On the Multifaceted Future of Participatory Design: A response to the responses

In this paper I have the pleasure of responding to three insightful commentaries to my paper, Bridging the gap between politics and techniques: On the next practices of participatory design (Kyng 2010). The commentaries are by Ellen Balka (2010), Helena Karasti (2010) and Dan Shapiro (2010). They deserve more in depth consideration than time and space allow. Hopefully the authors and I, as well as many more, will have the opportunity to continue the debate in the not too distant future. In my ‘gap paper’ (Kyng 2010) I argue for a re-focusing of PD research in order to increase the impact of PD research on the next practices of ICT design. I present a framework for this quest and invite and challenge others to participate. As I read the commentaries all three authors welcome the debate and agree with most of the ‘big picture’ presented in the paper. At the same time, they point to new issues and give critical comments to the framework and my use of it. Below I discuss what I find to be the most important issues raised, including a few where we are disagreeing and a few where I believe that we are misunderstanding each other. However, before doing so I spell out a few statements that form important parts of the background to what I’m trying to do. The first statement reads: