User Advocacy in Participatory Design: Designers‘ Experiences with a New Communication Channel

  • Authors:
  • Peter Mambrey;Gloria Mark;Uta Pankoke-Babatz

  • Affiliations:
  • GMD-FIT. German National Research Center for Information Technology, Institute for Applied Information Technology, CSCW Research Group, Schloß Birlinghoven, D-53754 Sankt Augustin, Germany;GMD-FIT. German National Research Center for Information Technology, Institute for Applied Information Technology, CSCW Research Group, Schloß Birlinghoven, D-53754 Sankt Augustin, Germany;GMD-FIT. German National Research Center for Information Technology, Institute for Applied Information Technology, CSCW Research Group, Schloß Birlinghoven, D-53754 Sankt Augustin, Germany

  • Venue:
  • Computer Supported Cooperative Work
  • Year:
  • 1998

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Abstract

We report on participatory designactivities within the PoliTeam project, a large projectwhich introduces groupware into the German government.Working with a representative small group of users indifferent worksites, an existing system was adapted touser and organizational needs, with the plan toimprove and expand the system to a large scale. Weintegrated new approaches of user advocacy and osmosiswith an evolutionary cycling process. User advocatesand osmosis were techniques used to explore the users‘needs during actual system use. These techniques wereincorporated into the system development. In thispaper, we present experiences with this approach andreflect on its impact on the design process from thedesigners‘ point of view.