Participant's View: Short-Term Evaluation of Realizing PD Ideals

Abstract

Participatory Design (PD) has long been described as a way to democratize technology development by involving those affected by the outcomes. Besides a good fit of technology as the outcome, PD allows participants to ĝ€have a say', and supports ĝ€mutual learning' and ĝ€co-realization'. A diverse range of PD methods has been developed, but there is a shortage of empirical studies showing whether (and why) these methods help pursue PD ideals. We therefore report on a case study of a short-term evaluation approach that may exemplary close this gap, and that allowed us to gain more knowledge on how our method affected participants. Participants perceived moderate to high feelings of ĝ€having a say', ĝ€mutual learning', and ĝ€co-realization'. In future research, mutual learning may exemplarily be improved by introducing a changing peer-to-peer procedure to the method. The evaluation may further be advanced by taking expectations into account.