Values-led participatory design: mediating the emergence of values

Abstract

There is a growing interest in values-led inquiries within participatory design (PD). One approach argues that working with values is a recursive 3-phase process that supports the emergence, development and grounding of values. This paper focuses solely upon this emergence phase, illustrating how we can support the emergence of values during the initial phase of a values-led inquiry. We do this by drawing upon a PD case where digital technology was designed to support the experiences of young adults with severe intellectual disabilities, in an art museum. This case allows us to describe how we establish, negotiate and the debrief values during this initial phase of a values-led inquiry (not to explicate how we can work with such young adults in PD). By foregrounding both explicit and implicit mediation in the PD process, we show how a theoretical understanding of mediation can potentially enrich and further the values-led PD tradition.