Social Technologies: The Changing
Nature of Participation in Design
Penny Hagen, Toni Robertson
Introduction
This paper is about emerging design methods that respond to the
participatory, emergent, and social nature of social technologies.
Social technologies are, in effect, designed through use. They are
containers or scaffolds that rely on participation and user-driven
contributions to take their form. Their shape emerges through the
activities of use, over time, and their use is social and situated and
depends on the activities of those who use them. The facilitation of
participation becomes a primary concern for designers of social
technologies. The embedded and contextual nature of using social
technologies suggests that, when designing, evaluating and evolv-
ing new social technologies, users’ experiences of, and feedback
about, use are most meaningful if those users have been given the
opportunity to experience the technologies in the actual context in
which they will be used.

In their 2002 paper titled “PD in the Wild: Evolving Practices
of Design in Use,” Dittrich, Eriksén, and Hansson explored the
multiplicity of ways in which design was taking place beyond the
traditional boundaries of IT software development projects.1 They
highlighted the need for new Participatory Design methods and
models that better supported design as ongoing and intertwined
with use. In this paper, we use this concept of “Participatory Design
in the wild,” along with other current examples and discourse in
Participatory Design, as the perspective through which to analyze
our practice-led research into early design research methods suit-
able for social technologies and to identify new forms of participa-
tion enabled by social technologies themselves. We focus in
particular on the development of social technologies in community
settings where use is voluntary, and how we might facilitate partic-
ipation within these settings in the early stages of their design. Spe-
cifically, we show how the use of social technologies reconfigures
the traditional role of self-reporting to become an opportunity to
1 Yvonne Dittrich, Sara Eriksén, and
Christina Hansson, “PD in the Wild:
design through use by enabling participants to: socialize the research,
Evolving Practices of Design in Use,”
bridge existing and future practices, and develop seed content. We reflect
in Proceedings of the 7th Participatory
on the potential conditions for participation that these three phe-
Design Conference: Inquiring into the
nomena represent, the role of social technologies in enabling these
Politics, Contexts and Practices of
Collaborative Design Work (New York:
ACM, 2002), 124-34.
© 2012 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
77
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participation experiences, and the potential impact they suggest on
how we approach early research and design of social technologies
2 Leah Lievrouw, “Oppositional and
in community settings.
Activist New Media: Remediation,
Reconfiguration, Participation,” in

As Leivrow has pointed out, Participatory Design in the con-
Proceedings of the 9th Participatory
text of social technologies, or new media as she describes it, is neces-
Design Conference: Expanding boundar-
sarily recursive.2 Participation is both the means of designing usable
ies in design (New York: ACM, 2006),
and meaningful technologies, as well as the outcome of successful
115–24.
systems. As social technologies become central to how we live our
3 See for example Eevi Beck, “P for
Political: Participation Is Not Enough,”
community, social, civic, political and professional lives, Participa-
Scandinavian Journal of Information
tory Design offers a critical, political frame through which these
Systems 14, no. 1 (2002): 77-92; and
forms of “participation” can be understood.3 Underpinning our
Joan Greenbaum and Kim Madsen, “PD:
research is a question of how the commitment to participation, as
A Personal Statement,” Communications
defined by Participatory Design, can be taken up in these environ-
of the ACM. Special Issue on Graphical
ments; our aim is to contribute to understandings of how participa-
User Interfaces: The Next Generation 36,
no. 6 (1993): 47.
tory approaches can be understood, enabled, and supported. The
4 Interested readers can find a fuller
findings and discussion on participation reported in this paper
account of the research in Penny
form one aspect of a larger, practice-led research project into the
Hagen and Toni Robertson, “Dissolving
impact of social technologies on participation in early design.4
Boundaries: Social Technologies and

The paper begins with a definition of the term “social tech-
Participation in Design,” in Proceedings
of the 21st Annual Conference of the
nologies” and the considerations about participation that these
Australian Computer-Human Interaction
technologies foreground for designers. We then outline participa-
Special Interest Group: Design: Open
tory approaches to the design of social technologies, described as
24/7 (New York: ACM, 2009), 129-36;
“prototyping in the wild,” that have emerged as a result of, and in
Penny Hagen and Toni Robertson,
response to, the inherently participatory and emergent nature of
“Seeding Social Technologies:
social technologies. A brief summary of our empirical research is
Strategies for Embedding Design in
Use,” paper presented at DRS 2010
then provided. This summary is followed by a description of the
Conference (Montreal, Canada, 2010);
findings from our practice-led work into self-reporting and the new
Penny Hagen and Toni Robertson,
opportunities for participation they suggest. We conclude the paper
“Social Technologies: Challenges and
with a reflection on the significance of a participatory approach to
Opportunities for Participation,” in
the design of social technologies more broadly.
Proceedings of the Participatory Design
Conference: Participation: The Challenge
(New York: ACM, 2010), 31-40; Penny
Social Technologies: A Definition and Focus for Design
Hagen, “The Changing Nature of
Social technologies, also known as social software or social media,
Participation in Design: A Practice-Based
refer to the combinations of mobile and online tools and systems
Study of Social Technologies in Early
that enable and seek out participation and contributions by users.5
Design Research” (PhD Thesis, University
Examples include Facebook, MySpace, Flickr, Twitter, YouTube,
of Technology, Sydney, 2011); and Penny
Hagen, Toni Robertson, and David
FourSquare, personal blogs, and discussion platforms, as well as
Gravina, “Engaging with Stakeholders:
more localized community or campaigning sites. Also integral
Mobile Diaries for Social Design,” in
to this landscape are mobile phones, short message servicing
Proceedings of the 2007 Conference on
(SMS), picture messages (PXT) also known as Multimedia Message
Designing for User Experiences (New
Service (MMS), and other personal production and communication
York: ACM, 2007): Article 5.
5 As social software, see danah boyd,
devices and channels (e.g., instant messaging). The use of “social
“The Significance of Social Software,”
technologies” here is intended to refer both to the tools and to the
in Blogtalks Reloaded: Social Software
emerging practices of connecting, producing, sharing, sending,
Research & Cases, ed. Thomas N. Burg
replicating, locating, publishing, and distributing that these
and Jan Schmidt (Norderstedt, 2007),
tools constitute.6 Although no fixed definition of what a “social
15-30; as social media, see Sirkka
Heinonen and Minna Halonen, “Making
Sense of Social Media Interviews and
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DesignIssues: Volume 28, Number 3 Summer 2012

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technology” is (or isn’t) is in play, social technologies can be charac-
terized as enabling greater social participation in technology-medi-
ated contexts.7

Narratives,” SOMED Foresight Report 2

However, as Brereton and Buur point out, “participation is
(Espoo: VTT, 2007), 6.
predicated upon delivering value to those who participate.” 8 Use
6 Heinonen and Halonen, “Making
of social technologies in community settings is voluntary. In design-
Sense of Social Media Interviews and
ing successful social platforms around which communities grow,
Narratives.”
evolve, and share, our role as designers extends beyond research-
7 danah boyd, “Social Network Sites:
ing, defining, creating, and releasing a product to include how
Public, Private, or What?,” www.danah.
org/papers/KnowledgeTree.pdf (accessed
designs will be connected to, embedded within, and taken up in
March 9, 2009).
the world. Perhaps we might even need to bring the community
8 Margot Brereton and Jacob Buur, “New
“into being” as part of the project.9 Equally, our design methods
Challenges for Design Participation in the
need to account for the social, participatory, and emergent nature of
Era of Ubiquitous Computing,” CoDesign
social technologies.
4, no. 2 (2008): 112.
9 Carl DiSalvo, Jeff Maki, and Nathan
Martin, “Mapmover: A Case Study of
Prototyping in the Wild
Design-Oriented Research into Collective
One of the ways in which practitioners of Participatory Design have
Expression and Constructed Publics” in
responded to the participatory and emergent nature of social tech-
Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference
nologies has been to extend prototyping into the settings where the
on Human Factors in Computing Systems
technologies are being used. As a col aborative and experiential
(New York: ACM, 2007), 1249-52.
10 For example, see Susanne Bødker and
method, prototyping has always been an important part of the
Kaj Grønbæk, “Cooperative Prototyping:
Participatory Design toolkit.10 Extended “into the wild,” prototyp-
Users and Designers in Mutual Activity,”
ing becomes a “living form” of design research that can enable
International Journal of Man-Machine
designers to co-design with community members in the context
Studies, (Special Issue on CSCW) 34,
of their daily lives. Examples of this approach include the Nnub
no. 3 (1991).
11 See Fiona Redhead and Margot
electronic community noticeboard developed by Redhead and
Brereton, “Nnub: Getting to the Nub
Brereton, Botero and Saad-Sulonen’s development of the Urban
of Neighbourhood Interaction,” in
Mediator software, and the “Patchwork Prototyping” of collabora-
Proceedings of the 10th Participatory
tive software described by Twidale and Floyd.11 In such approaches,
Design Conference: Experiences and
rudimentary prototypes or “patchworks” are pulled together and
Challenges (New York: ACM, 2008),
then evolve in situ with the community, in response to use and
270-73; Andrea Botero and Joanna
Saad-Sulonen, “Co-Designing for New
to community feedback. Rather than undertaking traditional
City–Citizen Interaction Possibilities:
usability evaluations of isolated software components, existing
Weaving Prototypes and Interventions
software is repurposed to create “concrete interventions” that can
in the Design and Development of
be co-evolved.12
Urban Mediator,” in Proceedings of the

For Redhead and Brereton, such an embedded approach
10th Participatory Design Conference:
Experiences and Challenges (New York:
was critical to engaging participation by the community in the
ACM, 2008), 266-69; Michael Twidale
design of the Nnub electronic community noticeboard. They
and Ingbert Floyd, “Infrastructures
reported that traditional methods (e.g., workshops) were only
from the Bottom-Up and the Top-Down:
attended by a few of the identified stakeholders. However, install-
Can They Meet in the Middle?” in
ing a functioning prototype in a local store—a location that was
Proceedings of the 10th Participatory
physically shared by many members of the community—allowed
Design Conference: Experiences and
Challenges (New York: ACM, 2008),
people to experience (and evaluate) the design as part of their daily
238-41.
lives. For these researchers, this approach was a significant depar-
12 Botero and Saad-Sulonen, “Co-Designing
ture from earlier consultative community informatics approaches;
for New City-Citizen Interaction
rather than seek consensus on intended use, stakeholders were able
Possibilities,” 269.
to indicate “usefulness through use itself.”13
13 Brereton and Buur, “New Challenges for
Design Participation,” 111.
DesignIssues: Volume 28, Number 3 Summer 2012
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Floyd et al. also argue that the advantage of such an approach is
that design and development decisions are based on users’ actual
experience of integrating the software into their everyday activities,
rather than on predictions or design principles.14 Moving prototyp-
ing into settings of everyday use provides participants with a con-
crete and visceral experience of use as a way to evolve and
participate in design. Through this experiential process, both
researchers and community members come to understand how
such technologies become useful and meaningful in people’s lives.
For example, for Botero and Saad-Sulonen, the use of “seed proto-
types” in the development of Urban Mediator enabled an under-
standing of how social technologies could give citizens a more
active role in shaping council policies and council responses to
community issues.15 The community defined the purpose and value
of the software as they used it.

The approaches to “prototyping in the wild” described here
are possible because social technologies lend themselves to the
deployment of simple prototypes that can be modified and evolved
through feedback.16 Twidale and Floyd argue that such approaches
only exist as a result of the current ecology of information technolo-
gies.17 Social technologies themselves become the design material,
allowing the activities of researching, designing, and using to
become concurrent practices. Design emerges through everyday use.
The examples of “prototyping in the wild” outlined above help to
frame and motivate the analysis of findings from our practice-led
research, which we report in the following section.
Research Background: Self-Reporting with Social Technologies
14 Ingbert Floyd, M. Cameron Jones, Dinesh
The empirical research reported in this paper took place in the con-
Rathi, and Michael Twidale, “Web Mash-
text of a commercial design agency committed to social change.
Ups and Patchwork Prototyping: User-
Many of the agency’s clients were motivated by the potential for
Driven Technological Innovation with
Web 2.0 and Open Source Software,” in
social technologies to reach and engage existing and new audiences
Proceedings of the 40th Annual Hawaii
in ways meaningful to those different stakeholder groups. We were
International Conference on System
involved in practice-led research to determine early design meth-
Sciences (Washington, DC: IEEE, 2007).
ods that would help the design agency and its clients understand
15 Botero and Saad-Sulonen, “Co-Designing
what kinds of community platforms or social media strategies
for New City–Citizen Interaction
Possibilities,” 267.
would be appropriate.
16 Brereton and Buur, “New Challenges

Specifically, we experimented with emerging self-reporting
for Design Participation in the Era of
techniques that made use of social technologies themselves as tools
Ubiquitous Computing.”
for self-documentation. Inspired by methods such as Mobile
17 Twidale and Floyd, “Infrastructures from
Probes, in which research participants use the photo function on
the Bottom-up and the Top-Down,” 238.
their mobile phones to collect and share aspects of their daily lives,
18 Sami Hulkko, Tuuli Mattelmäki, Katja
Virtanen, and Turkka Keinonen, “Mobile
we also appropriated existing communication devices such as
Probes,” in Proceedings of the Third
mobile phones, video cameras, and blogs as self-reporting tools.18
Nordic Conference on Human-Computer
The method we developed, known as Mobile Diaries, was
Interaction (New York: ACM 2004), 43-51.
deployed and evaluated in four different studies.19 Participants rep-
19 See, e.g., Hagen, Robertson, and Gravina,
resenting potential future community members were recruited and
“Engaging with Stakeholders: Mobile
Diaries for Social Design.”
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asked to complete diaries for a period of between one and three
weeks. The goal was to provide an insight into how the particular
design topic (e.g., sustainability or personal health) came to have
meaning in their lives.

Participants used multi-media picture messages and video to
capture and share rich, personal messages and snap-shots of their
daily lives. In the last two studies, the mobile messages were sent to
private research blogs or “participant mobile diaries.” These diaries
were created using a customized version of Wordpress, the open-
source content management system (CMS), and could be accessed
by both participants and researchers for the duration of the study.
The use of mobile phones and blogs as self-reporting tools allowed
for the real-time collation of data. This in turn enabled mutual
reflection and discussion by both participants and designers, not
just on the materials collected throughout the study, but also on
the questions and comments they generated. Importantly, the
tools and technologies used for the diaries were often the same as
those used for the final, public, custom community platforms that
were implemented.

Taking a participatory approach to self-reporting requires
supporting participants’ active involvement and influence over
design. Thus, our studies have had to be open-ended and partici-
pant-led to allow participants control over what and how “data”
are col ected. In addition, the active role that participants have
played in the interpretation of the collected material is part of their
ongoing participation in the design process as a whole.20 In the
process, we found that using social technologies themselves as tools
in the research and design of social technologies offered other
forms of participation. The doing of Mobile Diaries, in addition to
helping us understand what kinds of community platforms and
social technologies might be appropriate, also contributed to bring-
ing those future platforms and communities of “users” into being.
We present and discuss these findings in the next section, drawing
on concepts and examples from Participatory Design to explore
how these findings suggest new forms of participation.
Self-Reporting as “PD in the Wild”
As a contextual method, self-reporting is already located “in the
wild.” However, its role in design is generally understood as a
“research” or data collection technique. Using social technologies as
reporting tools started to blur the boundaries of research, design,
and use, creating opportunities for people to participate early in the
design process through use. We examine from this perspective three
outcomes in particular that were identified in the research as being
enabled by the use of social technologies. These results included the
capacity and tendency for participants to socialize the research, the
20 Elizabeth Sanders, “Design Research in
ability to bridge existing and future practices, and the potential to
2006,” Design Research Quarterly 1, no.
1 (2006): 1-8.
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develop seed content. Although not traditionally valued as outcomes
of self-reporting, our proposal is that these three phenomena repre-
sent potential new patterns of participation enabled and made
valuable by the participatory and emergent nature of social technol-
ogies. We examine each of these phenomena in the following sec-
tions and describe how they can support forms of participation
important to the early design of social technologies in community
settings; in particular, we consider how they can foster participation
by the “future community” and can create space for the new design
to be taken up within that community as part of people’s existing
ecologies. We reflect on how these findings potentially reconfigure
self-reporting to extend beyond a form of research data collection to
become an opportunity for “PD in the wild;” we then consider the
implications this transformation has for the role of methods such as
Mobile Diaries.
Socializing the Research
The focus on self-reporting as a research method is most often as a
personal activity, where individual participants record, reflect, and
share aspects of their lives with researchers, as a precursor to
design. Although there are some existing studies that document
self-reporting as a shared activity, these collaborations tend to
include recruited participants and are orchestrated as formal parts
of the research design.21 In our use of Mobile Diaries, social aspects
of the method emerged that were initiated and defined by the par-
ticipants themselves. For example, for some participants, the cre-
ation of images and video and the review of uploaded materials on
the “private” Mobile Diary blog became a shared process of reflec-
tion and play, in which other family members, friends, and peers
were invited to participate. Participants reported back to us that the
project and the method were often the subject of discussion, and at
times the experiences of participation were shared across existing
networks. For example, one participant described her Mobile Diary
21 For example, see research with “house-
experiences on her MySpace page while another hoped to post
holds” by Bill Gaver, Tony Dunne, and
“self-reporting” diary material to her MySpace profile.
Elena Pacenti, “Design: Cultural Probes,”

The conditions for socializing the research demonstrated here
Interactions 6, no. 1(1999); research
with “friendship groups” by Wendy
are made possible by the capacity and expectations of sociability,
March and Constance Fleuriot, “Girls,
distribution, and sharing inherent in social technologies. In using
Technology, and Privacy: ‘Is My Mother
social technologies as tools for research, we appropriated not just
Listening?’” in Proceedings of the
the technologies but also the practices of sharing and communica-
SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in
tion they make possible.
Computing Systems (New York: ACM,

Although this sharing raises some ethical questions to con-
2006), 107-10; and research with ‘pairs’
by Minna Isomursu, Kari Kuutti, and Soili
sider about confidentiality for the client organization and about the
Väinämö, “Experience Clip: Method for
need for consent from “informal participants,” it also has important
User Participation and Evaluation of
implications from a participatory perspective. For example, Merkel
Mobile Concepts,” in Proceedings of the
et al. suggest that in the context of community technologies, the
8th Participatory Design Conference:
role of designers goes beyond that of eliciting project requirements
Interweaving Media, Materials and
Practices (New York: ACM, 2004), 83-92.
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and includes finding ways to seed ownership.22 We propose that the
spontaneous inclusion of others in the process of self-reporting
reflects a sense of control and ownership by participants over the
research process, the design project, and the topic being investi-
gated. Participants determined not just when and how documenta-
tion took place, but also with whom. We also propose the
possibility that the process can be conceptualized as one of appro-
priation, prior to the creation of any code or system. Even without a
finished artifact, the project is becoming “a public thing open for con-
troversies.”23 A sense of momentum and interest is being built
around the project by the “future community” as its members
engage with it and give it meaning in their everyday lives and with
their surrounding networks.

Given the inherently social nature of social technologies, this
outcome is relatively predictable. However, such outcomes are nei-
ther accounted for in current methods of self-reporting nor particu-
larly supported by our current methodological infrastructures. This
absence raises the question of how to better support and leverage
this kind of community appropriation as a form of participation
central to the design of social technologies.
Bridging Existing and Future Practices
For participants, accommodating the activities of self-reporting has
always meant altering their daily practices to some extent. The
intervention of self-documentation facilitates reflection and at times
behavior change.24 In our case, participating in Mobile Diaries
involved experiences similar to those characterizing participation in
community platforms. Participants made videos, sent picture mes-
22 Cecelia Merkel, Lu Xiao, Umer Farooq,
sages, created mobile blog posts (mo-blogs), and commented on
Craig H. Ganoe, Roderick Lee, John
blog messages—all actions common to participation in social tech-
M. Carroll, and Mary Beth Rosson,
nologies. In many cases, participants were using these technologies
“Participatory Design in Community
Computing Contexts: Tales from the
for the first time, learning experientially about the technologies and
Field,” in Proceedings of the 8th
the various forms of interaction they allow as they produced “self-
Participatory Design Conference:
reports.” Some participants said that, as a result of the study, they
Interweaving Media, Materials and
intended to buy camera phones or start mobile blogging. For
Practices (New York: ACM, 2004), 1-10.
others, the Mobile Diary experience helped them to articulate what
23 Pelle Ehn, “Participation in Design
Things” in Proceedings of the 10th
had held them back from participating in online forums, including
Participatory Design Conference:
concerns with privacy and negative interactions with others online.
Experiences and Challenge (New York:

Such outcomes have a number of implications from a partic-
ACM, 2008), 96.
ipatory perspective. Dearden and Light note that one of the emerg-
24 See, e.g., Rebecca Grinter and Margery
ing roles for designers working with community platforms is the
Eldridge, “Wan2tlk?: Everyday Text
up-skilling of community members.25 Mobile Diaries became a
Messaging,” in Proceedings of the
SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in
playful and safe environment for participants to explore new tech-
Computing Systems (New York: ACM,
nologies. By participating in the studies, participants had the
2003), 441-48.
opportunity to experiment and develop skills and knowledge rele-
25 Andy Dearden and Ann Light, “Designing
vant to participation in social technologies. In developing Mobile
for E-Social Action: An Application
Diaries, participants negotiated, incorporated, and appropriated
Taxonomy,” paper presented at DRS’08
(Sheffield, UK, 2008).
DesignIssues: Volume 28, Number 3 Summer 2012
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particular physical, social, and technical devices and practices into
their daily lives, producing and sharing digital artifacts. Partici-
pants experienced something of how such technologies might take
up physical, technical, and social residence in their lives.

Botero and Saad-Sulonen discuss how the use of “living pro-
totypes” used during the Urban Mediator project created condi-
tions not only for the development of the system but also for the
practices that would make them viable.26 We found that Mobile Dia-
ries created a similar pathway. Self-reporting allowed participants
to develop the skills necessary to participate in future designs,
making this approach more viable because of the bridging of exist-
ing and future practices.
Developing Seed Content
In social technologies designed for community settings, contribu-
tors share stories, images, and experiences around topics relevant to
them. The shape of the community platform evolves in response to
these contributions from “community members.” The use of social
technologies as self-reporting tools blurred the distinction between
self-reporting and the production of user-generated content. At
times, there was little difference between the material participants
produced during the Mobile Diaries and what we would hope to
see on the user-generated sites or platforms we envisioned design-
ing, other than the framework under which it was produced. This
overlap resulted both from the subject matter of the reports (i.e.,
personal images, stories, and videos about a particular topic of
interest, told from the perspective of the participant), and from the
tools and format through which the reports were produced (i.e.,
MMS, blog posts, and MPEG-4 video formats developed for com-
munication, publishing, and distribution).

For example, Mobile Diary reports included content such as
the tour of a rooftop garden, home cooking experiments, and dem-
onstrations of strategies for reducing household waste. From a
design research perspective, these reports told us something of par-
ticipants’ motivations and interests around sustainability, but such
personal stories were also ideal seed content for a future-planned
community site around that same topic.

Social technologies are not about building a database and
populating it with content. Rather, contributions by community
members are the central, ever-evolving building blocks of design;
they bring meaning to, and measure, the success of any scaffolds
that we as designers might create. Content creation usually takes
place after a system has been in some way formed and released to
the public. The use of tools such as videos and camera phones early
in the design research process meant that the creation of seed con-
tent could begin earlier, opening up the potential for the future
26 Botero and Saad-Sulonen, “Co-Designing
for New City–Citizen Interaction
Possibilities,” 269.
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platform’s structure to emerge from the “bottom up.”27 Themes,
navigation structures, and taxonomies thus can emerge out of the
content, rather than being defined a priori.

The idea that material from self-reporting, usually a private
endeavor, could potentially be put to more public uses raises a
number of questions about privacy and consent and about how
data collection is framed. It also of ers potential new ways in which
participants can actively influence and participate in design
through activities related to use early in the design process. Man-
aged appropriately, self-reporting studies can be used as sources of
seed content, presenting an opportunity for future community
members to contribute directly to the design of future platforms
through use.

Such studies also are means through which ownership of the
developing technology can be fostered. In reflecting on Context-
mapping—a method that makes use of self-reporting—Rijn and
Stappers state that when looking at final research reports, “users
will automatically experience results with [their] personal expres-
sions as their belongings.”28 Their research looks at fostering a sense
of authorship among participants as contributors to the final
reports that are created out of their research. We suggest that in the
design of community platforms, the opportunity arises for the
material to be taken up in the design itself. Inviting participants to
take the role of author and contributor prior even to the develop-
ment or specification of any particular platform creates the poten-
tial for a stronger personal connection between the design project
and the participant.
Reconfiguring Self-Reporting to Support Design Through Use
Socializing the research, bridging existing and future practices and
developing seed content can all be understood as examples of par-
ticipation and design through use. Using social technologies them-
selves as tools for research into future community platforms created
the potential for roles and activities typically acted out in use (e.g.,
the appropriation of design as a public object or the development of
user-generated content) to be brought into the early phases of
design and research. Participants engaged in a concrete experience
of the modes of interaction and self-expression that constitute par-
ticipation in social technologies, enabling a form of “prototyping in
the wild.” The direct engagement of design through use provided
opportunities through which people could actively shape, influ-
27 Twidale and Floyd, “Infrastructures from
ence, and take ownership in the design. Embracing this potential
the Bottom-up and the Top-Down.”
extends the role of methods like Mobile Diaries beyond self-docu-
28 Helma van Rijn and Pieter Jan Stappers,
mentation, reconfiguring them as exploratory interventions “in
“Expressions of Ownership: Motivating
the wild” and producing rudimentary prototypes and compositions
Users in a Co-Design Process,” in
of existing social software. This creativity has implications for how
Proceedings of the 10th Participatory
Design Conference: Experiences and
Challenges (New York: ACM, 2008),179.
DesignIssues: Volume 28, Number 3 Summer 2012
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we conceive of the potential of self-reporting to support participa-
tion early in the design process and for the role of both designers
and participants.

Our experiences have encouraged us to begin thinking of
Mobile Diaries less as structured research studies with a finite
beginning and end and more as pilot projects or “hybrid explor-
atory prototypes” that can make visible, and evolve in response to,
existing energies and interests within the community. Mobile Dia-
ries might be the starting point of engagement with the future com-
munity, so that rather than closing the projects down at the end of
the “research phase,” the community and momentum created
during the studies can evolve and keep growing. Rather than fram-
ing the Mobile Diaries as a constrained, separate and discrete
research activity, they become an initial intervention that could lead
the way into the next iteration or configuration. In practice, this
perspective on Mobile Diaries includes adding, extending, or recon-
figuring the Mobile Diary platform using existing technologies in
response to participants’ feedback and use. For example, we might
add menus or navigation systems that reflect the ways in which
participants have begun to sort and manage self-reported material.
Instead of working with the community to identify specifications
for development of a new artifact or platform, the goal becomes
identifying “near enough” existing tools that enable co-discovery
and design through use. Finding ways to incorporate existing tech-
nologies that already serve a particular purpose (e.g., Flickr.com for
photos or Delicious.com for bookmarks) becomes the starting point
for experimentation and expansion of the existing platform. For
designers the emphasis is on identifying how existing tools can be
brought together in ways relevant to the specific community plat-
form being developed and developing channels through which
feedback from members of the community about their use and
experiences of use can be understood.

Participatory Design has long conceptualized design
research as going beyond data collection to becoming participatory
action research.29 The inherently participatory nature of social tech-
nologies makes this kind of proposition more viable: Where self-
reporting once represented an opportunity for designers and
researchers to conduct contextual research, it now presents an
opportunity for future community members to participate in design
through informed through experiences of use.

The examples of “prototyping in the wild,” given earlier in
this paper, along with our more ad hoc experiences with self-report-
ing, suggest ways in which social technologies allow and prompt
traditional design methods to be reconfigured to more readily
engage design through use. The emergent and participatory nature
of social technologies opens up new ways in which participants can
29 See Pelle Ehn, Work-Orientated Design
have ownership and control over the design, as the shape of design
of Computer Artifacts (Stockholm:
Arbetslivscentrum, 1988).
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can emerge through their use. However, work still needs to be done
to support these kinds of approaches in the commercial sectors in
which we work. For instance, the blurring of boundaries between
private and public participation and the shifting roles of partici-
pants require consideration. We have begun this process by includ-
ing clauses in consent forms that cover the potential to negotiate
more public use of material. Technically, we would also need the
resources to evolve the platform from the initial “diary” state into
its next, more public form. However, as we have seen, social tech-
nologies lend themselves to exactly this sort of recomposition and
reconfigurability. The real challenge is how these more “causal and
exploratory formats” become manageable in a commercial context.30
Organizations need to be culturally and politically mature enough
to take on such approaches and sufficiently resourced to support
the level of engagement required. A key barrier identified in our
research includes a common approach to design project infrastruc-
ture that assumes a linear development between research, design,
and use.31 Whether organizations have the capacity and maturity
required to allow a more participant-led design approach is also
questionable. Twidale and Floyd are at pains to point out that,
although the malleable nature of technologies is what makes
approaches such as Patchwork Prototyping possible, the appropri-
ate values and attitudes must also be present in the organization to
allow design to emerge through use.32
Conclusion
In this paper, we have focused on opportunities to support
participation in the design of social technologies, through use, in
community settings. We have presented new opportunities for
participation both demanded and enabled by social technologies
themselves, and we have suggested potential implications for how
we conceive of the early design of community platforms. We con-
clude by suggesting that such participatory approaches to the
30 Brereton and Buur, “New Challenges for
design of social technologies have a broader value. Commercial,
Design Participation,” 111.
government, and not-for-profit organizations increasingly are
31 Penny Hagen and Toni Robertson,
embracing social technologies as a way to support mass “participa-
“Social Technologies: Challenges and
Opportunities for Participation,” 7-8.
tion.”33 Although social technologies are “participatory” in that they
32 Ingbert Floyd and Michael Twidale,
require and rely on participant involvement to take their form, they
“Learning Design from Emergent
are not exempt from important ethical issues. We might ask who,
Co-Design: Observed Practices and
exactly, benefits from this participation and how can we, as design-
Future Directions” paper presented at
ers, act to maximize the benefits to the participants while avoiding
Design for Co-designers Workshop,
their possible harm and exploitation? If we take as our starting
at the 10th Participatory Design
Conference: Experiences and Challenges
point Greenbaum and Madsen’s political perspective of Participa-
(Bloomington, USA, October 1-4, 2008).
tory Design—that people have the right to influence their own
33 For example, see Hillay Cottam,
lives—then bringing a participatory approach to the design of such
“Participatory Systems: Moving Beyond
social technology systems is critical to ensuring that people have
20th Century Institutions,” Harvard
the ability to negotiate, control, and understand the implications of
International Review 31, no. 4 (2010),
50-55.
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participation as they evolve.34 Ongoing issues with privacy, owner-
34 Greenbaum and Madsen, “PD: A Personal
ship, opting-out, and sharing of personal information by major
Statement,” Communications of the
social network providers such as Facebook can be seen as indicators
ACM. Special issue on graphical user
of what can occur when full participation is not at the core of the
interfaces: the next generation, 36, no. 6
development of participatory systems.35 The risks are not limited to
(1993): 47.
35 See Kurt Opsahl, “Facebook’s Eroding
a failed website with no users. As the non-consensual exposure of
Privacy Policy: A Timeline” www.eff.org/
private data in the case of Google Buzz showed, the use of these
deeplinks/2010/04/facebook-timeline
technologies can be dangerous to people’s personal safety.36 Partici-
(accessed May 10 2010).
patory approaches sensitize us to the inherent politics involved in
36 See Nicholas Carlson, “Warning: Google
participation, and, as this paper has suggested, offer some starting
Buzz Has a Huge Privacy Flaw,” www.
points for how we might integrate a more participatory approach
businessinsider.com/warning-google-
buzz-has-a-huge-privacy-flaw-2010-2
into the systems that are now a central part of how we interact,
(accessed February 10, 2010).
communicate, and construct our identities in daily life.
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