Participatory design: authority, not feedback

Participatory design is usually explained by its instruments. Storytelling, games for analysis, mock-ups and prototypes are listed as techniques that bring users closer to the design. The instruments are real, and they are not the point. Bjerknes and Bratteteig (1995) draw a line the field has never abandoned. Participation is the involvement of users in the work of system development, in forms that vary from representation to collaboration. Influence is the power to make design decisions. Involvement can be arranged for anyone, though the ordinary arrangement assumes someone who can reach the session, read the materials and speak the project's language. Power has to be transferred.

This unit, the fifth of the ten, argues that participation is a transfer of framing authority, and not a supply of feedback. The previous unit asked what a prototype can show. This one asks who decides what it shows. The Scandinavian commitment holds only where participants can change the problem statement. Commercial adoption has repeatedly thinned it into consultation. The evidence is what the field's own reviews found.

Participation is involvement; influence is the power to decide

Bjerknes and Bratteteig (1995) separate the two terms while reviewing Scandinavian system development research. Participation names involvement in development decisions. Influence names the power to make them. Both vary in degree. Their complaint is that the field drifted from politics towards ethics, and they want it back. A democratic commitment gives the less powerful a share in decisions that affect them.

Bratteteig and Wagner (2016) give the decision its analytical weight. They studied four participatory design projects. They argue that understanding participation requires a focus on decision-making. Design, they argue, consists of creating, selecting, concretising and evaluating choices. The decisions are interlinked, and they call the links decision linkages. Participation, for them, is the sharing of power. Their four projects make the test concrete. Florence built hospital IT with nurses. Sisom built a symptom-reporting tool for ill children. Desarte built prototypes for architects. IPCity built a mixed-reality planning tool for urban planners and citizens. Sisom shows the failure mode. Its decisions were subordinated to a vision fixed before the children joined, and the adults treated them as unable to decide.

Kensing and Greenbaum (2013) review the tradition's heritage, and they put the criterion as having a say in the systems that shape one's work. Kensing and Blomberg (1998) organise the field around the politics of design, the nature of participation, and the methods for participation.

The Scandinavian commitment joined democracy to skill

The tradition's centre is a claim about work, not software. Ehn (1993) describes two decades of Scandinavian concern with participation and skill in computer-based systems. That work ran in alliances between researchers and trade unions, in projects such as DEMOS and UTOPIA. He argues that democratic participation and skill enhancement were objectives of design in their own right, and not only productivity and product quality.

Bodker (1996) explains why the invitation is not enough. She analyses participation through conflicts and resources. The parties bring different resources and incompatible objectives to a project, so the conditions for participation have to be created rather than assumed.

Muller (2003) supplies the history and the instruments together. He traces it to the Scandinavian workplace-democracy movement, where researchers worked with organised labour. He frames its practices as producing hybrid experiences in a region he calls a third space, belonging neither to the workers' nor to the software professionals' domain. Its techniques, from workshops and storytelling to prototype co-creation, let each side use knowledge the other lacks.

The field's own reviews find the commitment thin in practice

If participation means a share of authority, the question is whether the published work delivers it. Halskov and Hansen (2015) reviewed ten years of full research papers at the Participatory Design Conferences, 2002 to 2012. They found wide variation in how participation is defined and conducted.

Bossen, Dindler and Iversen (2016) looked at outcomes. They surveyed all Participatory Design Conference papers from 1990 to 2014. They filtered for systematic evaluations of the field's aims: mutual learning, empowerment, democracy and workplace quality. Of 143 papers, 66 were relevant. Only 17 evaluated those aims, generally without detail on their methods, and they were researcher-led rather than participant-led. A field that defines itself by empowerment is not measuring it.

Frauenberger and colleagues (2015) draw the consequence. They argue that the diversified field needs an account of rigour and accountability that fits its own belief system. That account would be delivered through debate, critique and reflection rather than positivistic standards. They propose a tool to think with: lenses for reflection on a project's choices. Participation is not self-justifying.

Commercial adoption thins participation, and what remains rests on the practitioner

The instrument can be bought without the commitment. Muller (2003) records that participatory design became a useful commercial tool. Some greeted it with enthusiasm, and others with dismay. A method for sharing power can be adopted for managing consent.

Vines and colleagues (2013) turn that concern into an empirical claim. They analyse participation projects in HCI. They argue that much of the research configures participation: choosing who is involved, in what form, and how much control is shared. Their sharpest observation is that participation can legitimise a decision that has already been taken.

When the instruments are neutral, the commitment migrates into the person holding them. Steen (2013) makes this explicit. He reads key texts through virtue ethics. He sets out five virtues needed by people who work in the field: cooperation, curiosity, creativity, empowerment and reflexivity. He describes empowerment as sharing power.

Contested question: must participation share power, or is any configured involvement enough?

The literature disagrees about whether the sharing of power is the definition of participation or one configuration among many. The first position is held by Vines and colleagues (2013). They hold that participation has configurations. Involvement is designed differently in different projects, and control is shared to different degrees. The honest task is to describe the configuration rather than to police it.

The second position holds that participation without a share of decision power is not participation at all. Its definitional statement is Bjerknes and Bratteteig (1995), who separate involvement from influence and refuse to let the first stand in for the second. Its analytical statement is Bratteteig and Wagner (2016), for whom participation is the sharing of power over interlinked decisions. Its historical statement is Ehn (1993), for whom democratic participation and skill enhancement were design objectives. A project that involves users but keeps the power to decide is consultation, whatever it is called.

What would settle it is not available in this literature. It would take a study that measures two things separately for each project. The first is what participants were involved in. The second is whether they held power over a decision or the problem statement. The first position predicts that some projects transfer authority without formally sharing power. The second position predicts that the two measures will come apart, so projects rated most participatory on involvement look weaker on influence. Bossen and colleagues (2016) came closest, but no source here ran the two measures side by side.

The two positions rest on different kinds of evidence. The configuration position rests on an interpretive analysis of participation projects in HCI, which maps how involvement is arranged rather than measuring who decided. The power-sharing position rests on a definitional argument, four case studies of participatory projects, and two historical accounts of the Scandinavian tradition, so its weight is case-based. The nearest thing to a count in the section is a survey of the field's own papers, and it reports how rarely the aims were evaluated rather than who held power. Until the two measures are run side by side, the designer should record both on every project: what participants were involved in, and which decisions they could have overturned. The strongest objection to the unit's thesis is that a strict power test may score as consultation projects that transfer authority in ways the definition does not recognise, since a project can shift control substantially without a formal share of decision power, and its participants may describe it as participatory all the same.

Where the argument is heading

Named work points at a new test of the same question. Delgado and colleagues (2023) study the participatory turn in AI design. They synthesise work from technology design, political theory and the social sciences into a framework for judging whether an approach grants people substantive agency. They report wide, largely unstated disagreement about who participates and with what power. Agnew and colleagues (2024) push the question to its edge. They survey proposals to replace human participants with AI-generated substitutes. They find those proposals motivated by lower costs and more data, and they argue that the proposals ignore representation, inclusion and understanding. If substitution is accepted, participation loses its subjects.

The sources this unit rests on

• Kensing, F. and Blomberg, J. (1998). Participatory design: issues and concerns. Computer Supported Cooperative Work. doi:10.1023/A:1008689307411 Kensing and Blomberg characterise participatory design as a maturing research area, organising the field around the politics of design, the nature of participation, and the methods for participation. They also ask whether results transfer to workers and survive a project's end. It measures no practice.
• Muller, M. J. (2003). Participatory design: the third space in HCI. In The Human-Computer Interaction Handbook. Lawrence Erlbaum. https://edinburghlivinglab.github.io/ddc/course_docs/Muller2003.pdf Muller surveys participatory design methods that produce hybrid experiences belonging neither to the workers' nor the software professionals' domain, framing that region as a third space, and traces its origin in the Scandinavian workplace-democracy movement. A survey, with no measurement.
• Bodker, S. (1996). Creating conditions for participation: conflicts and resources in systems development. Human-Computer Interaction. doi:10.1207/s15327051hci1103_2 Bodker analyses participation through conflicts and resources, arguing the conditions for participation have to be created because the parties bring different resources and incompatible objectives. It is the unit's answer to the claim that an invitation is enough. Conceptual, not an empirical study.
• Ehn, P. (1993). Scandinavian design: on participation and skill. In Participatory Design: Principles and Practices. Lawrence Erlbaum. https://www.routledge.com/Participatory-Design-Principles-and-Practices/Schuler-Namioka/p/book/9780805809510 Ehn argues the Scandinavian approach ties participation to skill: workers must influence the tools shaping their competence, and design should increase it rather than diminish it. He describes two decades of researcher and union alliances, including DEMOS and UTOPIA.
• Bjerknes, G. and Bratteteig, T. (1995). User participation and democracy: a discussion of Scandinavian research on system development. Scandinavian Journal of Information Systems. https://aisel.aisnet.org/sjis/vol7/iss1/1/ Bjerknes and Bratteteig review Scandinavian system development research and draw the line the field has not abandoned: participation is involvement in decisions, influence is the power to make them, and both vary in degree. It is the unit's definitional statement.
• Halskov, K. and Hansen, N. B. (2015). The diversity of participatory design research practice at PDC 2002-2012. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies. doi:10.1016/j.ijhcs.2014.09.003 Halskov and Hansen reviewed ten years of full research papers at the Participatory Design Conferences, 2002 to 2012, and mapped the field's practice against its professed ideals. It finds wide variation in how participation is defined and conducted.
• Bratteteig, T. and Wagner, I. (2016). Unpacking the notion of participation in participatory design. Computer Supported Cooperative Work. doi:10.1007/s10606-016-9259-4 Bratteteig and Wagner studied four participatory design projects and argue understanding participation requires a focus on decision-making, since design consists of creating, selecting, concretising and evaluating interlinked choices. Sisom shows the failure mode: a vision fixed before the children joined.
• Steen, M. (2013). Virtues in participatory design: cooperation, curiosity, creativity, empowerment and reflexivity. Science and Engineering Ethics. doi:10.1007/s11948-012-9380-9 Steen reads key participatory design texts through virtue ethics and sets out five virtues for the field's workers: cooperation, curiosity, creativity, empowerment and reflexivity, describing empowerment as sharing power. It is normative rather than empirical, and that is the finding.
• Vines, J., Clarke, R., Wright, P., McCarthy, J. and Olivier, P. (2013). Configuring participation: on how we involve people in design. Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. doi:10.1145/2470654.2470716 Vines and colleagues analyse participation projects in HCI and argue much of the research configures participation, choosing who is involved, in what form and how much control is shared. Their sharpest observation is that participation can legitimise a decision already taken. Interpretive, not a measurement.
• Bossen, C., Dindler, C. and Iversen, O. S. (2016). Evaluation in participatory design: a literature survey. Proceedings of the 14th Participatory Design Conference. doi:10.1145/2940299.2940303 Bossen, Dindler and Iversen surveyed all Participatory Design Conference papers from 1990 to 2014, filtering for evaluations of the field's aims. Of 143 papers, 66 were relevant and only 17 evaluated those aims, generally without method detail and researcher-led.
• Frauenberger, C., Good, J., Fitzpatrick, G. and Iversen, O. S. (2015). In pursuit of rigour and accountability in participatory design. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies. doi:10.1016/j.ijhcs.2014.09.004 Frauenberger and colleagues argue the diversified field needs an account of rigour and accountability fitting its own belief system, delivered through debate, critique and reflection rather than positivistic standards, and propose lenses for reflection on a project's choices. Position piece.
• Kensing, F. and Greenbaum, J. (2013). Heritage: having a say. In Routledge International Handbook of Participatory Design. Routledge. doi:10.4324/9780203108543.ch2 Kensing and Greenbaum recount the heritage of participatory design and put the criterion as having a say in the systems that shape one's work. It is a historical and programmatic statement of the field's commitment rather than a measurement of practice. Programmatic chapter.
• Delgado, F., Yang, S., Madaio, M. and Yang, Q. (2023). The participatory turn in AI design: theoretical foundations and the current state of practice. Proceedings of the 3rd ACM Conference on Equity and Access in Algorithms, Mechanisms, and Optimization. doi:10.1145/3617694.3623261 Delgado and colleagues synthesise technology design, political theory and the social sciences into a framework for judging whether an approach grants people substantive agency, and compare current participatory AI design practice. They report wide, largely unstated disagreement about who participates and with what power.
• Agnew, W., Bergman, A. S., Chien, J., Diaz, M., El-Sayed, S., Pittman, J., Mohamed, S. and McKee, K. R. (2024). The illusion of artificial inclusion. Proceedings of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. doi:10.1145/3613904.3642703 Agnew and colleagues survey proposals to replace human participants with AI-generated substitutes, finding them motivated by lower costs and more data, and argue they ignore representation, inclusion and understanding. It is a critical survey and measures no substitution in use.