[4/14/2003 10:44:08 AM | Cristina Rodrigues]

What is participatory design?

Participatory design is a technique in which representative users provide continual feedback to designers as they develop preliminary prototypes in low-fidelity media (e.g., pencil and paper). This method gives users an opportunity to interact with their suggestions for the product before those suggestions are codified into a program. Often these interactions lead to practical improvements on user suggestions. Such improvements can result in a product that better fits the need underlying the user's suggestion, as opposed to merely following the suggestion itself. Since studies show that user-designed systems are generally less usable than systems designed using mental modeling techniques, it's advisable to use a feedback loop such as participatory design before implementing user suggestions in a final product.