Design Decision Competence: Supporting User Participation in Design Decisions

Abstract

The paper suggests the notion of design decision competence to describe the competence that users need to develop in order to participate in design decisions in Participatory Design (PD). We present two PD projects with older adults where they participated actively in making design decisions and we describe the competence they developed as a basis for these design decisions. We argue that experiences with materials and prototypes that demonstrate technical possibilities are important for developing such competence. We conclude by proposing a refined notion of design decision competence which enables real participation in design decisions.