Software development for a distributed community of practice: lessons learned from fifteen years of participatory design on a single system

Authors:
Vincenzo D'Andrea;Arthur Baskin;Robert E. Reinke
Affiliations:
University of Trento, Trento, Italy;IIT Corp., Indianapolis, IN;IIT Corp., Indianapolis, IN
Venue:
Proceedings of the Tenth Anniversary Conference on Participatory Design 2008
Year:
2008

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Abstract

In this paper, we describe a case study that spans fifteen years of participatory design by an international community of software users and a distributed software development team. We describe a participatory design process involving annual community meetings and computer collaboration tools. These participatory design meetings have brought together sponsors, power users, and software developers in order to review new software versions and chart the course for future development. In this paper, we summarize the lessons learned from this co-evolution of a community of practice and a software system. We have identified five general principle organized around two complementary principles: fostering emergence/evolution of systems while capturing common software/domain structure.