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Contextuality of participation in IS design: a developing country perspective

Published: 27 July 2004 Publication History

Abstract

Participatory approaches to information systems design have evolved over approximately the last three decades, mainly in Scandinavia, Europe, and lately in the US. However there has been limited and peripheral research and debates over participatory design approaches and techniques in developing country settings. This paper explores three case studies in developing countries where participatory approaches have been used in the design and implementation of health information systems. The investigation reveals the politics of design, the nature of participation, and the methods, tools and techniques for carrying out design projects are shaped with respect to the diversity of the socio-economic, cultural and political situations faced in each of these settings. Though common strategies, such as capacity development, could be found that cut across the three case studies it is the importance of the contextual nature of participatory design that emerges most strongly. There is no single algorithmic best practice regarding participatory design in information systems which is applicable to all situations.

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cover image ACM Conferences
PDC 04: Proceedings of the eighth conference on Participatory design: Artful integration: interweaving media, materials and practices - Volume 1
July 2004
245 pages
ISBN:1581138512
DOI:10.1145/1011870
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Published: 27 July 2004

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Author Tags

  1. community IS
  2. developing countries
  3. health information systems
  4. participatory design

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