The evolution of bonded design: from elementary school to higher education

Abstract

This paper introduces an alternative model of the participatory design (PD) methodology, Bonded Design (BD). Bonded Design originated from research investigating the use of participatory design methods to foster collaboration between two potentially disparate groups, adult researchers/designers and elementary school children. Previous work has shown that by using design techniques selected from various existing PD models, executed in a particular order, the Bonded Design methodology can successfully empower two distinct groups of participants to conceive ideas for innovative technologies they could not have produced alone. For these reasons the BD methodology was chosen as the framework for a university-wide initiative of a Research 1 university to foster meaningful communication and interaction between faculty and IT professional staff with the intent to create innovative technology solutions. Findings from this study indicated that while several Bonded Design features were useful in achieving the end goal, modifications needed to be made to the methodology as a whole to accommodate not only the increased sophistication and knowledge base of the adult participants, but also the design of a tangible final deliverable that could be directly implemented.