Remote participatory prototyping enabled by emerging social technologies

Remote participatory prototyping is characterised by extended periods of engagement, working directly with participants in the context of real-world problem settings, and by the use of social technologies. This paper reports a prototyping activity that aimed to design web-based software, over a three-month period, to support people's 'everyday' travel planning. Participants were supported in creating software prototypes in the context of their real-world travel activities. The aim was to gain insight into the phenomena of unstructured, ad-hoc, planning as it occurs in the context of everyday life, as opposed to the deliberative, structured planning processes that are common in organisational contexts. This research examined the process of remote prototyping as a design method, enabled by social technologies. Remote participatory prototyping was used to support three concurrent activities: the design of a new software artefact; the use of the prototype as a means to gain insight into a social phenomena; and a cyclical process of reflective discussion that constituted a mutual learning activity between researchers and research participants.