Computer support for participatory designing: a pilot study

ABSTRACT The purpose of the present study was to analyze whether and how students working in the collaborative learning environment (Future Learning Environment, FLE2) were able to share their design process with the intended user of the product. We organized a collaborative design course in which six teams of first-year university-level textile students (N=24) solved an authentic and complex design task -designing bags of EuroCSCL conference -with the help of FLE2-environment. The design course was based on the idea of participatory design process. The methods of social network analysis were applied to study interaction between the students, teacher and the users in the FLE2 database. A more detailed qualitative content analysis was carried out by analyzing the design thinking, design activities, and interaction between the students’ and teacher’s and the users’ statements posted to the FLE2 database by two of the design teams. The results indicated that in the more successful group, there was more active dialogue between students and expert users (i.e., avid conference-goers). In the case of this team, the expert user took a role of co-designer by participating in the design process through evaluating ideas produced by students. In the case of the less successful team, the teachers and users took the role of organizing students’ process of working with FLE2 and their collaborative designing. This group did not deliberately test their ideas with the expert user.