The Voices of Design: Discourse in Participatory Information System Development

There is a lack of knowledge about how participation in information system design is built in practice and, particularly, about the interaction taking place within multi-disciplinary design groups. One way to structure participatory design processes has been by the introduction of rules for a "democratic dialogue." The purpose of this study was to explore the dynamics of small-group design meetings in which a set of rules aimed at leveling the possibility for access and display of information were used. Starting from a grounded theory method, a descriptive model was composed by the demarcation of three voices. The voices of participatory design, practice, and engineering were found to express the workplace context, the intentions and actions of the participants, and the influences from the institutions involved, which together constituted the design process. To be able to identify links between small-group discourse and organizational change, a framework for analysis is necessary which makes it possible t...