Participatory Design
End-users need to be involved because the designer cannot know the user
(and her tasks and environment) sufficiently wel to answer all questions
that come up during the design phase.
(See also: + and - points of this approach)
Participatory design means:
- Users become first class members of the design team.
This means they become active collaborators, not just passive participants.
Active members make suggestions, ask questions and fully participate in
discussions. Their role is thus not limited to answering questions the
designer comes up with.
It is important to involve real end-users, not their managers, in the
design team.
- Users are considered subject matter experts.
A designer is a user-interface expert and possibly also an application
programmer, but is not an expert in the task-domain and work environment
of the user. The end-user knows best how she is best able to perform
her tasks.
- The design process is iterative.
Throughout the process the designer learns more and more about the
user's environment and tasks.
Through experiments with mockups or prototypes the user learns more about
how to best perform a given task by means of a graphical user-interface.