The history of Participatory design (PD) may be interpreted as one of rise (80′es and early 90′es) and decline (mid 90′es ->). The source of PD is the Scandinavian tradition, where the development and implementation of interactive systems at the workplace was seen as a political activity requiring the democratic involvement of the  workers. As Pelle Ehn states it in a chapter in the classic  Participatory design: “Every human should have the right to participate equally in decisions concerning his or her life”. Early PD successes, as the project with the Norwegian Iron and metal workers union in the 70′es and UTOPIA in the 80′es, typically saw system development as a cooperative activity between skilled workers and their unions,  system owners and system developers. In order to facilitate user involvement, pioneering use of methods was applied – such as the use of mock-ups, role-play, future workshops, and co-operative prototyping.

Gradually, user involvement in PD processes were seen more as a pragmatic approach to improve system usability, and less as an activity with the political aim of industrial democracy. As Bergvall-Kåreborn and Ståhlbröst found in their survey of the PD conference articles of 2006, only one in the 15 conference papers that year presented a study with a democratic motive for participation.  This shift towards pragmatic motivation for PD is parallel in time to what I find to be declining awareness of PD among usability researchers and practitioners. Possibly, this pragmatic shift makes it difficult to differentiate PD from other user-oriented traditions, such as user-centred design.

Also, the world of system development has changed dramatically since the golden days of PD. For the majority of IT solutions being developed, it is no longer feasible to involve the intended user base in a democratic fashion. One obvious reason for this is the size and distributed nature of the user base for most interactive systems of today; it is either impractical or impossible to involve a fair share of the intended users in the development process.

The distributed nature the user base and the shift towards pragmatic motivation may be seen as important causes for the decline of PD. However, social media may possibly change the game back in favor for PD.  At least when it comes to overcoming the challenge of a large and distributed user base.

The growth of social media has made clear to the world something that PD researchers and practitioners have known all along: Users are (at their best) engaged, knowledgeable, and creative.   Social media also provide an opportunity to involve users in innovation and development. For ideation, such as Starbucks and Dell has done for some years already, or for feedback in development processes as we have done in the RECORD project.

In RECORD we have run several cases where users are invited to provide design feedback through a social media environment. Designs have been presented to users, who in turn have provided feedback as comments and ratings. Different cases have covered feedback on ideas, concepts, visual prototypes and beta-versions. We have learnt that the feedback provide insight in (a) the users general experience of the design, (b) aspects of the design that are particularly well liked,  (c) problems, (d) design suggestions, and (e) context information (such as situations for use). Also, through social media it is possible to (a) gather user feedback on a larger amount of ideas, concepts or solutions and (b) gather user feedback in the early phases of ideation and concept design. We have for example run cases where users provide feedback on >20 ideas for new solutions – which enables user involvement in a phase of development typically reserved for the designers and the core project team.

Not all the design feedback we get through social media is  gold – some of it is actually quite non-constructive.  But some is good and valuable. We are currently in the process of analyzing data to find out whether some types of users provide better feedback in others. In particular we investigate whether users with lead user characteristics (as defined by von Hippel)  provide better feedback.

In conclusion, social media seem to represent renewed attention to the users as a source of knowledge and creativity in system development. If so, social media used for PD purposes – Participatory design 2.0 – may represent the potential for a renewal in the interest also for PD. When involving users in development processes through social media, we for sure have lots to learn from the PD tradition.

Currently, the involvement of users in innovation and development is mainly pragmatic. However, it is conceivable that future uses of social media for such purposes also may be motivated politically. This remains to be seen. Maybe we have a new golden age of PD ahead of us.

Etter seminaret deltok drøyt 20 stykker på workshop med Leadbeater der vi tok for oss ulike problemstillinger knyttet til “design with and by people”. Vi legger pekere til presentasjonene i programmet så snart de blir gjort tilgjengelige.

Program og påmelding finner du her. Hold av plass i kalenderen.

På seminaret presenteres resultater fra RECORD. I tillegg kommer Nina Nordbø (NRK) og Heidi Nordby Lunde (VamPus og ABC Nyheter) for å fortelle om sine synspunkt på morgendagens sosiale medier. Og Espen Andersen setter sosiale medier i perspektiv av disruptiv innovasjon. Leadbeater holder en key-note. Kanskje vi også får til en workshop.

Samtidig med seminaret arrangeres en utstilling om sosiale medier. Det hele på AHO. Endelig program og påmelding kommer tidlig i august. Du finner litt mer om seminarets kontekst på Opinion-bloggen. Tror dette blir kjempemoro!

Seminaret vil hete  Fremtidens sosiale medier. Vi ønsker oss visjonære meningsbærere, etablerte løsningsleverandører og de nye fremadstormende, i tillegg til ulike tilnærminger til det å tenke om fremtidens sosiale medier.

Sammen med seminaret planlegger vi også en utstilling med samme tema som seminaret. Mer om dette senere.

Har du gode forslag til interessante foredragsholdere, lokale så vel som internasjonale, er det supert om du legger igjen en kommentar.  Budsjettet for seminaret er begrenset, så de store internasjonale kanonene er nok utelukket. Forøvrig er det fritt frem.

Bilder: Foredragsholdere på RECORD-seminaret i 2009 (http://www.flickr.com/photos/eirikso/ / CC BY-SA 2.0)

Tid: 2. oktober, 08:15-12:00 – med frokost
Sted: AHO, Maridalsveien 29, Oslo

Se program og påmelding.

Please find below the program for the workshop on co-creation in Living Labs, held at INTERACT 2009, monday August 24, 2009.

09:00 – Welcome and introduction

09:15 – 10:15 – Presentations: Goals, challenges and best practices
Budweg, Kristensen: Co-creation in distributed ICT Living Labs
Semolic: Lessons learned by the business case of LENS Living Lab
Gulliksen, Kviselius, Ozan, Andersson, Gazarian, Edenius, Oestreicher: Key Principles for
User Innovation in a Living Lab

10:15-10:30: Break

10:30 – 11:15 – Groups: Goals, challenges and best practices
Goal: Reach key goals, challenges and best practices to achieve Living Lab co-creation

11:15-11:45 – Plenary summary
Each group summarizes findings (5 minutes each). Questions and discussions.

11:45-12:30 Lunch

12:30-12:45 Info on funding possibilities for Nordic-Baltic Living Lab activities
Mattias Esbjörnsson, VINNOVA – The Swedish Governmental Agency for Innovation Systems: Information about the upcoming possibilities to apply for funding of Nordic/Baltic Living Lab activities.

12:45-13:45 – Presentations: Tools and methods
Ihlström Eriksson, Svensson: Experiences from Halmstad Living Lab
de Jong, Kuijer, Bakker: Codesign of sustainable innovations in the Delft Open Innovation
Session
Wolkerstorfer, Geven, Tscheligi, Obrist: User innovation through the Digital Participatory
Design Living Lab

13:45-14:00 Break

14:00 – 14:50 – Groups: Tools and methods
Goal: Describe important and promising tools and methods to improve Living Lab Co-creation. Strengths and weaknesses. Needed research and development

14:50-15:15 Plenary summary
Each group summarizes findings (5 minutes each). Questions and discussions.

15:15-15:30 Break

15:30-16:45 Plenary session: Manifesto for Living Lab Co-creation
Goal: Reach key issues which should be the basis of the manifesto, based on findings in previous group sessions as well as new issues.

16:45-17:00 Feedback on open review and discussion process
The workshop preparatory period has included the posting of all accepted contributions at the OWELA, with opportunity for commenting and discussion. Feedback on the process wanted.

—

The workshop is organized in cooperation between:

• RECORD online Living Lab (Norway)
• Airport Living Lab (Arlanda, Sweden)
• Botnia Living Lab  (Luleå, Sweden)
• OWELA (Open Web Lab) (VTT, Finland).

Dette er morsomt, for det viser at den online Living Laben vi etablerer i prosjektet har interesse også utenfor fagområder som software-utvikling og design; i dette tilfellet skjæringspunktet mellom markedsanalyse og brukerdrevet innovasjon.

Om du er interessert i Living Labs og markedsanalyse, kanskje du bør vurdere en tur til Stockholm 12. mars?

 The RECORD online Living Lab is now a member of the European Network of Living Labs (ENOLL), together with more than 100 Living Labs across Europe. Living Labs are environments that allow users to be involved in innovation processes, and the purpose of ENOLL is to enable a coordinated development of Living Labs.

The RECORD online Living Lab consists of an Internet panel and an online environment. The panel was established in the fall of 2007. Early trial cases has been run with an intermediate online environment mainly supporting one-way communication with the participants. A first version of an online environment, based on community technology, is planned to be used in trial cases early 2009. Read more about the Lab here.

Currently the RECORD online Living Lab serves early trial cases with project partners. When the Lab reaches sufficient maturity (2009-10) we aim to make its services commercially available to the industry in general.

Forskere i RECORD har levert rapporten eBorger 2.0 til Fornyings og administrasjonsdepartementet (FAD). Der beskriver de hvordan borgere bidrar innhold gjennom internett, og hvordan den offentlige forvaltningen i Norge kan utnytte denne trenden med brukerdeltagelse.

I rapporten foreslås det at forvaltningen i større grad må se borgere som samarbeidspartnere og ikke kun som passive mottagere av informasjon. Mulige tiltak kan være (1) et «WikiNorge.no», (2) at sentrale deler av offentlige data gjøres tilgjengelig og gjenbrukbar, og (3) at eForvaltningen inngår samarbeid med både norske og internasjonale såkalte «eGovgeek» aktører.

Interessert? Les rapporten selv.