Appropriation for Interdisciplinary Practice: The Case of Participatory Design in Brazilian Computer Science

摘要

Partner community participation in design enables the exploration of design spaces which could not be reached without partner knowledge and expertise, and also enables partner communities to exercise their personal power to influence technological change towards their own wants and needs. Participatory Design (PD) is an approach that since its inception seeks to build spaces of democratic technological change through practices with (rather than for) partner communities. From its origin in Scandinavia, the approach has been adopted by multiple academic communities around the world, and those adoptions have demanded changes to the underlying theories and methodologies to fit them into each different local reality, a process of appropriation which has transformed PD over the decades. As an example of a region which adopted and adapts PD, Latin America has specific epistemological and methodological challenges which emerge from historical and socioeco-nomic conditions, and in the context of the region, interdisciplinary practices have been discussed and applied in the context of partner participation in design. Considering the importance of academic communities for the advancement of PD towards meaningful changes to partner communities, this paper presents a systematic overview of PD in Brazilian Computer Science as an instance of such community. The study surveys articles from 2000 to 2020, seeking to expose how Brazilian PD operates in the region through the use of interdisciplinary referential. We expect that this contribution elucidates adaptation strategies of PD referential towards their appropriation by communities diverse from those the techniques were originally designed for, so that practitioners from other regions can discuss those strategies when adapting PD to the needs of their partners.