In the past couple of days I’ve come across a couple of valuable articles on Participatory processes and how best to visualise them. The first is from the excellent Museum 2.0 blog, which I’ve followed for a while as a source of theory and inspiration for the day job. Nina Simon’s article, in turn inspired by this document, explore the various ways in which you can incorporate users in public engagement with science. In another post I’ll explain which of these methods we used on the Ergonomics Real Design project, but I think these are of value to designers and public engagement specialists alike in evaluating how best to integrate participatory design into your engagement or design process.

Participatory Processes ((c) Nina Simon from the Museum 2.0 Blog)

Today I also uncovered another typically brilliant paper from DDO detailing the role that Cybernetics (described as the science of feedback) and systems theory can play in helping designers design sustainable products and services. Some of the article seemed similar to work that the likes of Birgit Mager, Stefan Moritz and Ezio Manzini have contributed long since to the Service Design Community but I think this article also serves as useful introduction to or simplification of Cybernetics and the value of reciprocity in the design of systems and services. If you haven’t checked out the others you should, particularly Stefan’s dissertation. This paper by renowned Cybernetician Klaus Krippendorf was also one of that encouraged me to pursue my Masters studies in Intrinsically Motivating Design.

Taken together these articles are brilliant in asking us to reflect on why Participatory Processes are valuable? Something that many of us know and feel as designers, but something that we often can’t justify or articulate. Having witnessed a few examples of this inarticulable, unsystematic ego-design this week – not least in watching the BBC’s Design for Life series with Philip Starck – I feel it appropriate to reiterate my own personal enthusiasm for a more systematic and empowering way of visualising and articulating design thinking. I’m as giddy as anyone when I see something, product or otherwise that is aesthetically out of this world or that contains an inordinate amount of technology or machined aluminium – I just think that we need to find a more sustainable way to focus our energies as designers. This in turn will result in more sustainable and empowered behaviour of those that interact with the products and services we design.

The Dubberly article is thus to me valuable in how it visualises the reciprocity of participatory processes. Their classification of this seemed to overlap a little with that of Nina Simon’s more theoretical but equally valuable insight.

The idea of reciprocity in both human effort and reward, and how this relates to the wider product or service eco-systems we interact with, is integral to my Masters work on Motivational Design. It’s also instrumental in ensuring effective public engagement with science. I’ve thus attempted to visualise the various collaborative processes detailed in both the previously cited articles. These, like the Motivational Design Personas I put up at the weekend, are still very much in draft so any feedback on these would be gratefully received. The basic premise is – the more balanced and symmetrical the image and correspondingly the transfer of information between left and right, the more sustainable the process.

The red lines indicate an internalised process (i.e an internal thought process), the dotted blue line indicates an observed (implicit) process, the think blue line indicates an articulated (explicit) process. [Does this need greater clarification? - If this doesn't make much sense let me know and check out the Dubberly article first as a primer.]

Observation (cc Fergus Bisset)

Observed Comparison (cc Fergus Bisset)

Conversation (cc Fergus Bisset)

Contribution (cc Fergus Bisset)

Collaboration (cc Fergus Bisset)

Cooperation (cc Fergus Bisset)

Co-Option (cc Fergus Bisset)

Thanks to DDO and Nina Simon for the inspiration.

• How do you visualise or conceptualise the sustainability or equilibrium within the products and systems you design?
• How do you decide which participatory processes to implement as part of your design process?
• Which of these processes are most effective? Is there any correlation between the perceived success of participatory methods and their reciprocity as indicated in these diagrams?