A Tool for Participatory Negotiation: LINKing-UP Participatory Design and Design Knowledge Reuse

We describe a web-based prototype that enhances participatory design by providing participatory negotiation mechanisms between designers and potential end-users of a proposed system. As a module of LINK-UP, a repository for reusable design knowledge, our tool compliments scenario-based design processes, helping designers and potential end-users improve consensus. Negotiation spans a whole design cycle, but our initial focus is on requirements analysis. We report promising results from a pilot evaluation and suggest directions that will further improve the synthesis of participatory design, reuse of design knowledge, and development of design-support tools.