Positions on Participation

In a manifesto we share with our students, the first guideline is “Work with the real users!”. Within the field of interaction design, we often work towards designing (digital) products or services. With these solutions there is always someone for whom you make it, someone who will use and experience it. As a designer you want to get to know this someone, immerse yourself in their context and understand their needs, because it is the only way to design something that can actually connect to it. That is why we believe that working with the people for whom you design should be a fundamental part of your design practice.

Both as designer and lecturer I have discussed the subject of participation quite often. All of the design approaches I teach classes in, like human-centred design, service design or design thinking, value some sort of active involvement of participants. Many even have (multiple) principles in regards to the participation of stakeholders and therefore similarities to the design direction of participatory design.

In an attempt to gain perspective on the possible role of participatory design in my own design research, I have read and analysed three different publications on the subject. Two things that I found particularly interesting were a view on participation from an art perspective and the progression on the role of participation that can be felt through the various publications.

The Social Turn

In the February 2006 edition of Artforum, Claire Bishop, a British art historian, critic, and Professor of Art History at The Graduate Center in New York, critiques participatory art in her article “The Social Turn: Collaboration and its Discontents”. Supported by a good list of projects, she introduces a recent increase in artistic interest in collectivity, collaboration and direct engagement. These so-called socially engaged art projects are part of a movement in which artists move from creating aesthetic work to practices where there is more interest in what creative collaboration can yield. Although understanding where this form of art originated from, Bishop is still critical: “I would argue that it is also crucial to discuss, analyze, and compare such work critically as art.”

The (in her words) ‘social turn in contemporary art’ also caused a change in art criticism. Artists are increasingly being judged on their approach and substantiation on where and with whom they collaborate, while the projects are difficult to distinguish from ‘normal’ socially engaged practices. In this form, dynamic and sustained relationships determine success, not aesthetic considerations. On why socially engaged art has been exempt from art criticism, Bishop quotes: “Emphasis is shifted away from the disruptive specificity of a given work and onto a generalized set of moral precepts.”

Bishop attributes this triumph of self-sacrifice in socially engaged art to a tacit analogy between anti-capitalism and the Christian “good soul”. To illustrate this she describes a number of works in which the artist relinquishes her own authority for the benefit of the work based on ethics and ideals. On the other hand, there are, according to Bishop, better works in which the artist chooses the preconceived story and uses the collaboration only as a means to bring that story out. As examples she describes Höller’s The Baudouin Experiment and Deller’s The Battle of Orgreave. These differences directly relate to the artist view on participation and placement (or role) of participants in their works of art. Bishop notes that this contradictory attraction between autonomy and social intervention is present in what she believes to be best collaborative practices over the past ten years and that this paradox is reflected in both the structure of the work and the circumstances in which it is received. It is precisely this art that should encourage us to opt for an alternative to the well-intentioned discourse who today pass for critical debate on social collaboration.

Participation is Risky

In 2014, 8 years after the previous publication, Liesbeth Huybrechts, a Professor at the Hasselt University faculty of Architecture and Art, published a book called “Participation is Risky — Approaches to Joint Creative Processes”. The goal of the book is defined in the preface: “to describe the negotiations that designers and artists engage in when setting up participatory projects”. Although the title, just like the first text, contains a direct opinion about participation, Huybrechts opts for a more open approach: “Both the book and the toolkit are set up in an open way — instead of proposing ‘recipes’ (or determinants or prerequisites) for participatory projects — in order to allow designers and artists to interpret and use them in their own way.”

While participatory design projects may differ from the earlier mentioned participatory art in e.g. their goals, meaning and approach, both are created together with ‘others’. To simplify things and move focus to the framing of the notion of participation, Huybrechts and her co-writers choose to refer to designers and artists as ‘makers’. In doing so, they distance themselves from the discussion whether something is art and/ or design or not. On participants she says: “We use the term ‘participants’ to identify the users, audiences or actors coming from different disciplines.”

By citing multiple sources, Huybrechts provides a frame, or common ground, from which we can view and discuss participation projects. A key aspect of these projects is that they allow for input from other participants besides the maker. Huybrechts hereby cites Norman who mentioned these projects thrive by learning from and building on insights, experiences and practices of others. While there should be a focus on these participatory exchanges, not knowing the outcomes beforehand often creates a feeling of uncertainty among both makers and participants. This is introduced as one of the risky trade-offs of participation projects.

Before a more detailed description of these risky trade-offs, or even their definition of participatory projects, can be given, Huybrechts first looks into how participation is defined within several domains including ‘citizen involvement’ and the domains of ‘media’ and ‘culture’. From this we learn that Arnstein describes participation as the means by which social reform can be induced. In addition Verba et al. illustrate that participants do not always participate in the same way or to the same extent. For me this relates to the different roles found within works of participatory art as mentioned earlier by Bishop. Huybrechts also concludes that technological progress has ensured participation can take place on a much larger scale and more easily. Our online networks support an explosion of user-generated content, without the barriers of time or location. But in regards to the quality of participation she says: “More participation does not necessarily imply ‘better’ participation. (…) only a minority of people effectively participate.”

From Interaction to Post-Participation

Participants have an active role in both Bishop and Huybrecht’s approach to participatory design. The artworks and projects discussed in their publications show how direct interactions have a direct impact on the work. Varvara Guljajeva, a practising artist with a doctorate in art from the Estonian Academy of Arts, uses her thesis from 2018 to discuss this active role in interactive art. In her research, she sees a shift from active to passive participation in the artworks and, as a result, finds that these artworks no longer fit into the categories of interactive or participatory art. For this she introduces the term post-participation.

Since artists experiment with ‘new’ forms of interaction and their position with regard to audience interaction, the definition of interactive art is constantly being discussed. The fact interaction has become part of our everyday lives also plays a significant role in the audience changing interest towards this interactive art. In this Guljajeva quotes Andy Cameron: “The interactive is so ubiquitous in our daily lives that it’s almost vanished into the background, become ordinary, even banal.” She acknowledges artists in this post-digital age are extremely aware of the seductive and subversive technologies and therefore have shifted their practices towards critical discourse and not the celebration of the medium.

According to her, post-participation creates a space for installations that do not fall under the category of interactive art, it’s descriptive of the role that the public plays within these installations and enables artists to address the vast growing data space we all contribute to daily.
In her analysis, Guljajeva uses three artworks to explain the differences and similarities between participative, interactive and post-participatory art. In summary, she concludes: “Participative and interactive art are quite related. Both domains aim to create new experiences and relations for their audience. The difference is that technology mediates an interactive artwork and a participative one does not. (…) When it comes to post-participation, the big difference is introduced by passive and unaware participation.” Recognizing and interpreting these differences with the term post-participation helps her and perhaps other practising artists to understand the evolution of her practice (interactive art) from the perspective of audience involvement.

Perspectives on participation: critical, adopted and beyond.

In Relation to..

For me, the three texts differ mainly in the way they view participation. I think that Huybrechts perspective on participatory design relates best to my own. She, just like myself, has adopted participation in her daily practice and sees it as a valuable addition to the creative process. I am eager to find where and how I could make my project thrive by learning from and building on insights, experiences and practices of others. In relation, I found the notion of post-participation by Guljajeva interesting. At the moment I often opt for a direct and active form of participation in qualitative design activities, but moving beyond active and using the ubiquitous amount of data we provide daily as input for my design can provide new perspectives.

With regard to the possible role of my own participants, I looked at how the three texts frame the participant role in projects. I like the seemingly simple dichotomy used by Bishop, because it is descriptive in the accountability of the participant. In my research, the people using a space could be observed while using or testing a design (like an ‘executor’) or join in creative sessions or generative activities (like a ‘co-creator’). I would like to address these participants as users. In her framing of participants, Huybrechts emphasizes the characteristic that the participants come from different disciplines. I would like to address these participants from other disciplines as experts. Depending on the activity, objective and awareness, both types of participants can participate both passively and actively in my study.

The framing of participants through the different approaches.

Feature Image: Mark Hansen and Ben Rubin, “Listening Post” (2001-2003) at the Whitney Museum, photo: DA https://www.flickr.com/photos/ben_rubin-ear_studio/5534298609