Participatory Design: The Third Space in HCI
Michael Muller

1. Introduction
   • What is participatory design?
   • Why should people care?
   • Where does participatory design happen?
     • Differences in different cultures and political traditions
   • When does participation happen?
     • Lifecycle issues
2. Brief bibliographic essay
   • Major sources for participatory design
   • Previous works on participatory practices
3. Analysis space of participatory practices
   • Organized by two dimensions
     • Lifecycle phase (from early problem analysis through field customization and redesign)
     • Whose "cultural space" is involved?
       • Do the users come to the software professionals' world? Provide examples.
       • Do the software professionals come to the users' world? Provide examples.
       • Do users and software professionals meet "in the middle," between their two worlds? This is the focus of the chapter
4. Detour: Cultural spaces and "third space" analyses
   • From CHI 2000 plenary: Third space
     • The concept of intermediate/boundary spaces, sharing attributes of what is on either side.
     • Common example: Estuary as meeting place of salt and fresh water -- and very fertile
     • Ground the concept (briefly!) in cultural studies (hybridity, Bhabha; Haraway; L. Code)
5. Review selected participatory practices that lie in the "third space of participatory design"
   • I.e., the practices that are neither in the users' world nor in the software professionals' world
   • Apply attributes of third space work (from the preceding section) to help to understand these practices
   • Review the practices (e.g., games, theatre, alternate media, other unusual working materials, and practices for their use)
     • Co-construction of materials
     • Co-construction of analytic language (e.g., as formed from the materials, in part)
     • Co-construction of understanding (hybridity, maintaining multiple perspectives simultaneously)
     • Derive general attributes of third space work in PD and HCI
6. Conclusion
   • Challenges and unsolved problems
   • Where to go for more information
   
   
   Homepage -- Objectives -- Guidelines -- Table of contents -- Advisory board -- Contact us