Rogério DePaula
ABSTRACT
As computer technologies start to permeate the everyday activities of a continuously growing population, social and technical as well as political and legal issues will surface. Participatory design is asked to take a more critical view of participation, design, technology, and the arenas in which the network of actors and artifacts dialectically construct the social orders. This paper has a much more modest aim of that to contribute the discussion of participation and design in part by a more indepth understanding of the translation problem among different actors who directly participate in participatory design activities. This problem takes place when different actors come to participate in the design activities and when they are to decide whether to adopt and use a designed artifact. By analyzing a multi-year-long effort to understand and provide social and technical means for the use of educational computer technologies in special education, this paper aims to shed new light on the understanding of this problem. The arenas of participation framework is employed to frame the different social orders in which actors act, carry out their work practices, participate in design processes, and ultimately make use of this artifact. While fundamental to the democratization of the design of sociotechnical solutions, participatory design may not be sufficient to reveal all sociopolitical issues of work practices that surface in its adoption and use. It is necessary to take into account the different arenas in which their design and use are carried out.
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Index Terms
- Lost in translation: a critical analysis of actors, artifacts, agendas, and arenas in participatory design
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Reviews
Molisa D. Derk
From personal experience, I know that most computer professionals know of projects that seemed to be well designed and well written, but went unused or underused because the multiple factors involved in the use of the system were simply not understood. Participatory design (PD) research tries to bridge that gap. This is an excellent paper in that field, though possibly not a very accessible one for a computer professional not involved in PD research, due to the field-specific terminology used. In this paper, DePaula explores the effects of several areas of influence on system design and use beyond the primary users. These areas, or arenas, are the broader work arena, including the people and groups the end user must work with; the institutional arena, including supervisors, coordinators, and governing institutions; and the national arena, including federal legislation, and other national conditions that affect local users. He uses a case study of a system that was designed and implemented for a group of special education teachers, using PD methods, to illustrate the influences and challenges presented by these three arenas in the design, implementation, and eventual utility of the system. The paper is well written, organized, and thorough, and presents a very convincing case. The design and use of a computer system is, in fact, a complex social interaction, as well as a technical process, and PD studies attempt to improve the process so that our systems are actually used and useful. DePaula's paper is an important addition to these studies. Online Computing Reviews Service
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