Framing Participatory Design Through e-Prototyping

The paper discusses how a new way of prototyping can serve as a method to support a participatory and evolutionary design approach within Web projects. “e-prototyping” is meant to frame participation of Web users and other stakeholders in the design process through providing and maintaining a variety of communication channels for (user) feedback on frequently released software versions as well as establishing a steering board which takes into account the users voice in sorting out the feedback and setting priorities for the following design effort. From the software process perspective, e-prototyping supplies the development arena with the information needed (i.e. requirements), thus embedding the design activities in a loop of continuous communication and learning.