Source: Comprehensive Guide to Participatory Design in Human-Computer Interaction (SIGCHI literature review, 2014–2024)
Difficulty: Intermediate
Prerequisites: Part 1 of these notes (Foundations), covering PD's definition, origins, and four core dimensions.
Tags: participatory design, PD, HCI, cooperation, co-designers, informants, evaluators, facilitators, stakeholder roles, application areas, healthcare design, education technology, civic technology, SIGCHI, research methods
Once you understand what Participatory Design is and where it came from (Part 1), the next question is how it works in practice. This set of notes covers the roles people play in PD projects, the settings they work in, the domains where PD is most commonly applied, and how PD functions within HCI research. A content analysis of 185 SIGCHI papers (2014–2024) provides the empirical backdrop for much of this material.
In practice, PD involves participants taking defined roles (informants, co-designers, evaluators, facilitators, researchers) across in-person, online, or hybrid settings. It is applied most heavily in healthcare, education, civic challenges, and communication technology. Within HCI research, PD operates as a research method, a design approach, and a research context in its own right.
Informant (PD role)
A participant who provides insights into current practices, workflows, and needs, but does not directly shape design decisions. Think of it as the person who tells you what the problems are, without necessarily drawing the solution.
Co-designer (PD role)
A participant who actively creates solutions alongside professional designers, sharing decision-making power. In simple terms, they are building the thing with you, not just commenting on it.
Evaluator (PD role)
A participant who tests prototypes and provides feedback on how well a design meets their needs. Think of it as the person who tries the thing and tells you what works and what does not.
Facilitator (PD role)
A person who guides design sessions, manages group dynamics, and ensures all voices are heard. In simple terms, the person running the workshop and keeping it productive.
Direct involvement (in democratic PD)
Full participation across all design stages: ideation, prototyping, and testing. Participants co-decide on design choices. Think of it as having a vote at every stage, not just being consulted once.
Implicit influence
Providing feedback that informs design decisions but does not determine the final outcome. In simple terms, your input shapes the direction, but you do not have the final say.
Goal empowerment
Deploying solutions that provide tangible benefits to users in real-world contexts. Think of it as the design project actually producing something people use and benefit from, rather than ending as a research paper.
Process empowerment
Supporting participants' knowledge, creative expression, and sense of safety during the design process itself. In simple terms, making sure people feel equipped and comfortable enough to contribute meaningfully.
Content analysis
A systematic research method for categorising and analysing text or media. In this context, used to examine 185 PD papers from SIGCHI conferences. Think of it as reading a large set of papers with a structured coding scheme to spot patterns.
Researchers sampled 185 papers that explicitly claimed to conduct PD, published at SIGCHI conferences between 2014 and 2024
The analysis used content analysis, focusing on application areas and how PD's core features manifested across projects
Papers were screened for being empirical, full-length, and involving active stakeholder participation
This review forms the evidential basis for many of the claims in this topic
PD serves distinct functions within HCI, and understanding these helps when reading or categorising PD papers:
As a research method: exploring design spaces, understanding user experiences, defining design directions. Here PD is a way to gather rich qualitative data.
As a design approach: developing new solutions, prototypes, and systems through collaborative creation. Here the output is a designed artefact.
As a research context: broadening theoretical understanding of PD itself, developing new methods and tools for participatory work. Here the PD process is the object of study.
PD appears across a wide range of HCI domains. The most prominent include:
Healthcare and well-being: assistive robots, health monitoring systems, therapeutic interventions, elderly care, mental health support systems
Education and learning: VR-based educational tools, digital badges, learning environments developed with students, teachers, and parents
Communication and social media: improving online platforms, designing tools for marginalised groups, fostering community engagement
Technology and interaction: novel interfaces, gesture-based controls, wearable devices
Civic challenges: addressing racism, discrimination, and urban planning by involving affected communities directly
Other domains: transportation, privacy and security, sustainability, creative practices
Most PD projects aim to address human-centred issues and empower participants to influence both design and policy.
Cooperation is the operational backbone of PD. It involves joint activity among end-users, stakeholders, and designers.
Participant roles:
Informants: provide insights into current practices
Co-designers: create solutions alongside designers
Evaluators: test prototypes and give feedback
Facilitators: guide sessions and support participation
Researchers: analyse and document the process
Settings and scale:
Participants range from individuals to community groups
Sessions happen in-person, online, or in hybrid formats
The research found three main collaboration patterns:
End-users designing with designers, often as co-creators
Stakeholders collaborating with designers without direct end-user involvement
Designers leading while participants act as informants or testers
Diverse stakeholder involvement enriches perspectives, improves practical relevance, and promotes inclusive innovation.
Democracy manifests in two main ways:
Direct involvement: full participation across all stages (ideation, prototyping, testing), with participants co-deciding on design choices
Implicit influence: participants provide feedback that informs but does not determine final decisions
Empowerment has two forms:
Goal empowerment: deploying solutions that provide real benefit to users in their actual contexts
Process empowerment: supporting participants' knowledge, creative expression, and psychological safety during the design process
A key finding from the literature review: many current PD practices remain at the ideation or exploration stage. Relatively few projects progress to deploying functional systems that directly empower users. This is a significant gap between PD's aspirations and its current reality.
A hospital designing a patient-facing appointment system using PD would involve patients as co-designers (not just test users), nurses as informants about workflow, and IT staff as technical co-designers. The facilitator would ensure quieter participants are heard. If the system is deployed and patients can manage their own bookings, that is goal empowerment. If participants leave the project with new digital skills, that is process empowerment.
Students often assume all PD participants have the same role. They do not. Informants, co-designers, evaluators, facilitators, and researchers have distinct functions, and a project may use several of these roles.
It is tempting to think PD only happens in-person around a whiteboard. Online and hybrid PD are well-established, particularly post-2020.
Many students believe that running a single user-feedback session counts as PD. If participants have no co-decision-making power, the democratic dimension is missing, and the practice may not qualify as PD.
Implicit influence is sometimes confused with empowerment. Providing feedback that gets filtered through a design team is a weaker form of democratic participation than full co-decision-making.
⚠️ Know the five participant roles (informant, co-designer, evaluator, facilitator, researcher) and be able to describe each briefly. These come up in short-answer questions.
⚠️ The distinction between direct involvement and implicit influence is a common source of exam questions about the quality of participation in PD.
⚠️ Goal empowerment versus process empowerment is a useful framework for evaluating whether a PD project has had real impact.
⚠️ The finding that many PD projects stall at ideation without deploying functional systems is a strong critical point for essays.
⚠️ Be able to name at least three application areas of PD with a concrete example for each.
True or false: A co-designer and an informant play the same role in a PD project.
Fill in the blank: The three functions of PD in HCI research are: as a research method, as a design approach, and as a __________.
True or false: Goal empowerment refers to participants gaining new skills during the design process.
Fill in the blank: The literature review analysed __________ papers from SIGCHI conferences published between 2014 and 2024.
True or false: Most PD projects in the reviewed literature successfully deployed functional systems that empowered users.
(Answers: 1. False, co-designers create solutions alongside designers while informants provide insights without shaping design decisions directly. 2. Research context. 3. False, that is process empowerment; goal empowerment is about deploying solutions that benefit users in real-world contexts. 4. 185. 5. False, many remain at the ideation or exploration stage.)
Q: Describe the five roles participants can take in a Participatory Design project.
A: (1) Informants provide insights into current practices and workflows. (2) Co-designers actively create solutions alongside professional designers. (3) Evaluators test prototypes and give feedback on whether designs meet their needs. (4) Facilitators guide sessions and ensure all participants can contribute. (5) Researchers analyse and document the PD process itself.
Q: What is the difference between goal empowerment and process empowerment in PD? Why does the distinction matter?
A: Goal empowerment refers to deploying solutions that provide tangible benefits to users in their real-world contexts. Process empowerment refers to supporting participants' knowledge, creative expression, and psychological safety during the design process itself. The distinction matters because a project can achieve process empowerment (participants learn new skills, feel heard) without ever delivering a functional system that changes their circumstances. The literature review found that many PD projects achieve process empowerment but fall short on goal empowerment, which limits PD's real-world impact.
Q: Name three application areas where PD is commonly used in HCI, and give a brief example for each.
A: (1) Healthcare and well-being, for example co-designing health monitoring systems with elderly users and caregivers. (2) Education and learning, for example developing VR-based educational tools with students and teachers. (3) Civic challenges, for example involving affected communities in urban planning or anti-discrimination initiatives to shape both the technology and the policy around it.
The cooperation dimension connects to broader HCI themes around stakeholder analysis and the design of collaborative systems. The distinction between direct involvement and implicit influence maps onto debates in political science about participatory versus representative decision-making. The application areas covered here overlap significantly with topics in health informatics, educational technology, and civic tech.
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