Participatory Design of Websites with Web Design Workshops

Abstract

At the University of Rochester's River Campus Libraries we have included users in technology development with great success. "Participatory design" entails collaboration among designers, developers, and users from the earliest stages of conception through to implementation of websites and other technology. Using participatory methods, a project to redesign the library website began with workshops to identify user needs and preferences. The results of these workshops led to the identification of key tasks for the main page. They also generated a hierarchy of tasks for sub-pages and rich information about how students and faculty members use current websites in their work. In our article, we explain our reasons for running participatory design workshops, describe our methods, review participants and recruitment, and summarize key findings. We also include information about our local implementation and general conclusions about the value of design workshops for website design and development.