Heritage: Having a Say
Item
Title
Heritage: Having a Say
Abstract/Description
This chapter focuses on the early history of Participatory Design projects up to the first Participatory Design Conference in 1990. It explains how the political and social movements of the 1970s and 80s formed a stage for translating participatory research into development of computer applications. Some of the early action projects are described in order to give readers an understanding of the problems and challenges. A central focus is on the roots of Participatory Design in enabling workers to gain a voice in the technologies that affect their working lives. It concludes with reviewing theoretical underpinnings as well as summarising some guiding principles. The Introduction focuses on the motivations and struggles in early work-oriented design. The general political context is described in order to situate the early projects in the complexity of enabling workers to gain a voice in decision-making about technology. Both action-based projects and theoretical sources are used to explain the development of Participatory Design’s guiding principles. Readers will learn about the early struggles to give voice to those who traditionally lack power in the development process. Equalising power relations and mutual learning are both a motivation and an outcome of the Participatory Design heritage. Of equal importance is the understanding that design and development must be situated in the real, everyday actions of people using technology. The early history is not intended as a ‘birth story’ but rather as a series of struggles that grew out of some mistakes and into new ways of looking at computer system development, traces of which can be seen today in many design situations. The early heritage demonstrates how difficult it is to do more than ‘involve’ users in design. Bringing about more equal power relations and actually fostering emancipatory participation remains a critical challenge. The projects discussed here each begin with motivating factors and conclude with lessons learned and the need for further research. Participatory Design history tells us that mistakes and unanswered questions still abound.
Author/creator
Date
In publication
Publisher
Routledge
Resource type
Background/Context
Medium
Print
Background/context type
Historical
IRE Approach/Concept
Open access/free-text available
No
ISBN
978-0-203-10854-3
Citation
Kensing, F., & Greenbaum, J. (2013). Heritage: Having a Say. In Routledge International Handbook of Participatory Design. Routledge.
Resource status/form
Published Text
Scholarship genre
Textbook
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