Participatory Design as a Learning Process

This chapter develops a process for working with community organizations that gives them greater control over their information technology and increases their capacity to manage technology projects. It presents an integrated approach, focusing on design and learning, as a way to work with this group. This approach emphasizes participatory design as a learning process in which it introduces hierarchical and lateral aspects of learning. The chapter describes related work on participatory design. It approaches participatory design as a learning process. This chapter describes the overall project, gives background on the environmental group it worked with, and details the research methods. It provides description and analysis of our collaboration with the environmental group. The chapter describes the work and the contribution to environmental communication and discusses the reusable solution schemas called patterns. This chapter is valuable to the general audience of community practitioners and researchers interested in building community capacity using information technology.