Getting to the Point with Participatory Video Scenario

Participatory video scenarios can be used to facilitate user participation in the development of collaborative information systems. At the same time these scenarios promote the empathic understanding of the users. When scenario design is based on a contextual study of the users' work, the scenarios can be focused on the issues that are most challenging from the users' point of view. The number of scenarios can be minimized and their future relevance maximized, when the scenarios are built on key findings abstracted from the users' work. Co-creating video scenarios in participation with users is at best both efficient and motivating. As users are experts in their field, they can relatively quickly come up with realistic and representative examples of situations for the scenarios. The richness and multimodality of video and the possiblity to augment the story afterwards with edited images and sounds support communicating the scenario performances in a vivid, detailed and emotion-evoking way. This paper describes a case study in which participatory video scenarios were used in the development of a bank's knowledge management system.