Participatory IT Design: Designing for Business and Workplace Realities

The goal of participatory IT design is to set sensible, general, and workable guidelines for the introduction of new information technology systems into an organization. Reflecting the latest systems-development research, this book encourages a business-oriented and socially sensitive approach that takes into consideration the specific organizational context as well as firsthand knowledge of users’ work practices and allows all stakeholders - users, management, and staff - to participate in the process. Participatory IT Design is a guide to the theory and practice of this process that can be used as a reference work by IT professionals and as a textbook for classes in information technology at introductory through advanced levels. Drawing on the work of a ten-year research program in which the authors worked with Danish and American companies, the book offers a framework for carrying out IT design projects as well as case studies that stand as examples of the process. The method presented in Participatory IT Design - known as the MUST method, after a Danish acronym for theories and methods of initial analysis and design activities - was developed and tested in thirteen industrial design projects for companies and organizations that included an American airline, a multinational pharmaceutical company, a national broadcasting corporation, a multinational software house, and American and Danish universities.