Participatory Design Conference 2006 July 30, 2006

"Expanding Boundaries in Design"

The theme Expanding Boundaries in Design focuses attention on the multiple contexts in which design takes place and on an expanding range of possible design outcomes.

While participatory design principles and practices are most often applied to the design of technical systems and artefacts, increasingly there is both the need and the opportunity to focus PD approaches on other domains, such as physical environments, organizational practices, and IT-enabled services.

Likewise, the contexts in which PD is practiced has grown to include teams of globally distributed designers and practitioners; actor networks that span organizational, expertise, cultural and linguistic difference; and activity areas beyond the workplace, such as domestic and leisure.

Finally, PD has a significant role to play at various stages of design, from initial concept development, to system configuration, to implementation, to integration within the context of use, and ultimately to ongoing design in use.

Conference website