Small projects/large changes: Participatory design as an open participated process

Abstract

This paper examines the need for large-scale, sustainable changes, and the effects of citizens' active participation and design co-operating to realise such changes. Section 1, starting from Pelle Ehn's last contribution, deals with participatory design and how it can be extended from the traditional idea of participation as the integration of users in projects, to the concept of participation as the interaction of active groups of citizens with open and articulated processes in the direction of socio-technical changes. Section 2 introduces the idea of planning by projects strategy and presents five design projects. Section 3 discusses how participatory design can be extended to give a rationale for these large-scale projects and what designers did in practice: triggered citizens’ interest, aligned their motivations and empowered their capabilities. The idea emerging from this discussion is that when participatory design is intended as an approach aiming at broad and complex transformation processes its traditional notion must integrate the concept of social innovation (first step) and evolve towards the idea of an open process where a multiplicity of small, diverse, participated initiatives (or local projects) interact (second step) to achieve a larger vision.

Keywords:

• social innovation
• participatory design
• design thinking

Notes

1. Socio-technical system: the interaction between society's complex infrastructures and human behaviours. In this sense, society itself, and most of its substructures, are complex socio-technical systems (Wikipedia).

2. This paper is the result of a research conversation between the authors. Nevertheless, Ezio Manzini has directly edited Sections 1 and 3 (3.1, 3.2), and Francesca Rizzo Sections 2, 3.3 and 4.

3. William Mitchell argued that a Living Lab represents a user-centric research methodology for sensing, prototyping, validating and refining complex solutions in multiple and evolving real-life contexts. Nowadays, several Living Lab descriptions and definitions are available from different sources. Recently, Mitchell, along with Kent Larson and Sandy Pentland, formed the first US-based Living Labs research consortium. According to the consortium website: ‘the convergence of globalization, changing demographics, and urbanization is transforming almost every aspect of our lives. We face new choices about where and how we work, live, travel, communicate, and maintain health. Ultimately, our societies are being transformed. MIT Living Labs brings together interdisciplinary experts to develop, deploy, and test – in actual living environments – new technologies and strategies for design that respond to this changing world. Our work spans in scale from the personal to the urban, and addresses challenges related to health, energy, and creativity’ (Wikipedia).