Facilitating Participatory Design
It’s always a good idea to work with at least one other person as you move through the participatory design process. This includes working on the design goal and planning and facilitating the participatory design sessions. Working with others helps to better plan and debrief sessions as well as gain understanding of the learning that takes place during sessions.
Worksheet #6: Participatory Design Session Planning Template
Use this template to plan a participatory design session, completing the following sections:
- Design goal statement
- Length of session
- Preparation/materials needed
- Session introduction
- Question of the day
- Design task description
- Design activity
- Presentations/sharing back
- Design task themes (“Big Ideas”)
Participatory Design Tips
- You do not have to, or want to, facilitate participatory design sessions on your own. The planning, implementation, and debriefing of these sessions is a great way to build relationships with stakeholders, colleagues, and teens. Work with at least one other person to co-facilitate the participatory design process.
- Remember that a key component of participatory design is that you don’t know exactly what you will learn and how activities will actually “go.” Your planning has to allow for flexibility and agility. While you must have a plan in mind, being able to shift as you see how things are unfolding is essential.
- Openness to ambiguity is essential. As participatory design is about learning with others so as to be able to develop solutions related to your design goal. You won’t know what you will learn and/or come up with until the process is complete.
- Debriefing participatory design sessions is also essential. You and the others you are working with need to spend time talking about how the session went, what you learned, and how the session informs what you will do next.
Worksheet #7: Design Session Debriefing
After your design session, hold a debriefing session with your co-facilitator(s). Discuss the following questions.
- What went well?
- What was difficult?
- How did the session help you to understand what might be put in place to reach your outcome?
- What would you like to do next in a participatory design session?
- What changes need to be made to your logic model/theory of change?
You can read more about participatory design and techniques in the article Designing the Library of the Future for and with Teens: Librarians as the “Connector” in Connected Learning and via the Google Doc, Implementing Participatory Design: A Few Resources.
In this video, Beth Bonsignore at the University of Maryland describes the participatory design process and some of the techniques she uses with the KidsTeam afterschool design program.
Example: Austin Public Library
This product of a participatory design session, co-facilitated by Austin Public Library youth staff and public school teachers, demonstrates how through the process, co-designers were able to plan how to support the needs of youth and families who participated in school virtually. The public library staff used the ideas generated from the co-design sessions to begin planning for the fall 2020 school year. At the end of the co-design sessions, library staff asked for community direction on how they would like the library to stay accountable to them. The group of teachers preferred a newsletter, while some of the other groups requested a living dashboard that would be updated periodically. (See the Priority Dashboard developed through this work.)
Source: Austin Youth Council + Austin Public Library