Enhancing Participatory Design by MultipleCommunication Channels

Participatory approaches for the design and the introduction of computersystems are drawing increasingly more attention among researchers as well asamong practitioners. While participatory design (Schuler and Namioka 1993)might be considered as only "helpful" for the development of single-userapplicationsit can offer significant benefits for the design of systems incollaborative contexts, since the social and organisational aspects ofcollaboration call for a socio-technical view towards system development.Furthermore, Participatory Design can induce social capital into system designand reveal the actual standards of dignity and ethics of human work.[...]