Spaces for Participatory Design Innovation

This paper presents a model to guide the design of participatory design (PD) projects, which was generated through methodological reflection on a programme of digital health and care research. Building on wide use of the term spaces within PD literature and theory, the model comprises seven spaces that can be designed to support diverse stakeholders to engage in a PD process. The model encourages reflection on the capacity of participants to critically and creatively engage with the concepts being proposed, in order to design a process to scaffold participation. Aiming to support PD practitioners and researchers to identify the combination and sequence of hybrid spaces required to move participants and concepts towards resolved designs, the model guides the careful design of each space supported by examples of practice. The model is also designed to enable reflective practice and articulation of PD processes to support integration within multidisciplinary collaborations.