9 Participatory Methods Overview

User (or participatory) design, is a term coined by Alison Carr-Chelman who defines a model that “extends stakeholder involvement beyond mere input to create empowered users who have design and decision-making powers”. The focus of user design is to empower users to have an equal voice in the process of creation so that library employees are working alongside stakeholders to develop the strategic plan. This can take many forms, but the basics of participatory design include:

• Control over the process and agenda is handed over to the participants. Participants also analyze and reflect on the information generated by the planning process
• It involves library employees and participants working together to understand a problematic situation and change it for the better
• This type of design focuses on social change that promotes democracy and challenges inequality; is context-specific, often targeted to the needs of a particular group; is an iterative cycle of input, action, and reflection

One critical element to understand is that in seeking to empower user communities in this way, there is no “liberator” who is here to save the day and de-marginalize this process. The emphasis is very much on collaboration as equals working together towards shared solutions-this is crucial and you must have a clear understanding of this element prior to engaging in any type of discussions and activities with stakeholders. Methods under this heading include ethnographic approaches, user experience, and equity-driven design.

Ethnographic approaches

• Ethnographic approaches cover everything from drawing to interviews and observations. Nancy Fried Foster has worked extensively with libraries in this instance:. These types of methods are all fairly involved, and they require a high level of interpretation and synthesis. These approaches are best used when you want to collect direct data about user behavior. Both observations and drawing require an understanding of what you are trying to study via each method, as well as the ability to elicit themes out of what you are seeing rather than impose a predisposed notion of the results ahead of time.
• Drawings can also provide interesting results, but you will have to think about what patterns they help you uncover-if everyone is drawing a service desk of some sort, it will be up to you to decide what importance this element might have for your planning vs if there are fun but ultimately unique elements such as green spaces that might be of less interest. Drawing projects will need specific prompts and you will want to provide participants with the opportunity to ask questions without guiding them too much as to what or how to draw. There is no specific template for this type of user engagement as it really depends on your context and what your goals are for the study in question.

User Experience approaches

• Typically, user experience is related to discussions surrounding virtual environments such as website design, but there are increasing applications for face to face interactions with users. The Nielsen group provides an overview article of when to utilize what type of methodology such as directly engaging with users vs observing, collecting self-reported data vs obtaining it indirectly. One popular method is that of customer journey mapping which allows users to tell you what they are experiencing and feeling during each step of a particular service or activity. Customer journey maps are a great way to put yourself in your users’ shoes so that you are seeing their challenges and successes with fresh eyes which will help you make improvements or test out a new offering. Creating a flowchart of each stop along the journey will help you analyze the action with the corresponding experience. Customer journey maps typically involve the following steps:
  • Understanding your users as a group-there may be different groups of users that you want to do this separately for
  • Timeline (is it a one-time event or does it occur across a longer time span?)
  • Touchpoints are all of the things and people where the user is interacting with your service, program, space, etc.
  • Asking open ended questions will help users fill in their own thoughts and feedback

Design thinking and equity-centered design

• While the other two methods work well if you are seeking specific feedback regarding a either an existing state (i.e. is this service being used and how it might change in the future) or as more of a way to envision new possibilities, equity-centered design can help you think through the overall process rather than the content itself. Equity-centered design is a derivative of design thinking-both of these approaches were developed at the Stanford D school. This type of process focuses on the first step in the design process, that of building empathy by examining biases and power structures inherent in our approaches to generating new ideas for planning. They entail:

1. Building awareness of and about the impact of our beliefs and biases as they relate with/to our users and their context
2. Who are we and who are our users and where does each come from (perspective)?
3. Making power dynamics explicit
4. What are the equity challenges we/they are dealing with?
5. How can collaboration help address these challenges?

Design thinking has been criticized as being one size fits all and trying to gloss over some of these more complex issues, but equity-centered design, if done correctly, will help you uncover biases before the process even begins. The information on the Stanford website provides additional activities you can utilize to help create a shared understanding of the challenges your users have that you can address as you go through each step and generate solutions, then implement them and gather additional feedback as you test out these ideas and build on what you are learning. As with some of the other methods we discussed, this process requires time as well as the ability to identify patterns and themes while focusing on one or two solutions to follow-up on. Asking open ended questions and letting users drive the direction of the guided conversation can also be challenging but can yield meaningful results and a potential to create or update services and initiatives in new and interesting ways.