Designing Participedia: A Collaborative Research Platform

Abstract

A transformation of democratic governance is occurring as public participation empowers citizens to have their voices heard beyond the vote. Participedia is a research community and online crowdsourcing platform designed to document and share emerging knowledge about participatory democracy. Participedia's women-led Design & Technology (D&T) team used participatory design (PD) and feminist human computer interaction (HCI) strategies to evaluate Participedia's formerly proprietary website and design and build a new, open source platform. By shifting Participedia to an open source technological approach, the D&T team deliberately created opportunities for women and students and initiated new collaborations through channels like Github. Key design improvements, such as improved accessibility and reducing bias in the data model of Participedia, further align the project with feminist values of equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI). The D&T team is part of a new generation of designers and developers contributing to interdisciplinary research through design and technology for social good.