Multilevel Design and Role Play: Experiences in Assessing Support for Neighborhood Participation in Design

摘要

Designing and assessing systems to support neighborhood participation in design is difficult due to the challenges of involving real participants and the fragile nature of early instantiations of technologies aimed at supporting open-ended and ill-structured design tasks. We report on a scenario-based, semi-realistic field trial of two prototypes of the Envisionment and Discovery Collaboratory, an environment for supporting community involvement in design activities. By engaging subjects in playing participant roles, we have been able to gain some crucial insights into the facets of the design at multiple levels as part of an ongoing design process.