Particpatory design of community informatics (May. 3)

By now, the case for participative design of ICT should be clear. Not only in the context of this course but for the information systems discipline in general. As a matter of fact, participative design or participative approaches have been around since the very outset of the discipline. It has been one of the main areas of work under the socio-technical approach; indeed the social aspect of socio-technical systems implies precisely an involvement of users, customers, people affected, managers, designers, experts, etc. in the design of information systems. Methodologies or approaches such as Action Research, Checkland's Soft Systems Methodology or Enid Mumford's ETHICS approach are all testament of this development that has continued through the work we have already discussed (Orlikowski, Walsham, Avgerou, among others). However, these approaches have yet to gain the recognition or widespread use they should have, especially outside academia. This is the same conclusion that Mumford herself reached, as expressed in her last published interview before her death a few years ago (Porra & Hirschheim, 2007). Mumford's career developed in parallel to the development of informatics. She in fact started out working in docks and mines and using participative approaches focused around industrial relations and job satisfaction. Having learnt anthropologically influenced methods from the Tavistock Institute, Mumford and her colleagues would do ethnographic type of research becoming deeply embedded or engaged with the actual work of clerks or miners at the operational level. You can picture her wearing a helmet and lying on the floor while interviewing a miner about his perception of his job, its conditions, management, etc. Her being a woman in a mostly male environment was difficult (not to mention risky) but it was also an asset in terms of gaining trust and appearing less threatening or less representative of management interests (which can of course hamper or downright impede interaction with workers).

Nonetheless, and despite having proposed ETHICS as one of the most influential and early contributions in participative design of ICT systems, Mumford still felt at the end of her career and life that the basic goal had still not been attained, that an ethical approach to IS development had yet to be realized or popularized. That early proposals (such as ETHICS or SSM) were still seen as utopian, or costly, or risky or something to be dealt with by "soft" professionals, but not be real hardcore engineers or designers. So despite the many advances in theoretical and methodological terms, the situation remains mostly unchanged and there are very few companies (whether big corporations, consulting firms, IT industry leaders) that have adopted participative ethical design as a core of their business or as the standard way to go about designing ICT. Mumford's recommendations are as valid today as they were more than forty years ago: (1) information systems should be designed to improve the quality of life for all; (2) individuals should participate in the design; (3) solutions to local problems have global consequences; and (4) all research should lead to problem-solving action. The connection to design science research is also evident and potentially a good sign that there might be a resurgence or strengthening of participative approaches. This might also be pushed forward by the popularization of agile development methods and the widespread use of IT that turns users into more skilled and knowledgeable co-designers.

Because community informatics is aimed at building systems for a specific group (NGOs, townships, etc.) and typically differentiates itself from business informatics, it is an especially rich setting for studying and applying participative design, as expressed in (Carrol & Rosson, 2007). For them, participatory design is supported by moral and pragmatic principles or propositions. The moral principle expresses the ethical compromise or responsibility that within a democratic society, people affected by a system should participate in its conception and design; that it is in fact their right to do so. The pragmatic principle simply states that participation is required in order for the systems to actually be effective, because there is no other way to design it in a situated context-dependent manner, under the understanding that there is no generic ICT for community informatics. Community informatics implies a diverse population, a diverse technological infrastructure, unpredictability in terms of future users and multiplicity of roles. On the other hand, it implies that whatever the intervention amounts to (a new ICT tool, a new system, a new process support), this will impact the lives of ordinary citizens. So it is evident that both the moral and the pragmatic principle hold for these types of interventions. While participatory design is aimed at inclusion (which we have already discussed), community informatics is aimed at self-actualisation (which we have also discussed as empowerment of individuals in line with Amartya Sen's ideas about capacities rather than resources). When combined, the result should be collective actualisation in the target community.

Now, in order for this to happen, there are a number of guidelines, issues and instruments available. First of all, motivation is a key ingredient for participation. If there are no community leaders to begin with, then the designer (as facilitator, not as expert) should contribute to generating the conditions for participation. On the one hand, the fear of technology should be reduced. This can be achieved, either by showing simple examples of easily applicable ICT tools (e.g. using Twitter or Doodle to quickly organize a meeting) or by previously training participants with an emphasis on appropriation and autonomous deployment of (web-enabled) tools. On the other hand, the participants should take control of the process through learning. Not just learning how to use or deploy ICT, but learning about participation through discussion on these issues. And more importantly, the community can share their learning experiences with other communities, helping them structure their own participative community informatics initiatives: this generates both recognition and reputation, which are fertile grounds for motivation and empowerment. Specifically, each intervention may be supported by observation, interviews, workshops, scenario-based design, case studies, forum or wiki based technology assessments, learning about simple open source or web authoring tools, and then on to cross-community workshops and training which may result in the emergence of sustainable steering committees through which the community adopts and takes charge of the design effort towards the future and in an extended network beyond the local context.