Participatory methods

Participatory methods allow users to provide input, ideas and feedback to researchers and designers to help shape the concept and design of new products and services.

Participatory design methods encourage the direct involvement of users or consumers in the design process, increasing the potential for a cross-fertilisation not only among the different professions and competences that can contribute to a foresight activity, but also among the principal stakeholders that might be affected by the ideas and decisions there developed. These design projects can become symbolic processes able to engage people in constructing their own context and ‘point to something meaningful’ that they have constructed (Stacey et al., 2000).

Participatory design may be more appropriate for public and non-profit project planning, with its need for a higher degree of external stakeholder involvement, than for a corporate product development enterprise. Wherever it is used, however, the important thing is to plan how to involve different stakeholders at different levels of the process.

The impulse to involve as many participants as possible in design research and planning should be tempered with the understanding that even small samples of people can provide a great deal of information. (The field of human computer interaction, for example, has shown that much can be learned from a test group of as few as a dozen people.)

Our team of expert analysts and evaluators has been involved in the design of many systems where they used participatory methods. These methods enable to reduce the gap between the functional requirements and the user requirements.

Formative evaluation is one of the most useful participatory methods we adopt in this respect. This method is particularly valuable, for instance, when a given web-based application has to be redesigned. Starting from the existing systems, users are required to perform certain tasks and to discuss what would need to be improved based on their experience interacting with the system. The findings are than valued and negotiated with the design team, so that they can gain real insight on how to redesign the system.

Other participatory methods include concept testing, collaborative prototyping, card sorting and scenario testing. Together they help foster the evolution of concepts and the development of prototypes.