe and Scandinavia towards contexts where participation materializes in different ways and departs from other systems of knowledge.
I use a distinction offered by Shapiro [11] between a ‘weak’ and a ‘strong’ view of participation, to find ways in which this concept could be further examined. According to the author, the ‘weak’ view of participation is pragmatic, in other words, it refers to the involvement of people in a design process as a channel to learn about their lives and therefore achieve the success of design projects. Under this logic, participation becomes cumulative. Diversely, the ‘strong’ view departs from an understanding of human practices as inherently social, developed in constant calibration with others and dependent on the specific context of influence. Under this view, participation is therefore difficult to replicate.
By coupling the ‘strong’ view of participation with feminist research practices, this interactive workshop intends to open a fertile ground for advancing the discussion around the meanings of participation. Since the early 1980s, feminist scholars have positioned research relationships as social relationships, indicating the transcendence of participating, beyond mere inclusivity [5]. The concepts of friendship, rapport, interpretation, and power are at the core of feminist research practices. Additionally, the ‘strong’ view of participation could also be complemented by the work of Eevi E. Beck [4] who advocates for a linkage between participation and concerns about power and dominance.
A commitment to feminist research methods demands an actual physical engagement with the questions that surround one’s practice, beyond the theorization of frameworks. Specifically, the methods of feminist reflexivity and positionality provide a useful guide for crafting meanings of participation in design. Reflexivity can be widely understood as the recognition of how aspects of one’s identity or social location can affect one’s vision of the social world. It is a conscious attempt to explicitly identify power relations in the research process by placing the researcher in the same critical space as the subject of research [7]. On the other hand, positionality encourages an understanding of truth as situated in and emergent from particular involvements and relationships, not only from some essential or innate characteristics of the individual [3]. “The relationships in research define the individual's perspective and provide the location for meaning, identity, and political commitment” [3].
By bridging participatory design and feminist research theory and practices, I aim to de-focus the attention from the interactions with participants as the space where definitions of participation emerge, and rather shift the focus to the lived experiences and inward space of researchers and designers, as the site of meaning construction and decision-making during a participatory process. The personal transformations of designers are often underestimated in the documentation of participatory projects, but as Markussen has pointed out, even when designers and users equally take part in shaping the design, it is, however, the designers who account for the design process [9]. The methods of reflexivity of positionality can help us uncover such nuances.
Definitions vs Posibilities
In the context of design research, there may not be a final definition of participation, but rather an ongoing refinement of its meaning. Positionality sets an ideal of self-critical commitment, considering the truths upon which we act subject to further refinement, amendment, and correction [3]. At the same time, no single definition of participation can account for the entire participatory experiences of one researcher. As Herr and Anderson have discussed in the context of Action Research, “one’s positionality doesn’t fall out in neat categories and might even shift during the study. Researchers will have to figure out the nuances of how they position themselves with regard to their setting and participants” [8]. Moreover, and as Beck [4] and Andersen et al. [1] have pointed out, notions of participation must avoid the creation of standards for “good” participation, as participation materializes differently in every context.
One of the motivations for conducting this interactive workshop is to bridge design theory and feminist research practices, and to illuminate the concept of participation in design, by engaging in a reflective process that is mediated by dialogue and creativity. Participation here is understood as both a practical and a conceptual tool. At the practical level, participation materializes when establishing contact with groups and communities. On the other hand, re-thinking its underlying role as a theoretical or conceptual tool can provide meaning and critical foundations to our creative practice. For this workshop I propose participation as a lens, an instrument that helps us open our vision regarding notions of ethics, participatory mechanisms, challenges and limits, with the aim of delineating possibilities (not static definitions) that emerge from the lived experiences of PD students or practitioners, and are in dialogue with concepts that are currently permeating the contemporary academic production on participatory design, such as decolonization and communalization.
The methodological contribution of this workshop is the creation of pedagogies that enable a meaningful dialogue between participants and their individual worlds, in parallel to their interventions with communities. It also seeks to accommodate a variety of academic practices with different social commitments, student engagements and experiences from pedagogy or activism. More generally, this workshop contributes to the field of participatory design, feminist research and action-research, by systematizing the learnings into workable meanings of participation, that can be further revisited and transformed.
Departing from the conceptual background described above, this workshop materializes in the form of a collective accordion book that documents several meanings, possibilities and definitions of participation. The shape and materiality of such a book allows participants to visualize their thinking processes by extending ideas outwards, folding and creating constellations of meaning. The format and media are not restricted to written definitions and encourage verbal, corporeal, visual and experimental mediums of expression.
Leveraging the fact that PDC2020 will be held in Colombia, this interactive workshop allows conversations between design practices in different settings, bringing to light the ones rooted in the Colombian context, as they have not been visible in the literature of the field.
REFERENCES
[1] Lars Bo Andersen, Peter Danholt, Kim Halskov, Nicolai Brodersen Hansen and Peter Lauritsen. 2015. Participation as a matter of concern in participatory design. CoDesign, 11(3-4), 250–261. doi: 10.1080/15710882.2015.1081246
[2] Sherry R. Arnstein. (1969). A Ladder Of Citizen Participation. Journal of the American Institute of Planners, 35(4), 216–224. doi: 10.1080/01944366908977225
[3] Katharine T. Bartlett. 1990. Feminist Legal Methods. Harvard Law Review, 103(4), 829–888. https://doi.org/10.2307/1341478
[4] Eevi E. Beck. 2002. P for Political: Participation is Not Enough. Scandinavian Journal of Information Systems. 14 (1)
[5] Rosalind Edwards and Melanie Mauthner. 2012. "Ethics and Feminist Research: Theory and Practice." Ethics in Qualitative Research. Miller, Tina, editor, et al.2nd ed London: SAGE Publications Ltd, pp. 14-28. SAGE Research Methods. Web. 1 Dec. 2019, doi: 10.4135/9781473913912.
[6] Kim Halskov and Nicolai Brodersen Hansen. 2015. The diversity of participatory design research practice at PDC 2002–2012. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 74 , 81-92. doi:10.1016/j.ijhcs.2014.09.003
[7] Sandra Harding. 1987. Feminism and Methodology, Buckingham: Open University Press
[8] Kathryn Herr and Gary L. Anderson. 2005. The continuum of positionality in action research. In Herr, K., & Anderson, G. L. The action research dissertation: A guide for students and faculty (pp. 29-48). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, Inc. doi: 10.4135/9781452226644
[9] Randi Markussen. 1996. Politics of intervention in design: Feminist reflections on the Scandinavian tradition. AI & Society,10 (2), 127-141. doi:10.1007/bf01205278
[10] Joanna Saad-Sulonen, Eva Eriksson, Kim Halskov, Helena Karasti and John Vines. 2018. Unfolding participation over time: temporal lenses in participatory design. CoDesign, 14(1), 4–16. doi: 10.1080/15710882.2018.1426773
[11] Dan Shapiro. 2010. A modernized participatory design? A reply to Kyng. Scandinavian Journal of Information Systems. 22 (1)