Engineering or participatory design?

Abstract

Participatory design as a method of organizing community engagement is rapidly gaining prominence in Russia and is becoming a significant tool for transforming school spaces, as well as a format for building and developing a cohesive school community based on shared principles and aspirations. However, not all stakeholders within an educational institution are prepared to unite and collaboratively participate in bringing important initiatives to life. This leads to mutual distrust among stakeholders in education. Even when a student-led initiative begins with joint participation, it often ends in failure.

This article explores the experience of developing a school branding project using participatory design practices with high school students.

The project participants managed to conduct an emotional assessment of the school’s physical-spatial environment among all stakeholders using the ‘Unfinished Sentences’ technique, draft their first creative brief, identify a shared understanding of the school space among students, teachers, and parents, and formulate a set of the school’s core values.

The article presents a number of specific features related to designing the spatial-semantic and communicative-organizational components of the educational environment. Participatory design implies a shift from a sequential ascent through the stages of engaged design as an end in itself, to a palette of choices where children are aware of the multi-level gradation of growth points and can select them independently. Depending on the circumstances or desire, the participation of children, and children and adults together in transforming a space carries within it a positive effect: it awakens the ‘student’s voice’, develops social activity, fosters communicative competence, and provides creative inspiration and initial professional trials.