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2014 | Buch

Disentangling Participation

Power and Decision-making in Participatory Design

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Providing a critical view on user participation in design, disentangling decision making and power in design, this book uses fieldwork material from two large participatory design projects: one experimental in the field of urban planning, the other a product development project within health care. Addressing power issues in participatory design is critical to providing a realistic view of the possibilities and limitations of participation. Design is decision-making: during a design process a huge number of decisions taken before the designers end up with a design result - an artefact or system. All decisions are a choice between possibilities and selecting one of them and making it concrete as a change in an artefact is a demonstration of the capacity to transform, which is a key aspect of power. Participatory designers are committed to empowering users and facilitating a design process where users are able to take part in all types of decisions. This volume explores the challenges for practitioners of participatory design arising from this commitment by asking what participation really means: who should participate and in which parts of a design process; what does it mean to share power with users; how are decisions to be made in a participatory way and what is it that users participate in? The book provides a conceptual framework for understanding these issues as well as a fresh look at participation.

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Frontmatter
1. Introduction
Abstract
Much of the PD literature today explores and provides guidance on how to enrol (prospective) users as co-designers: how to find users and user representatives, how to organize the design process, how to develop a common ground and mutually learn from each other, how to develop ideas and evaluate them as a multidisciplinary team, etc. The most difficult part, however, is the sharing of power inherent in the PD approach: in order to collaborate with users as co-designers the designers need to share their power with them and acknowledge their different and equally valuable expertise. This book explores exactly this challenge for practitioners of PD by asking what participation really means: who should participate and in which parts of a design process; what does it mean to share power with users; how are decisions to be made in a participatory way?
Tone Bratteteig, Ina Wagner
2. Decision-Making in Design
Abstract
Decision-making is a complex matter, even more so in design, where every design move involves choices. In this chapter we aim at becoming more precise about how design is decision-making and what role design decisions play in design and in PD. In design – as in everyday life – we make choices and select among them. In design, this takes the form of making moves, seeing some of the effects of the moves, and acting accordingly by moving back or making a new move.
Tone Bratteteig, Ina Wagner
3. The Cases
Abstract
This chapter introduces the two cases.IPCity is about the design of a collaborative mixed reality application, aimed at supporting mixed teams of urban planners, politicians and citizens in using participatory technologies to create and manipulate design alternatives for real urban planning projects. Sisomis about an information system that allows patients – severly ill children – to report their symptoms on a mobile device, before consulting a doctor. The chapter provides a brief introduction to the two cases, focusing on their chronology and on details of the participatory process.
Tone Bratteteig, Ina Wagner
4. Kinds of Decisions
Abstract
The first step in our analysis is to identify some of the decisions made in the two projects. We introduce several distinctions here, which we find useful: decisions on values and concepts; decisions on how to implement the vision; and decisions requiring negotiations with the outside world. The ‘kinds of decisions’ we distinguish reflect relevance or weight of a decision, as well as aspects of the design process. Hence, the distinctions are heuristic and practical rather than based on a theory.
Tone Bratteteig, Ina Wagner
5. Streams of Decisions
Abstract
The notion of ‘streams of decisions’ reflects the fact that decisions are interrelated in different ways and that some decisions are more important than others, as they shape the space for many other decisions. In this chapter we examine how decisions are linked, with some decisions affecting other decisions in unforeseen ways. We also introduce the notion of non-decisions: choices that are made without explicitly deliberating or communicating about them.
Tone Bratteteig, Ina Wagner
6. Power, Influence, Trust and Loyalty
Abstract
Power is a key concept within social and political theory. Without being able to give justice to such a complex concept and its history, we want to first point to some of its most salient roots to then highlight aspects of the concept of power that have been developed in different theoretical traditions and are relevant for our analysis. We look more deeply into three aspects of power: how decisions in the two projects were shaped by structural arrangements; which ‘mechanisms’ participants used to align their work and different positions, finding instances of ‘power to’ but also of influence, trust and loyalty in how choices were introduced and selected. We also discuss issues of power/knowledge, examining in particular how topics were constructed through ‘discourse’ and exploring instances of ‘normalising practices’.
Tone Bratteteig, Ina Wagner
7. Participation
Abstract
In the debate about PD and its methods a strong link between process and result is assumed: a participatory process is expected to lead to a participatory result. We explore this assumption, looking into the kinds of decisions in both projects and into what the participants participated in and how. We think of a participatory result as one that increases users’ ‘power to’. Looking closer into what participants participated in we come to the conclusion that within one and the same project there may be different depths of participation, depending on the role and particular expertise of participants but also on the types of issues.
Tone Bratteteig, Ina Wagner
8. Conclusions
Abstract
This chapter looks back and reflects on the three concepts: power, decision-making, and participation, and how they have helped us understand the PD practices in the two projects. There are different arenas for participation in a design project: creating choices, selecting among choices, implementing or materializing a choice, seeing/evaluating, and making the next move. Having uncovered a strong link between participation and ‘power to’, we argue that users don’t have to participate in all these arenas to contribute to a participatory result.
Tone Bratteteig, Ina Wagner
Metadaten
Titel
Disentangling Participation
verfasst von
Tone Bratteteig
Ina Wagner
Copyright-Jahr
2014
Electronic ISBN
978-3-319-06163-4
Print ISBN
978-3-319-06162-7
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-06163-4