Getting Creative with Participatory Design

Abstract

Most published work on Participatory Design (PD) has taken a practical approach, focusing on actively involving users in software development. There have been few attempts at developing theory to explain, and ultimately to improve, PD activities. Terms such as creativity and innovation are often used to describe aspects of the PD process. In this paper we describe our ongoing research applying theoretical conceptions of creativity in order to understand, explain and improve the creative process of PD.