Source: Qi & Yu, "Participatory Design in Human-Computer Interaction: Cases, Characteristics, and Lessons"
Tags: cooperation, political commitment, democracy, empowerment, mutual learning, creativity, reflection-in-action, PD misconceptions, PD in HCI, design collaboration, knowledge exchange, agonistic spaces
Difficulty: Intermediate to Advanced | Prerequisites: Parts 1 and 2 of these notes (PD history, method, and application areas).
This is where the paper gets sharpest. Having established where and why HCI scholars use PD, the authors now examine how the four core dimensions of PD (cooperation, political commitment, mutual learning, creativity) actually showed up in practice, and where they were missing. The section closes with a direct discussion of common misconceptions about PD in HCI. If your exam or essay asks you to critically evaluate how PD is practised (rather than just defined), this is the material to draw on.
Most HCI studies involved end-users, but many used them as informants or testers rather than co-decision-makers, which undermines PD's democratic principle. Only 11 of 185 papers achieved real-world empowerment through deployed designs. Mutual learning was bidirectional but unevenly reported. Creativity often lacked true reflection-in-action. The authors identify three core misconceptions: overlooking political commitment, narrowly equating PD with workshops, and inventing unnecessary PD terminology.
Explicit (Direct) Democracy in PD
End-user participants directly engage in design decision-making, from ideation through to prototyping and testing, co-deciding the final outcome. This is the form of democracy PD literature considers essential.
Implicit Democracy in PD
End-user participants influence designers' decisions indirectly (e.g., by providing feedback that designers then interpret), but designers retain final decision-making authority. The paper flags this as a weaker form that risks undermining PD's core commitment.
Goal Empowerment
The extent to which PD outcomes actually improve end-users' lives by producing deployed, functional designs. Only 11 of 185 papers achieved tangible, real-world goal empowerment.
Process Empowerment
How users are supported during PD activities. Three types were identified: knowledge empowerment (building participants' understanding of practices, technology, or domain), creative expression empowerment (teaching design skills and providing tools), and environmental empowerment (creating safe, supportive settings).
Mutual Learning Framework
A taxonomy of five knowledge types exchanged between participants and designers: user present practice, technology options, new systems, design skills, and auxiliary knowledge and skills.
Agonistic Public Spaces
A concept from PD literature where diverse stakeholders with conflicting perspectives engage in constructive debate, driving innovation through negotiation rather than avoiding disagreement. Think of it as productive friction rather than forced consensus.
Reflection-in-Action
Creativity that emerges from participants reflecting on their current practices while actively making and prototyping, not from detached brainstorming. Marc Steen calls this "reflexivity": reflection on practices in which one is actively involved.
End-users: Present in all but one of the 185 papers. These are the people directly affected by the design output.
Other stakeholders: Present in roughly half the papers. Includes caregivers, domain experts, parents, policymakers, and managers.
Designers: Present in all papers, typically the paper's own researchers. They coordinated, facilitated, and sometimes co-created.
68.65% of papers involved individual-level participants (representing themselves and similar people).
29.73% involved community-level participants (e.g., residents and building managers).
Only 1.62% (3 papers) engaged government-level participants, such as municipal project leaders or United Nations collaborators.
Informant: Providing insights about practices and needs, typically through interviews and observations.
Designer: Acting as independent or co-designers alongside researchers.
Evaluator: Voting on sketches, assessing prototypes, or reviewing existing designs.
Facilitator: In rare cases, such as children acting as camera operators during interviews with peers.
Researcher: Participating in data analysis alongside the research team.
End-users designing with designers (sometimes involving stakeholders): Designers either acted as facilitators while users led, or designers co-created alongside users. This was the most common pattern.
Stakeholders collaborating with designers, without end-users: For example, therapists and social workers co-designing technology for children with trauma histories, but without the children present.
Designers leading, participants as informants or testers: Users provided feedback or insights but did not participate in design decision-making. This pattern conflicts with PD's democratic principle.
77.84% in person (participants' homes, science centres, etc.)
11.89% entirely online (using Miro, Zoom, etc.)
10.27% mixed settings (combining online and in-person)
Two manifestations were observed:
Direct democratic engagement: Users fully involved throughout design stages, from ideation to prototyping, expressing opinions and co-deciding the outcome. Sometimes enacted through evolutionary prototyping where users proposed new features iteratively.
Implicit democratic influence: Users participated in workshops whose outputs were then analysed and interpreted by designers. Final design decisions remained with the designers. Also common in design-space-exploration papers, where the output was guidelines or directions rather than a concrete design.
The authors' key concern: when designers make final decisions on behalf of participants, this undermines PD's democratic commitment. It risks prioritising designer preferences over actual user needs and blurs the line between PD and standard User-Centred Design.
Goal empowerment took two forms:
Real-world, tangible empowerment: Design outcomes deployed and made publicly accessible. Example: releasing a sound-and-image manipulation system as open-source software. Only 11 papers achieved this.
Proposed goal empowerment: Design directions that could benefit end-users in future, but remained as sketches, scenarios, or low-fidelity prototypes. The majority of papers fell into this category.
Process empowerment came in three types:
Knowledge empowerment: Enhancing participants' understanding of their own practices, technology literacy, or domain knowledge.
Creative expression empowerment: Orienting participants on design thinking, sketching techniques, and providing appropriate design tools.
Environmental empowerment: Building relationships among participants, fostering community, encouraging free expression, and adjusting workshop approaches based on feedback.
The paper identifies five knowledge domains exchanged during PD, organised in a framework from understanding current practices to designing better futures.
User present practice: Practice contexts, practice details (workflows, tasks), power dynamics (hierarchies, authority structures), and user perspectives and attitudes.
Technology options: Overviews of existing and emerging technologies, plus users' attitudes toward and understanding of these technologies.
New systems: Imagining new design solutions (conceptualising potential systems) and prototyping/experiencing new systems (hands-on interaction with prototypes).
Design skills: Basic design concepts (e.g., design thinking) and practical design skills (e.g., using specific tools or prototyping techniques).
Auxiliary knowledge and skills: Domain-specific knowledge relevant to the design topic, research skills (data collection and analysis), and ICT literacy (proficiency with tools like Zoom, Miro, iPads).
Designers learning from participants: Gained insight into user practices, envisioned designs, technology interactions, and (in some cases) design skills from observing how participants used tools and provided feedback.
Participants learning from designers: Gained technology overviews, design skills, understanding of new systems through concepts and prototypes, and auxiliary knowledge.
Participants learning from each other: Exchanged all five knowledge types, learning about each other's practices, organisational roles, challenges, and perspectives. This peer learning is often under-recognised.
Oral expression: Participants verbally expressed new ideas or improvements. Particularly important when working with people with disabilities, where designers helped translate verbal ideas into sketches.
Visual presentation: Drawing, sketching, role play, storyboards, scenarios, wireframes, crafts, and videos, using paper, pens, sticky notes, or digital platforms like Miro.
Mock-up prototypes: Ranged from low-fidelity (paper prototypes, LEGO constructions, handcrafted models) to medium- and high-fidelity prototypes and Wizard-of-Oz setups.
Functional systems: Systems that could simulate or achieve major characteristics of the final product, intended for functional testing and iteration. In some cases, designers pre-built functional systems before the PD sessions.
The creative outputs included computer systems, services (learning objectives, hospital services), and communication norms.
PD's principle is that creativity should emerge from participants reflecting on their existing practices while actively making things, not from detached brainstorming.
The paper found that many PD practices did connect to users' current practices through mutual learning (interviews, focus groups, observations) and involved designing-by-doing (hands-on prototyping).
However, not all practices upheld this principle. Some guided participants to create things without linking the process to their relevant experiences. Others asked participants to verbalise ideas without involving them in hands-on activities. Both deviations weaken the reflection-in-action foundation of PD creativity.
In current HCI research, PD is more often viewed as a research method to extract user knowledge than as a design practice to create tangible, real-world solutions. Most outputs are guidelines and directions, not deployed systems.
Most PD practices addressed immediate, small-scale issues at the individual level, with limited collaboration with organisations or governments that could amplify impact. Only 3 papers involved government-level participants. The 1998 concern raised by Kensing and Blomberg about PD's "individual project arena" focus remains unresolved in HCI.
Involve participants as direct co-decision-makers, not merely as influences on designer decisions.
Develop and deploy functional design solutions rather than stopping at guidelines and low-fidelity prototypes.
Involve diverse stakeholders, including community and governmental partners, to scale impact.
Embrace constructive conflict ("agonistic public spaces") rather than seeking frictionless consensus.
Re-engage with the reflection-in-action principle for creativity.
Examine PD practices from non-Western contexts to address the field's Western-centric bias.
Misconception 1: Overlooking the political commitment to democracy and empowerment
Some papers labelled their work as PD without involving end-users in the design process, or treated participants merely as informants or testers. Without the democratic principle of shared power and decision-making, such practices are better described as "co-design" rather than PD.
Misconception 2: Narrowly equating PD to design ideation or prototyping
Some cases labelled only the workshop sessions as PD while treating earlier stages (understanding user practices through interviews) and later stages (user testing) as separate from PD. PD is a holistic, iterative design process requiring user engagement throughout, not just during a single workshop phase.
Misconception 3: Introducing unnecessary PD terminologies
Terms like "Iterative Participatory Design" and "User-Centred Participatory Design" are redundant. PD has always been iterative since its inception, and PD is already an extreme form of human-centred design, making the "user-centred" prefix unnecessary. These terms signal a lack of fundamental understanding of PD's existing concepts.
The mutual learning framework (five knowledge types) can serve as a planning checklist for anyone running a PD project: have you ensured that both participants and designers are learning about each other's practices, the available technology, the emerging system, design skills, and relevant domain knowledge? The three misconceptions provide a practical diagnostic: if your project lacks democratic decision-making by end-users, it may be co-design but it is not PD.
Students often think that any workshop with users counts as PD. It does not. If users only test or react to designer-created prototypes without influencing decisions, it falls short of PD's democratic commitment.
The idea that PD must always produce a deployable product is also incorrect, but the authors argue the field should move further in that direction to achieve real-world empowerment.
"Mutual learning" is not just designers learning from users. It runs in both directions and also occurs between participants themselves.
Creativity in PD is not free brainstorming. It should be grounded in reflection on current practices and involve hands-on making.
⚠️ The distinction between explicit and implicit democracy is a critical analytical point. Know examples of each and be prepared to argue why implicit democracy is considered insufficient by strict PD standards.
⚠️ Only 11 out of 185 papers achieved tangible, real-world goal empowerment. This statistic powerfully illustrates the gap between PD's aspirations and HCI practice.
⚠️ The five knowledge types in the mutual learning framework (user present practice, technology options, new systems, design skills, auxiliary knowledge and skills) are a testable taxonomy.
⚠️ The three misconceptions (overlooking political commitment, equating PD to workshops, unnecessary terminology) are likely exam or essay material. Be able to explain each with examples.
⚠️ The concept of "agonistic public spaces" and the value of constructive conflict in PD is a more advanced point that shows deeper engagement with the literature.
True or false: Most HCI PD studies achieved real-world deployment of their design outcomes. False – only 11 of 185 papers achieved tangible, real-world goal empowerment.
Fill in the blank: The three types of process empowerment are knowledge empowerment, creative expression empowerment, and ________ empowerment. Environmental.
True or false: In PD, mutual learning only flows from participants to designers. False – it is bidirectional (designers also teach participants) and also occurs between participants.
Fill in the blank: The term "agonistic public spaces" refers to settings where diverse stakeholders engage in constructive ________ and debate. Conflict.
True or false: "Iterative Participatory Design" is an important new variant of PD. False – PD has always been iterative; the term is redundant and signals a misunderstanding.
Q: What are the two forms of democracy the authors identified in HCI PD practices, and which does the PD literature consider essential?
A: Direct democratic engagement (users co-decide design outcomes) and implicit democratic influence (users inform designers who retain final authority). Classical PD literature considers direct democratic engagement essential, as implicit influence alone undermines the principle of shared power.
Q: Name the five knowledge types in the mutual learning framework and explain how they are organised.
A: The framework moves from understanding current practices to designing better futures. The three core types are user present practice (contexts, details, power dynamics, attitudes), technology options (overviews and perspectives on existing technology), and new systems (imagining and prototyping new designs). The two supporting types are design skills (concepts and practical techniques) and auxiliary knowledge and skills (domain knowledge, research skills, ICT literacy).
Q: What are the three misconceptions of PD identified in the paper?
A: (1) Overlooking political commitment to democracy and empowerment, for example by treating users as informants or testers rather than co-decision-makers. (2) Narrowly equating PD to a single workshop phase rather than recognising it as a holistic, iterative design process. (3) Introducing unnecessary terminology like "Iterative Participatory Design" or "User-Centred Participatory Design" that reveals a lack of understanding of PD's existing features.
Q: Why do the authors recommend embracing conflict in PD rather than seeking consensus?
A: Drawing on the concept of "agonistic public spaces," the authors argue that diverse stakeholders with differing perspectives can drive innovation through the negotiation of their differences. Early Scandinavian PD projects treated conflicts between workers, management, and developers as valuable resources. Avoiding conflict can produce harmonious but less diverse and innovative design outcomes.
Q: How does the paper characterise the gap between PD's empowerment aspirations and actual HCI practice?
A: Most HCI PD papers remained at the design-space-exploration stage, producing guidelines, directions, or low-fidelity prototypes rather than deployed systems. Only 11 of 185 papers achieved real-world empowerment through publicly accessible design outcomes. The authors call for more PD practices that go beyond research to develop and deploy functional design solutions.
This material connects to power and ethics in design (who makes decisions and who benefits), a recurring theme in responsible innovation and AI ethics courses. The mutual learning framework links to knowledge management and organisational learning theory. The agonistic public spaces concept connects to political philosophy (Chantal Mouffe's work on agonistic pluralism) and has parallels in CSCW's interest in conflict and negotiation in collaborative work. The misconceptions section is directly relevant to any design-methods module that covers the differences between PD, UCD, and co-design.
cooperation in PD, political commitment, democracy in design, empowerment, goal empowerment, process empowerment, knowledge empowerment, environmental empowerment, mutual learning, mutual learning framework, five knowledge types, user present practice, technology options, new systems, design skills, auxiliary knowledge, creativity in PD, reflection-in-action, reflexivity, designing by doing, oral expression, visual presentation, mock-up prototypes, functional systems, agonistic public spaces, constructive conflict, PD misconceptions, co-design vs PD, implicit vs explicit democracy, depoliticisation, Western-centric bias, design collaboration patterns