Participatory design
Involving participants from the target groups from start is an essential part of the LIDA approach.
Involving participants from the target groups from start is an essential part of the LIDA approach. In particular, it is essential to not only listen to, and acknowledge, their personal experiences and stories, but also in a co-creation process design and implement this knowledge and practices in the learning resources. This approach has many similarities with Participatory Design, which is a design tradition related to democratization and decision-making power, originated from Scandinavia in the 1970s (Bratteteig, Bødker, Dittrich, Mogensen, & Simonsen, 2013; Martin & Hanington, 2012). Participatory Design is characterised by three core values:
The first is having a say, which means that the users should have influence and power in the decision-making. It is worth noting that having a voice is not enough, you should also be heard and have an impact.
The second value is mutual learning, which refers to the fact that neither the users nor the designers have enough knowledge of both the design possibilities and the domain/context, and they need to learn from each other to be equal contributors to the result.
The third and last core value is co-realisation or co-creation, which simply means that the users should be involved in the design. According to Liz Sanders’ classical map of Design Research (Sanders, 2008), an important difference between user-centred design and participatory design is that in the former, users are considered as subjects or reactive informers, while in the latter, users are treated like partners or active co-creators, see Figure:
Figure 1: Mapping Participatory Design (Sanders, 2008, p. 14). We have added digital storytelling, in the Research-Led, Participatory Mindset part of the map.