eParticipation and Participatory Design

Participation in Web2.0 and
e-Participation in Government:
Toward a “Third Space” for
Deliberation and Government
Michael Muller
IBM Research & IBM Center for Social Software
Cambridge, MA, USA
michael_muller@us.ibm.com

Agenda
• Where I work
• Apology for modifying parts of the planned talk
• Chapter 1. Surprising Experiences with Social Software and
Participatory Web2.0
• Chapter 2. Participation in Government and Software Design
• Chapter 3. Moving Forward
• Conclusions
• Our discussion

Where I Work
• IBM Research, Cambridge, MA, USA
– Previously Microsoft, US telecommunications
• IBM Collaborative User Experience group
– Founded 1988 by Irene Greif as Lotus Research
• Co-founded the field Computer Supported Cooperative Work
– 20-30 people
– Interdisciplinary
– Focus on providing new ideas and features
– Anticipating “disruptive technologies”

Agenda
Chapter 1. Surprising Experiences with Social Software and
– Examples of four software projects with surprising participatory
outcomes
– Summary
– Planning to be surprised: Designing for appropriation
– “Third space” / Hybridity Concepts
• Chapter 2. Participation in Government and Software Design
• Conclusions
• Our discussion

The Coordinator
• (Before “Social Software” was conceived)
• Task-structured email, ca. 1988
– Searles’ theory of Speech Acts
– Attractive abstraction of human
communication processes
• “We put it out in the hall,
along with all the other trash”
• Problems
– Instrumental communications only – Like contracts
– No opportunity for non-instrumental messages
– People need sociality if they are going to work together
The Coordinator was not social enough

• Winograd, T., ‘A Language/Action Perspective on the Design of Cooperative Work,’ Human-Computer Interaction 3:1 (1987-88), 3-30.
Reprinted in Greif, Irene (Ed.), Computer-Supported Cooperative Work: A Book of Readings, San Mateo, California: Morgan-Kaufmann,
1988, 623-653.

Dual Accounting in Workflows
• Workflow systems as a problematic success story for CSCW
– Inflexible, decontextualized, inhumane to workers
– Necessary and beneficial to organizations to manage work & billing
• Tensions with workflows at a printing shop
– Workflow required each vs. Trusted customers could
print job to be fully “print now and pay later”
negotiated in advance
– Workflow required each vs. Most employees managed
employee to be assigned to several print jobs
a single print job at-a-time simultaneously
• Solution: Break the rules
– Employees accepted and ran print jobs without a new contract
– Employees created false userIDs to allow each human to manage multiple print
jobs simultaneously through their false userIDs, and to allow humans to share
responsibility for a single job
Staff invented new ways to do the job collaborative and to give an honest
accounting of the work done for each customer
• Dourish, P., ‘Process descriptions as organisational accounting devices: The dual use of workflow technologies. Proc GROUP 2001.

ActivityExplorer
• Conceived as a “niche” solution, between
– Very informal, two-person interactions (quick but messy)
– <ActivityExplorer>
– Formal group processes (slow but disciplined)
• Use Case for ActivityExplorer
– Small number of users
– A few heterogeneous data objects
– A brief period of time
• Summer 2003 interns assigned to do one step of their
projects using ActivityExplorer
– Interns took over!
– Lunch dates (very informal, two-person…)
– “Intern tips and tricks” (formal group processes…)
– Interns made AE more broadly social than intended
Interns’ appropriation led to product success
• Muller, M.J., Geyer, W., Brownholtz, B., Wilcox, E., and Millen, D.R. (2004). One-hundred days in an activity-centric collaboration
environment based on shared objects. Proceedings of CHI 2004.

Activity Threads

Also “lunch dates” and
community-wide threads

ActivityExplorer
• Conceived as a “niche” solution, between
– Very informal, two-person interactions (quick but messy)
– ActivityExplorer
– Formal group processes (slow but disciplined)
• Use Case for ActivityExplorer
– Small number of users
– A few data objects
– A brief period of time
• Summer 2003 interns assigned to do one step of their
projects using ActivityExplorer
– Interns took over!
– Lunch dates (very informal, two-person…)
– “Intern tips and tricks” (formal group processes…)
– Interns made AE more broadly social than intended
Interns’ appropriation led to product success
• Muller, M.J., Minassian, S.O., Geyer, W., Millen, D.R., Brownholtz, E., and Wilcox, E. (2005). Studying appropriation in activity-centric
collaboration. International Reports on Socio-Informatics 2(2), 50-58. http://www.iisi.de/fileadmin/IISI/upload/IRSI/IRSIv2i2complete.pdf.

‘Heretical’ Uses of Social Bookmarking
• Social bookmarking
– Store your browser bookmarks in an online site
• Describe each bookmark with one or more “tags” (user-specified
descriptive text)
• Good for people with multiple machines (access own tags anywhere)
• Possible to find relevant bookmarks created by other users
– Use Case: Refinding one’s own bookmarks + opportunistic finding of
others’ bookmarks
• Bookmarking for audiences
– Some people use a single tag hundreds of times
– Some people ignore tagging of podcasts in a streaming media service,
and then tag those podcasts in the more popular bookmarking service
(tagging across services)

• Thom-Santelli, J., Muller, M.J., & Millen, D.R. (2008) Social tagging roles: Publishers, evangelists, leaders. Proc CHI 2008.

‘Heretical’ Uses of Social Bookmarking
• Tagging for audiences
– Publishers – Using a reliable tag to lead their readers across
services to their internal publication (podcast)
– “Evangelists” – Using one or a few tags to lead thousands of
employees to information on a topic of importance (“web2.0”,
“attention-management”)
– Community-organizers – Finding a tag that is likely to be used
by other members of a community-of-practice
– Team-leads – Finding a tag that is unlikely to be used by anyone
outside of the team
• Similar findings of Information Curators in an internal
file-sharing service – collecting and describing files to be
used by colleagues
• New ideas, new patents, new features
Employees appropriated the social bookmarking system to
communicate with large numbers of fellow employees
• Muller, M.J., Millen, D.R., & Feinberg, J. (2009). Information curators in an enterprise file-sharing service. Proc. ECSCW 2009, Vienna,
Austria, September 2009.

Summary (1): Benefits of Surprises
• Review
The Coordinator was not social enough
Staff invented new ways to do the job collaboratively and
honestly
Interns’ appropriation of AE led to product success
Employees appropriated the social bookmarking system to
communicate with large numbers of fellow employees
• Successful technology transfer, good products, happy people
• Users…
– Want to engage in social activities with others
– Give high priority to helping one another, and to helping clients
– Will find a way to do this!
– Often are trying to do the right thing for themselves, others, and
their organizations and communities

Summary (2): Plan to be Surprised
• Designing for Appropriation
– Flexibility, community, incremental changes, visibility, persistence
– Articulation, demonstration
– Deliberately do not complete the design complete the design
through usage
– Our experiences
• Immediate value
• Foreground the content
• Support co-construction of objects and language to describe them
• Provide user control over features that change in meaning

• Dourish, P. (2003). The appropriation of interactive technologies: Some lessons from placeless documents. Journal of CSCW 12(4), 465-
490 (2003).
• Muller, M.J., Minassian, S.O., Geyer, W., Millen, D.R., Brownholtz, E., and Wilcox, E. (2005). Studying appropriation in activity-centric
collaboration. International Reports on Socio-Informatics 2(2), 50-58. http://www.iisi.de/fileadmin/IISI/upload/IRSI/IRSIv2i2complete.pdf.
• Pipek, V. (2005). From tailoring to appropriation support: Negotiating groupware usage. PhD thesis, Oulu University. Available at
http://herkules.oulu.fi/isbn9514276302/ .
• Bell, G., Blythe, M., Sengers, P: Making by making strange: Defamiliarization and the design of domestic technologies. ACM Trans.
Comput.-Hum. Interact. 12(2),149-173 (2005)
• Spinuzzi, C., Tracing genres through organizations: A sociocultural approach to information design. MIT Press, 2003.

Summary (3): Hybridity Theory
• Third space (Bhabha, 1994)
– Where two cultures meet, overlap, interact something new
– From biology: The estuary where salt water meets fresh High
fertility and biomass
– From cultural critique: The inter-cultural regions along national borders
New understandings and new cultures
– An analytic lens to reduce power imbalances in inter-cultural spaces
• Properties
– (Re-)Negotiate identity of self and others
– Challenge ideas, especially binary oppositions (either/or both/and)
– New opportunities for self-expression, communication, and co-creation
• Bhabha, H.K., Location of culture. London: Routledge, 1994.
• Dingawaney, A., & Maier, C. (1994). Between languages and cultures: Translation and cross-cultural texts. University of Pittsburgh Press.
• Krupat, A. 1992. Ethnocriticism: Ethnography, history, literature. Berkeley: University of California Press.
• Alcoff, L. (1991). The problem of speaking for others. Cultural Critique, Winter 1991-1992, 5-32.
• Roof, J., and R. Wiegman. 1995 (Eds.). Who can speak? Authority and critical identity. Urbana, IL, USA: University of Illinois Press
• English, L., Third space: Contested space, identity, and international adult education. Paper at CASAE/ACEEA Conference, 2002.
• Hannula.M., Third space: Merry-go-round of opportunity. Kiasma Magazine12(1,), http://www.kiasma.fi
• Bachmann-Medick, D. (1996). Cultural misunderstanding in translation: Multicultural coexistence and multicultural conceptions of world
literature. Erfurt Electronic Studies in English 7. http://webdoc.gwdg.de/edoc/ia/eese/artic96/bachmann/7_96.html
• Grenfell, M. (1998). Border-crossing: Cultural hybridity and the rural and small schools practicum. Australian Association for Research
in Education conference, 1998.

Summary (3): Hybridity Strategy
• The need for dialogue among users and software professionals
• Combine two (or more) domains into a single zone of overlap
(break or remove the formal boundaries)
– Software design
– Actual usage
• Users, developers, designers, managers as equal “co-navigators”
in this new space
• Make everything mutually strange
• Promote and facilitate interaction, combination, dialogue
new relationships and new ideas
• Suchman, L., Located accountabilities in technology production. Scandinavian Journal of Information Systems 14(2), 91-105, 2002.
• Tscheligi, M., Houde, S., Marcus, A., Mullet, K., Muller, M.J., and Kolli, R Creative prototyping tools: What interaction designers really need to produce
advanced user interface concepts. Proc CHI’95..
• Bretag, T., Developing ‘third space’ interculturality using computer-mediated communication. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 11(4).
• Muller, M.J. Participatory design: The third space in HCI (revised). In J. Jacko and A. Sears (eds.), Handbook of HCI 2nd Edition. Mahway NJ USA:
Erlbaum, 2007.
• Muller, M.J. Ethnocritical heuristics for reflecting on work with users and other interested parties. In M. Kyng and L. Mathiessen (Eds.), Computers and
design in context. Cambridge MA USA: MIT Press, 1997.
• Holmström, J. The power of knowledge and the knowledge of power: On the systems designer as a translator of rationalities. Proc IRIS 1995.
• Fowles, R.A.. Symmetry in design participation in the built environment: Experiences and insights from education and practice. Proc Co-Designing 2000.
• Zurita, L., Rurul living labs: User involvement activities. Proc Conference on Concurrent Enterprising, 2008.
• Driedger, S.M., Kothari, A., Morrison, J., Sawada, M., Crighton, E.J., &Grahahm, I.D., Using participatory design to develop (public) health decision support
systems through GIS. Int. J. Health Geographics 6(53), 2007.

Appropriation through Hybridity
• The Coordinator
– No ability to create new (or familiar) social actions Failure
• Dual accounting in workflows
– Users changed identity representation to create new false users and to
allow more efficient work and better service
• ActivityExplorer
– User experience was flexible enough – and new enough – to create
uncertainty and the users’ need to redefine the space in their own way
• Social bookmarking
– Users redefined features for personal-refinding, into features for
communication and mutual service
• (Except for The Coordinator), outcomes were good for
everyone

Agenda
Chapter 2. Participation in Government and Software Design
• eParticipation Tools
– Your ideas
• Stages in eParticipation: Standard treatments and what is missing
• Lifecycle for eParticipation Tools and Systems: Conventional models
and what is missing
– Your ideas
• Conclusions
• Our discussion

Problems with eParticipation Systems
• Tensions regarding ownership and provision of services
– Government, political parties, NGOs?
• If built by government
– Low government interest
– “Political niche areas”
– Often poor participation (exception: one-way provision of information)
• If built outside of government
– Can lead to difficulties experienced by government agencies or staff
– Can replicate old power structures and inequalities
• Evaluation issues
– Single evaluation perspective
– Single system in isolation
– Limited range of evaluation reference points or purposes
• Aicholzer, G., Towards an eparticiation profile of Austria. MCIS 2006 White papers.
• Manbrey, G., From participation to e-participation: The German case. Proc ICEGOV 2008.
• King, S.F., & Brown, P., Fix my street or else: Using the internet to voice local public service concerns. Proc ICEGOV 2007.
• Wimmer, M.A., Ontology for an e-participation virtual resource center. Proc ICEGOV 2007.
• Panopoulou, E., Tambouris, E., & Tarabanis, K., eParticipation initiatives: How is Europe progressing? Eu. J. ePractice 7, 2009.
• Kavanaugh, A., Zin, T.T., Carroll, J.M., Schmitz, J., Pérez-Quiñones, M., & Isenhour, P., When opinion leaders blog: New forms of citizen interaction. Proc
dg.o 2006 (International Conference on Digital Government).,
• Martin, P.P., Putting e-participation research on the service of civil society. iGov Central, http://www.i-
gov.org/index.php?article=4509&visual=1&id=114&subject=24
• Macintosh, A., & Whyte, A. , Towards an evaluation framework for eParticipation. Transforming Government: People, Process & Policy 2(2), 16-30, 2008.
• Phang, C.W., & Kankanhalli, A., A framework of ICT exploitation for e-participation initiatives. Communications of the ACM 51(12), 128-132 (2008).

Obstacles to Participation
Obstacle
• Physical disability
• Cognitive disability
• Literacy
• Language
• Gender
• Economics & class
• Government poverty
• Ethnic & class conflict
• Taouflik, I., Kabaili, H., & Kettani, D., Designing an e-government portal accessible to illierate citizens. Proc ICEGOV 2007.
• Balci, A., Kumas, E., Tasdelen, H., Süngü, E., Medeni, T., & Medeni, T.D., Development and implementation of e-government services in Turkey: Issues of
standardization, inclusion, citizen and satisfaction. Proc ICEGOV 2008.
• Musyoka, J., Social electronic governance: Re-Visiting the redistribution question through coordinating relations between electronic governance and social
goals. Proc ICEGOV 2008.
• Kas, R.K., Patra, M.R., Mahapatra, S.C., e-Grama: A tool for bridging the digital divice in rural India. Proc ICEGOV 2008.
• Koumpis, A., Chatzidimitriou, M., Vontas, A., & Peristeras, V., The 100 Euro e-gov portal. Proc ICEGOV 2007.
• Galpaya, H., Samarajiva, R., & Soysa, S., Taking e-government to the bottom of the pyramid: Dial-a-gov? Proc ICEGOV 2007.
• Seshagiri, S., Sagar, A., Joshi, D., Connecting the ‘bottom of the pyramid’ – An exploratory case study of India’s rural communication environment. Proc WWW
2007.
• Chen, D.-Y., & Lee, C.-P., To reinforce or to mobilize? Tracing the impact of internet use on civic engagement in Taiwan. Proc ICEGOV 2008.
• Kim, B.J., Zheng, L., & Jacobson, D., A report on the 2007 iGov Research Institute: Overcoming four dimensions of language barriers. Proc dg.o 2008
(International Conference on Digital Government).
• Kaliannan, M., Awang, H., & Raman, M., Technology adoption in the public sector: An exploratory study of e-government in Malaysia. Proc Int. Conf. Theory &
Practice of Electronic Governance, 2007.
• Kolko, B., Johnson, E., & Rose, E., Mobile social software for the developoing world. In Online Communities and Social Computing, Springer, 2007.
• Awotwi, J.E., & Owusu, G., Lack of equal access to ICTs by women: An e-governance issue. Proc ICEGOV 2008.
• Subramanian, M., Theory and practice of e-governance in India: A gender perspective. Proc Int. Conf. Theory and Practice of Electronic Governance, 2007.
• Millard, J., E-governance and e-participation: Lessons in promoting inclusion and empowerment. In E-Participation and E-Government: Understand the Present
and Creating the Future. United Nations, 2006.

Goals/”Methods” of eParticipation
• Problems and Obstacles Need for citizen’s involvement in
both
– Solving a problem
– Defining the problem
• Do current approaches encourage widespread participation?

• He, J., & King, W.R., The role of user participation in information systems development: Implications from a meta-analysis. J. Mgmt Info Sys 25(1), 2008.
• Doll, W.J., & Deng, X., The collaborative use of information technology: End-user participation and systems success. Info. Resources Mgmt J. 14(2), 2001.

Participation Stages: Offline & Online

Offline Online
Newspaper, radio, TV, leaflet, poster, Websites, webcasts, podcasts, email
Information brochure, report, mailing, telephone newsletter, online-registers and
hotline, information centre indexes
Questionnaires, surveys and polls,
Online-questionnaires, eSurveys,
telephone hotlines, fax, citizen’s
Consultation panel, public hearings, public
ePanels, ePolls, ePetitions, GIS and
map-based tools, email, chatrooms
meetings
Focus groups, workshops, expert Online-forum, eConsultation systems,
Involvement committees online surgeries
Online-community, wiki, collaborative
Cooperation Consensus conferences, mediation
systems
eReferenda, eVoting, collaborative
Empowerment Referenda, voting, citizens’ juries
systems
Giving voice ?
• Alchholzer, G., Buckner, K., Christiansen, E., Cruickshank, P., Davarinos, K., Eleftheriou, E., Gkarafli, M., Lippa, B., Panopoulou, E., Rose, J., Sæbø, Ø.,
Rallies, demonstrations, protests
Tambouris, E., Tarabanis, K., Taylor-Smith, E., Westhold, H., & Winkler, R., DEMO-net D13.1 Development methods and support environments to build
eParticipation tools. http://demonet.uni-koblenz.de/what-is-it-about/research-papers-reports-1/demo-netdeliverables/AichholzerEtAl2007a/
Action
?searchterm=demo , 2007. Boycott, sick-out, strike, work-to-rule
• Macintosh, A., Charaterizing e-participation in policy-making. Proc HICSS 2004.
?
• Chrysos, C., Kercic, D., Porquier, E., & Todorovski, L., Integating the drivers of e-participation at regional level in Europe. IDEAL-EU.
http://www.google.at/url?sa=t&source=web&ct=res&cd=2&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ideal-eu.net%2Fimages%2FDocuments%2FIDEAL_EU_D6.4_
• Brochure_and_Leaflet.pdf&ei=hjRNSqPkIpOysgbvya2tBA&usg=AFQjCNHOgcQzuFGX08NMFQrIelqcR7BsRQ&sig2=GvwO9Lq3XekjtscuebT-sA
• Curtin, G.G., Global e-government/e-participation models, measurement andmethodology. UN workshop on E-Participation and E-Government, 2006.
• Wimmer, M.A., Ontology for an e-participation virtual resource center. Proc ICEGOV 2007.
• Ahmed, N., An anthology of e-participation models. In E-Participation and E-Government: Understand the Present and Creating the Future. United Nations,
2006.

Participation Stages: Offline & Online

Offline Online
ePanels, ePolls, ePetition systems, GIS
and map-based tools, email
meetings
Focus groups, workshops, expert
Involvement committees
Online-forum, eConsultation systems

systems
systems
Giving voice Rallies, demonstrations, protests ?
Action Boycott, sick-out, strike, work-to-rule ?

Your Ideas

Offline Online
Information Newspaper, radio, TV, leaflet, poster… Websites, webcasts, podcasts, email...

Consultation Questionnaires, surveys and polls… Online-questionnaires, eSurveys…

Involvement Focus groups, workshops… Online-forum, eConsultation…

Cooperation Consensus conferences, mediation… Online-community, wiki…

Empowerment Referenda, voting, citizens’ juries… eReferenda, eVoting…


• Should these two cells be added for eParticipation?
• What should go in those cells?
• Should those online service and systems be provided by
government, or by citizen organizations?

Your Ideas
Offline Online
ePanels, ePolls, ePetition systems, GIS
and map-based tools, email
meetings
Focus groups, workshops, expert
Involvement committees
Online-forum, eConsultation systems

systems
systems

• Should these two cells be added for eParticipation?
• What should go in those cells?
• Should those online service and systems be provided by government, or by
citizen organizations?

Development Approaches (1,2)

Plan Waterfall Model
Analyze Dennis, Wixom, & Tegarden, 2005

Design

Implement

eP Tool
Where are the citizens?
and other stakeholders?
Plan
Design Implement
Analyze

Design Design Implement Integrate

Design Implement
Parallel Model
Dennis, Wixom, & Tegarden, 2005 eP Tool

• Alchholzer, et al. DEMO-net D13.1 Development methods and support environments to build eParticipation tools. cited in full on “Participation Stages” slide..

Development Approaches (3)

Unified Process - Dennis, Wixom, & Tegarden, 2005

Analysis of current participation in
policy-making
Policy-making cycle processes process analysis
Existing participation opportunities
Existing communication channels Governance and participation re-
Current technology support design

process re-design Governance process changes
New participation options
Channel selection
eParticipation tool/service design Tool selection

Key design decisions system development
Tool design and development
Service design
Programming Tool/service introduction

Implementation & Roll-out & implementation
change management Back-office reorganization
Stakeholder education
Citizen engagement

Business process re-engineering – e.g., Davenport, 1995; Lenk & Traunmuller, 2000


Design Research - Sanders, 2006

Evolutionary Cyclic

• Mambrey, P., Mark, G., Pankokebabatz, U., User advocacy in participatory design: Designers’ expectations with a
new communication channel. Computer Supported Cooperative Work 7(3-4), 291-313, 1998.

Participatory IT Design

Focus Results - Decisions

scope of design project:
timetable, content, finances, project establishment Project charter + plan
participants

aligning the design project’s goals in-line analysis /
and the company’s goal’s business Strategic alignment report
and IT strategies strategic alignment

work practices in selected work in-depth analysis / Analysis report + work practice
domains descriptions
ethnography

Visions of IT systems and their
relation to work organization and innovation / Design project report +
mock-ups and prototypes
qualifications vision development
implementation project

• Bødker, K., Kensing, F., & Simonsen, J., Participatory IT design. MIT , 2004.
• Kensing, F., Simonsen, J., & Bødker, K., MUST – a method for participatory design. In Blomberg,
J., & Kensing, F., & Dykstra-Erickson, E. (Eds.), Proc Participatory Design Conference, 1996.



Design

Implement

eP Tool
Where are the citizens?
and other stakeholders?
Plan
Design Implement
Analyze

Design Design Implement Integrate

Design Implement
Parallel Model
Dennis, Wixom, & Tegarden, 2005 eP Tool



Design

Implement

eP Tool

A Simple Model to Build On

Plan

Analyze

Design

Implement

eP Tool

Add an explicit Evaluation Stage

Plan

Analyze

Design

Implement

Evaluate

eP Tool
• Kensing, F., and Munk-Madsen, A., PD: Structure in the toolbox. Communications of the ACM 36(6), 78-85,1993.
• Muller, M.J., Participatory design: The third space in HCI (revised). In Jacko, J. and Sears, A. (eds.), Handbook of HCI 2nd
Edition. Mahway NJ USA: Erlbaum, 2007.

Participatory Workshops

Starting Conference Plan

Future Workshop

Analyze

Scenario and Storyboard
Workshops
Strategic Design Workshops Design
“Non-Functional Artifacts” Theatrical Workshops
Workshops

Implement

Evaluate User Audits

eP Tool

Participatory Narratives

Plan

Users’ Stories

Community Stories
Analyze
Contextual Inquiry & Contextual Design

Designers’ Stories

Scenario-Based Design
Scenario
Lay PhotoDocumentaries
Design
Lay VideoDocumentaries

Interface Theatre

Implement

Evaluate

eP Tool

Games

Plan

Language Games

What-If Games
Carpentopoloy Analyze
Specification Game
CARD
Layout Kit
PICTIVE
Organization Kit
Icon Design Game
User Game
Design
Landscape Game
Technology Game
Scenario Game
Implement

Evaluate

eP Tool

Prototyping

Plan

What-If Games
Analyze
Board Games
Cooperative Prototyping

UTOPIA

Evolutionary Prototyping and “Perpetual Beta”
(“cardboard computers” Collage
Design
Design by Doing
CARD
PICTIVE
Implement

Carpentopoloy “Paper Prototypes”
Specification Game
Layout Kit Evaluate
Organization Kit

eP Tool

Your Ideas

Plan

Workshops
Analyze • What broad topics
Contextual Inquiry & Contextual Design

are missing?
Cooperative Prototyping

Narratives
Evolutionary Prototyping and “Perpetual Beta”

• What specific types
Scenario-Based Design

Design
of methods are
Based

Games
missing?
Implement • What other
Prototyping lifecycle models
should be
Evaluate
considered?

eP Tool

Agenda
• Chapter 2. Concepts of Participation in Government and
Software Design
Chapter 3. Moving Forward
– Proposed research topics
• Conclusions
• Our discussion

Moving Forward in eParticipation
• We know how to make systems
– Not perfectly
– We don’t (yet) know how to make citizens’ systems
• We know how to do participatory design
– Too many choices among methods and tools?
– We don’t (yet) know how to do participatory design in the large
• There are a lot of questions!

• Aichholzer, G., Towards an eparticiation profile of Austria. MCIS 2006 White papers.
• Manbrey, G., From participation to e-participation: The German case. Proc ICEGOV 2008.
• King, S.F., & Brown, P., Fix my street or else: Using the internet to voice local public service concerns. Proc ICEGOV 2007.
• Panopoulou, E., Tambouris, E., & Tarabanis, K., eParticipation initiatives: How is Europe progressing? Eu. J. ePractice 7, 2009.
• Kavanaugh, A., Zin, T.T., Carroll, J.M., Schmitz, J., Pérez-Quiñones, M., & Isenhour, P., When opinion leaders blog: New forms of citizen
interaction. Proc dg.o 2006 (International Conference on Digital Government).,
• Macintosh, A., & Whyte, A. , Towards an evaluation framework for eParticipation. Transforming Government: People, Process & Policy 2(2),
16-30, 2008.
• Zappen, J.P., Harrison, T.M., & Watson, D., A new paradigm for designing e-government: Web2.0 and experience design. Proc dg.o 2008
(International Conference on Digital Government).
• Light, A., Notes on participatory evaluation and sustainability. http://www.futurelab.org/resources/publications-reports-articles/ opening-
education-reports/Opening-Eduation-Report1128

Proposed Research Topics (1)
• If eParticipation is provided via large systems
– Participatory lifecycle models for citizens
– The “simple” study of stakeholders and their needs
will be informative
– How can proven participatory methods be “scaled up”
(for very large numbers of citizens)?
– How can proven participatory methods be “flattened out”
(for very diverse populations)?
• Thought experiments
– How would broad eParticipation be designed by “a large software
company”? by a customer-care provider? by a telecommunications
company?
– How would broad eParticipation be designed by the UN?
– How would broad eParticipatoin be designed by the parliamentary
bodies of different countries?

• If eParticipation is provided via web services
– How reliable must a system be for eDiscussion? eDeliberation?
Contrast with eVoting?
– Which citizenship activities benefit from identity-disclosure? from
anonymity? How do these values relate to the obstacles discussed
earlier?
– What are the governmental and policy implications of “perpetual beta”
• Thought experiments
– How would Google provide citizens’ services?
– How would Facebook (or Digg) provide citizens’ services?
– How would Twitter provide citizens’ services?
– How would a health service provide citizens’ services?

• What are the consequences of extending the methods of
eParticipation? e.g.,
– One-way information provision
– Two-way transactions
– Effective impact on decisions
– Citizens’ initiatives
– Citizens’ actions (demonstrations, protests, marches, boycotts…)
• For each stakeholder group, e.g.,
– “Ordinary” citizens (the “default” citizen)
– Citizens with special needs
– Government
– Government staff workers
– NGOs
• And who should “own” the space where these activities occur?

• Is appropriation useful for citizens’ services?
– If so, how can it be encouraged?
– If not, how can it be prevented?
– Who should “govern” appropriation?
• Is hybridity a useful attribute of citizens’ services?
– Do we need that much ambiguity and creativity? When? Why?
– How can hybridity support the participation of all of the diverse
members of the population? What kind of hybridity?
– Who designs hybridity?

Conclusion
• Appropriation and hybridity revealed through experiences
with social software
• Existing eParticipation systems and development models do
not allow appropriation or hybridity
• Participatory alternatives
• Proposed research questions

eParticipation and Participatory Design

eParticipation and Participatory Design

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