We used participatory design in all of our community projects. Participatory Design is not only an approach to design… but most importantly a design attitude. Participatory Design (PD) is a creative approach to engaging and co-creating with communities to address local issues.

Traditional design projects typically include the paying client and professionals within similar and related industries; in participatory design, members of the wider community — from the users who are directly affected by the design, to the local business owners who may be peripheral to it — are also recognised as legitimate stakeholders with the ability to impact the project.

The extent of their involvement can range from being passively informed of a project’s development, to actively sharing roles and responsibilities in decision making. While there may be times when informing is a necessary part of the process, we believe that real impact is often made when we intentionally build up a person’s capacity to contribute at higher levels.We combine this with agile methodologies including Design Thinking, Kanban and Scrum.