Increasing Participatory Engagement through Technology and Design

This broad-ranging edited collection highlights the role that technology can play in increasing community engagement in participatory design, now and in the future.

Challenging conventional notions of participatory design, this volume provides innovative solutions in areas such as democracy, sustainable living, smart cities, energy, and transport. Design has the capacity to engage citizens and communities in new and different ways, and since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, it has become increasingly important to rethink how services and engagement can be made digital. Each chapter demonstrates applied and potential uses of emerging technologies as a form of engagement with select case studies from South and North America, Europe, and Asia, all grounded in participatory theories, methods, and practices. Together, they explore how the green transition, the move to Industry 5.0, global-centric design, or systemic design approaches play a role in citizen engagement when current paradigms are being challenged. Leading practitioners and researchers cover topics such as crowd-sourcing information gathering, visual and systems thinking, creativity tools, participatory budgeting and governance, online participation, and citizen engagement to bridge communities and government.

This interdisciplinary book provides theoretical and practical knowledge for those who work with citizens, communities, and participants in multiple contexts, including designers in the fields of interaction and user experience design, product design, service and system design, social design, and design for policy and governance. It will also appeal to managers, public and private sector planners, engineers, and policymakers.

Mari Suoheimo is an Associate Professor at The Oslo School of Architecture and Design, Norway. Her main research focus is on how to approach wicked problems in service design. Suoheimo is also part of the editorial board of the Design Journal and the Contexts Systemic Design Journal.

Jonna Häkkilä is Professor for Industrial Design at the University of Lapland and a docent in Human Computer Interaction at the University of Oulu, Finland. She leads the user experience research group LUX focusing on design and technology and has received numerous grants e.g., from the EU, Academy of Finland, and Interreg.

Ravi Mahamuni is Principal Scientist at TCS Research and Adjunct Professor at IDC School of Design, IIT Bombay. He is Design Thinker with 29 plus years of experience; his research focuses on design for change, system design, and service design at scale. He believes in technology as an enabler while humanizing the services. He also advises several academic institutions on matters related to design, technology, and social change.