Citizen Engagement in ICT Design: The Challenge - Informing Digital Futures: Strategies for Citizen Engagement - page 120

As also noted in Chapter 2, participatory design has been developed and
applied predominantly in Scandinavia. However despite the efforts of pio-
neering advocates and practitioners such as Mumford (1983), Muller
(2002) and Cabana (1995), this approach has not been widely adopted in
other countries. One likely reason for this is that participatory design fits
well with the strong democratic culture of the Scandinavian countries, and
in particular, with their commitment to industrial democracy which is for-
malized in legislation. By contrast, a truly participatory approach does not
fit easily into cultures (whether national or organisational) which do not
share the values or fully embrace the democratic principles that it embod-
ies.
7.1.3 Role Conflicts and Role Boundaries
A further barrier to citizen engagement is created by traditional views
about design and the role of designers. Mumford (1991) was among the
first to identify that the way in which ICT design is approached leads to
problems relating to role boundaries between the different professionals
involved. However the problem is not confined to the ICT design domain.
Designers in all domains have traditionally regarded it as their prerogative
to formulate design solutions and then to implement them. Giving respon-
sibility to others (e.g. to the end users of their designs) is a cause for con-
cern for some, partly because it could threaten their capacity to innovate
and partly because it could result in design solutions which are sub-optimal
from a technical standpoint (even if the users prefer them). As Norman
(2000) points out, most professional designers have spent a long time get-
ting trained in their discipline, and are usually aware of the pitfalls. How-
ever, as Norman also points out, “ most design is not done by professional
designers, it is done by engineers, programmers and managers .” Each of
these roles has not only a different set of professional skills, but also dif-
ferent goals and responsibilities, which are likely to conflict with those of
each other, let alone those of the end-users. For example, “ designers must
please their clients, and the clients may not be the users ” (Norman 2000).
With so much scope for conflict within design projects it is hardly surpris-
ing that some designers do not want to engage with a wider group of
unknown people whose influence upon the project will at least be unpre-
dictable.
There is, however, evidence of a modest degree of change in this rela-
tionship. For example, in the product design domain, some designers are
embracing the notion of co-design (e.g. Gyi et al. 2005) in which potential