Sharing is caring. Sharing and documenting complex participatory projects to enable generative participation

This article reflects on how sharing documentation of subjective viewpoints on complex participatory projects can contribute to end-user development in or generativity of projects. We will discuss the documentation approaches of some participatory projects that combine the development of software and hardware in a cultural, social or health context with groups of participants with an eye on generating ongoing participation. We will also describe how we, inspired by these projects, developed 1. a “thick documentation” approach, based on a collaborative mapping method called MAP-it 2. that provides a dynamic view, revealing the diverse subjective perspectives on the project; 3. that motivates different types of makers and participants to participate in documenting; 4. that aims for generativity. We evaluated our approach on these 4 goals and propose future