Participation is hardly used in practice tools and techniques have been developed over the years to support the kind of participation activities that have been pursued in the past. New computer tools may add a new dimension to the suite of available tools and extent the scope of participation possible
Since there are some successful participation projects carried out in computerless environments indicating that computers are not a prerequisite for participation [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9] the question of the need for computer tools for supporting participation arises. Our answer consists of five parts. First, especially in product design, computer tools such as 2 or 3-dimensional simulations have been used already in participation activities [10, 11, 12] and can be further used instead of expensive 3-dimensional scaled-model simulations [13, 11]. Second, a major part in participatory design projects is the education of participants. The medium of education may range from workshops to the provision of working manuals [14, 15, 5, 16, 17]. This educational activity can benefit from the availability of computer tools that may enhance or replace some of the traditional techniques. Certainly, hypertext and multi-media technologies can be used to provide different, if not richer, medium for communicating information [18, 19].
Third, extensive participation requires facilities to enable the accumulation, organization, comprehension, and use of the resulting volumes of information if it is to be digested before an action is to take place. These facilities can be supported by computer tools. Note that such facilities extend and provide new roles for other technologies that facilitate group work such as Group Decision Support Systems (GDSS) [20, 21] or Group Communication Support Systems (GCSS) [22].
Fourth, certain forms of computational support may increase the rate and type of participation by providing effective means of communication (see below). Fifth, and maybe most significant, computational support for participation may provide the substrate for conducting studies on participation. In fact, as the first step in a participation project, prospective participants could study previous design situations to determine the form of participation they want to adopt or modify. We argue that the study of participation should be done in a participatory mode (i.e., Participatory Action Research) and believe that the same tools that support participatory design could be used for supporting participatory research. In the ideal case, these processes are merged into one.
We now focus on computational support of communication and information
organization in participatory design.
The participatory design process,
including the participatory development of tools, is a complex process whose
effectiveness may be enhanced by support from computational tools. Some
evidence that computer tools can influence participation can be adduced from
studying the patterns of interactions different people display via
electronic mail or other media systems [25]. For instance,
some people that did not participate in face-to-face discussions found it
easier to participate through electronic medium, even when participants
belonged to unequal social status [26].
Participatory design requires extended and meaningful communication. Communication among members of the design group requires that there be consensus on the naming (i.e., a shared denotation and understanding of relevant terms and concepts), constraints, problem structuring, and design trade-offs. Without such agreements, effective communication and coordination of work cannot occur [27]. However, such agreements cannot, in general, be imposed from the outside but must be generated by the design group consensually. In this context, participants from different disciplinary, experiential, and organizational background need to work together. Supporting the underlying communication process requires facilities for reconciliation of different perspectives as well as the maintenance of each individual perspective. Otherwise a given individual participant may be unable to effectively access, understand, and contribute to the information generated collectively.
The participation process takes place both through synchronous as well as asynchronous communication. Communication, an integral part of any participatory work, operates along the two dimensions of time and place [28]. Interactions in the same-place same-time quadrant of this space are the focal point of most collaborative work. The focus of these tools is on creating a shared workspace where the communications take place through a shared workspace and by the direct physical presence of the participants. Extensions to these technologies, relax the requirement of same-place by exploiting high-speed communications and video technologies [29].
Communication becomes more complicated when same-time same-place collaborative work, being resource and travel intensive, is not viable and different-time different-place collaboration is required. In the absence of face-to-face contacts, individual engineers must be able to participate in this dialogue in an asynchronous manner in a variety of representational forms, media, and modes of communication while retaining the time sequence of the exchanges as follows:
Information capture and structuring depends on which representational forms, media, and modes of communication are used. For example, information techniques useful for text management are not useful for graphical information. On the other hand, organizational units or concepts extracted from textual information can be useful in classifying graphical information such as sketches, or drawings.
Same-time technologies use multi-form, multi-media communication in an attempt to provide support for approximating the most effective mode of communication - face-to-face. Same-time approaches are limited, however, in the number of participants that can effectively communicate. Furthermore, they lack a viable mechanism for accessing design rationale or history, which causes significant problems in understanding previous decisions and consequently in applying the lessons of the past to the present. On the other hand, asynchronous communication is limited in the richness of its modes of communication. However, it may support the participation of larger numbers of participants and provide facilities for capturing design rationale as an integral part of the process without unacceptable additional overhead.
One of the major problems associated with asynchronous communications is that the ``conversation'' tends to drift; i.e., the communicators tend to lose the overall context of the discussion [28]. This is because the maintenance of the structure of the context becomes very difficult unless such maintenance is designed into the system. For example, e-mail users attempt to maintain part of the context by including the mail being responded to in their replies but a moments reflection reveals the difficulty of using such an approach in an extended conversation.
Moreover, the ability of synchronous communication to provide effective support for collaboration degrades when meetings do not address self-contained topics. In situations where issues are re-visited in subsequent meetings, the context of the previous discussions needs to be re-created to allow effective communication. This activity can benefit from facilities that assist in constructing and managing such context -- which, in effect leads to problems and requirements parallel to the asynchronous case. In effect, this brings different-time characteristics into same-time activities.
Asynchronous communication is needed when some cannot or are not willing to participate fully in all discussions, they may follow the discussion coded through the computer medium and comment on them. Their comments are a form of restricted participation providing input otherwise inaccessible. Note that such an option is expected to be negotiated and agreed upon by all participants. Asynchronous communication is also needed when participation must be interrupted because of time commitments. One can envision potential participants who are unable to participate due to conflicts in schedules--a situation common in urban planning participation projects in small towns [30]; in these cases, tools which are designed to allow for asynchronous participation can permit those potential participants to contribute. While the local newspapers have served as a record of such participation [30], yesterday's newspapers are sometimes hard to come by.