Online Participatory Design

Abstract

When the COVID-19 pandemic struck Norway, The Norwegian Association of Local and Regional Authorities (KS) set out to develop a new information system for contact tracing. This thesis looks at how participatory design approaches were used in this process. The COVID-19 pandemic posed challenges for user participation due to time constraints in developing new technology, restrictions on travel and physical meetings, a heterogeneous user group spread across the country, and an overall lack of time to participate. In this thesis, I investigate the possibilities and opportunities within these constraints and how the project owner has responded to this to involve users in the design processes. These challenges also apply to participation in many large-scale information systems. This thesis' empirical perspective is the digitisation and development of new contact tracing technology. The theoretical context is participatory design in large-scale information systems. The following research question has been investigated in these contexts: How can we support participatory design during a pandemic? I used an interpretive epistemological approach aligned with the qualitative case study methodology to investigate this research question. The practical contribution is how the participatory design responses KS, the product owner, enabled during the development of Fiks contact tracing, considering the pandemic's challenges and opportunities. The theoretical analysis argues that Fiks contact tracing utilised a digitised modification of participatory design and facilitated user representation to develop a solution satisfying the users' needs. KS used the arenas of digital participation meetings to enable participatory design during the pandemic. During these meetings, KS used digitised modifications of principles and methods from participatory design to engage the end-users and learn about their needs. By involving Fiks contact tracing users in the design and decision-making processes, the values of working life democracy are supported by increasing the users' trust in the system and openness to change. To achieve the values of participation among a more significant portion of the user group, user representatives posed as power users representing their municipalities. In addition, some municipalities utilised user representation in the form of a representative who represented multiple municipalities.