ABSTRACT
The author first became interested in participatory design for aesthetic reasons. When she do participatory design, she collects and interpret firsthand accounts of the practice of work using methods that are not just anthropological but also artistic. In this chapter, the author draws on examples of design work in academic libraries to explore how she works toward this ideal of participatory design for the common good. As she write this chapter, she sit at the center with her questions and arguments surrounded by books and articles, reading and writing implements, and, of course, her colleagues, some of them very distant in time and space but linked to me through papers, screens, and communication devices. The student work in particular drew heavily on visual methods and artifacts, using drawings and images in three separate project phases: development of the quantitative program, interpretation of the participatory design artifacts and report, and architectural design.
