Participatory Programming and the Scope of Mutual Responsibility: Balancing scientific, design and software commitment

Over the past seven years, we have been conducting a variety of participatory design activities with research biologists, programmers, and bioinformaticians at the Institut Pasteur in Paris. We first describe the history of these activities and how they have created the beginnings of a participatory design culture. We introduce participatory programming, which integrates participatory design and end-user programming, and examine how it acts as a medium for forging scientific ideas. Finally, we reflect on three poles of activity: the computational medium, scientific hypotheses and participatory design.