Citizen Engagement in ICT Design: The Challenge - Informing Digital Futures: Strategies for Citizen Engagement - page 126

7.2.1 Parameters of the Shift

In Table 7.1 below we highlight the features of current approaches to ICT
design and compare these with the features of an approach which we be-
lieve will deliver desirable digital futures.

Table 7.1. Comparison of features of current and desirable design approaches for
ICT

Current State Desirable Future State

Technical focus of ICT developments Design focus is on the whole (socio-

technical) system

Limited practice of participatory design
and low levels of stakeholder influence

Participatory approaches become the
norm; stakeholder empowerment

Traditional design roles New hybrid roles

Knowledge silos Knowledge and best practice widely

disseminated

Lack of skills for citizen engagement in
ICT developments

Widespread skills for participation
and engagement

High perceived costs of engagement Balanced cost/benefit analyses

IT departments 'own' the ICT system Users 'own' the system

The belief that ICT design practice needs to change is not in itself a new
conclusion. As we have already said in Chapter 3, there are many others -
both practitioners and academics/theorists working in related fields, who
have reached similar conclusions. Many authors from different back-
grounds - such as Norman (2000), Cooper (1999), Seely Brown and
Duguid (2000), Nardi and O'Day (1999), to name but a few influential and
fairly recent examples - have produced provocative and powerful topics
based on a profound conviction that conventional approaches to design are
failing to deliver the technologies we want.
The ongoing interest in design and in 'better' design has led, over the
years, to the development of many theories, associated methods and design
approaches, although most have had at best limited impact. Rather than
identifying yet another 'new' design method, we believe that the key to de-
signing desirable digital futures lies in embracing and integrating a wider
range of design principles. Four approaches in particular seem to us to
provide the necessary theoretical and methodological building blocks to
underpin the required shift in design focus:

• Sociotechnical systems theory and information ecologies , which

recognize the interdependency which exists between technology and
society, and the co-evolutionary nature of the way in which these two
elements develop and mutually shape each other.