Revising the Roles of Management in Participatory Design

Revising the Roles of Management in Participatory Design: "Participatory design originated in Scandinavia in the 1980’s as an outgrowth of the democratic philosophy of work fostered in Northern Europe. Since PD is so strongly user-centered, it represents a major philosophical change from the consulting model of system design favored by U.S. corporations. One of the tenets of PD is that system workers should be given better tools for their work instead of having their work mechanized. Another is that the user’s perceptions about technology in their work are as significant as the technical requirements for the technology. PD is oriented toward improving social factors in the workplace, which is considered a major purpose of design in Scandinavia. As a design approach, it has been favorably received in Europe, and has been used in numerous projects reported in international journals. Participatory design has evolved over time from a worker-centered intervention to a more integrated system design approach, incorporating a wider range of team members such as analysts, developers, and managers.
Participatory design showed up later in the United States, as an outgrowth of user-centered system design practices facilitated by human factors practitioners. The North American PD approach is more focused on integrating users into the design process and less oriented toward workplace issue resolution or organizational design. PD is considered different from JAD in its allowing users to share responsibility for design with the project and development teams. "