Supporting Participatory Innovation Through Introductory Tools

Recently, participatory design is gaining popularity in designing usable novel systems. A participatory design activity typically starts with presenting the participants with introductory tools. These tools provide the participant with the required background knowledge and also trigger their creative process. Thus, the right choice of introductory tools is a determinant of participants' creativity, and hence innovative output. In this work, the authors analyze the impact of various introductory tools on the overall innovation. To test the hypothesis, a series of participatory workshops were conducted to design a novel mleaning tool. Each workshop enrolled the real users of the system and was staged with a different combination of introductory tools. The participants' output in the form of innovative design artefacts was collected and behavior during workshops was noted. The authors analyzed the results to find the relation between the choice of introductory tools and the participants' innovative output.