Topic 3 - Research Paper on Participatory Design

Participatory Design

Definition:

In participatory design, participants (putative, potential or future) are invited to cooperate with designers, researchers and developers during an innovation process. Potentially, they participate during several stages of an innovation process: they participate during the initial exploration and problem definition both to help define the problem and to focus ideas for solution, and during development, they help evaluate proposed solutions.

Research Paper 1:

Gronvall, E. & Kyng, M. (2013). On participatory design of home-based healthcare. Cognition, Technology & Work, 15(4), 389-401.

Participatory Design with Elderly people:

We look at the Research Paper “On participatory design of home-based healthcare” by Erik Gronvall and Morten Kyng. It discusses challenges relating to the Participatory design (PD) in a private home setting.

The paper reports four challenges conducting the PD process in homes of weak/elderly population. As it describes, the challenges are: (1) “designing for, and negotiating knowledge about, the home”, (2) “ill, weak users and their participation in PD”, (3) “divergent interests of participants” and (4) “usable and sustainable post-project solutions” (Gronvall & Kyng, 2013).

The table below describes how control over the setting differs in a home to a hospital.

	Home	Hospital
High Control	Patient	Healthcare worker
Low Control	Healthcare worker, researchers	Patient, researchers

Table 1: Distribution of control

What makes the paper distinct from most other PD papers is that the PD process is set in private homes of participants in contrast to professional environments which are usually the norm. This paper shows that challenges can be difficult to solve, and how tackling these challenges can lead to new possibilities in “development of national infrastructures and service architectures as well as organizational models for healthcare” (Gronvall & Kyng, 2013).

Research Paper 2:

Siozos, P., Palaigeorgiou, G., Triantafyllakos, G., & Despotakis, T. (2009). Computer based testing using “digital ink”: Participatory design of a Tablet PC based assessment application for secondary education. Computers & Education, 52811-819. doi:10.1016/j.compedu.2008.12.006

Participatory Design with secondary school Students and Teachers:

This Research Paper explains about how the participatory design helps in identifying key challenges faced while developing computer based assessment (CBA) application in secondary education and students and teachers are also participated in framework design. CBA Application called “MyTest” is designed with collaboration of 31 students and teachers.

Need of Students and Teachers for designing application:

·     Students and teachers should take responsibility for co-designing the assessment applications, in order to fulfil their expectations, address their deficiencies, adapt them to their computer experience levels and create products that are specific-tailored to their sociocultural and educational traditions.

·      The equipment selected for the assessment delivery should minimize the influence of the platform-mode and test-mode effects, should provide familiar and easy-to-learn interactions and should provide opportunities of use in real learning conditions.

·   Application design should not cancel but enhance previous hand-written assessment practices, enriching them with new possibilities. They should be an evolution that emphasizes educational effectiveness and not a revolution highlighting technological innovations.

Distinguishing Factor of this paper:

One cannot simply design and develop exact solution for others who is in need of it, unless the client themselves involved and give their opinion about the ongoing process. Here students and teachers are involved in the process of Design which helps in bringing out an exact application which satisfy both students and teachers who are the real time users of that application.

Three main guidelines were highlighted for the incorporation of CBA in secondary education:

·      design in cooperation with the students and teachers

·      selection of the most adequate media platform

·      planning an evolution rather than a revolution of the prior practices

They have provided evidence that designing effective CBA applications can be realized by actively involving students and teachers in the design process. Both students and teachers were excited about their participation in the design sessions, and they asserted that they would rely more on educational software designed using this approach. This throws light on their willingness to undertake a process of re-conceptualizing existing pedagogies in the light of new opportunities and engage in the co-formulation of their future.