Evolution, Not Revolution: PD in the Toolbelt Era

An emerging software development paradigm – the toolbelt model – offers new challenges and opportunities to the participatory design movement. A case study illustrates how professionals working in product design and development domains assemble and evolve collections, or “toolbelts,” of off-the-shelf software tools to support their ongoing work practices. An analysis shows that while the toolbelt model is a politically empowering software development paradigm, domain workers still need help in: (1) identifying suitable tools and “gluing” them together to create a coherent system, (2) designing information representations, and (3) evolving better long-term work practices. We propose a new model of participatory design – participatory evolutionary development – as a potential technique for addressing these challenges.