A Pattern Language for Living Communication:

Deepening Participation

Doug Schuler

Public Sphere Project

Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility

The Evergreen State College

2700 Evergreen Parkway NW

Olympia, Washington, USA 98505-0002

dschuler@evergreen.edu

ABSTRACT

This workshop is directly tied into an ambitious, global, strongly participatory project organized by the Public Sphere Project (PSP) of Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility. The intent is to build a coherent and compelling "pattern language for living communication" which reflects the collective wisdom of a very loosely knit community of activists, researchers, policy-makers, and technologists worldwide currently engaged in a wide range of technological and social activities to develop a communication and information infrastructure that supports social and environmental amelioration by civic society. The objectives of the workshop are as follows: move pattern language forward (refine patterns and/or language; make process more participatory), get participatory design community involved in a long-term way on project, evaluate and critique the project so far, surface ideas for deeper and more effective participation in process, and add new patterns (especially related to participatory design) and insert more participation within the patterns themselves.

Keywords

Pattern Language, participatory design, public sphere, knowledge structure

Context

This workshop proposal is directly tied into an ambitious, global, strongly participatory project organized by the Public Sphere Project (PSP) of Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility. The intent is to build a coherent and compelling "pattern language for living communication" which reflects the collective wisdom of a very loosely knit community of activists, researchers, policy-makers, and technologists worldwide currently engaged in a wide range of technological and social activities to develop a communication and information infrastructure that supports social and environmental amelioration by civic society. Thus the pattern language will ultimately contain theory, philosophy, political dimensions, design practices, as well as nitty-gritty, pragmatic suggestions. We plan to publish this pattern language in online and printed form. A "pattern language" (described below) is a somewhat complex theoretical structure which is based on the insights of professor emeritus Christopher Alexander and his colleagues at the Center for Environmental Design at the University of California, Berkeley. Alexander's book, A Pattern Language (1977) is a classic in the area of architectural design and theory.

This workshop is the next phase of a larger process. At the time of this writing approximately 165 pattern proposals have been entered (from people in Bolivia, Ghana, South Africa, Malaysia, Philippines, Argentina, Japan, Russia, Canada, western Europe and the United States) into our online "pattern management system" (http://diac.cpsr.org/cgi-bin/diac02/pattern.cgi/) and are therefore now available for public viewing and pattern submissions and for editing by authors. By the time of PDC in June, 2002 it is hoped (and believed) that the language itself will be further advanced. Although additional patterns will have been submitted, the more substantive work will have been completed on the language itself: merging, deleting, refining, ordering, and linking of patterns into a form that more closely resembles a complete pattern language that covers the entire domain (itself a difficult definitional problem) is non-duplicative and non-self-contradictory, and is coherent, compelling, and useful in a wide variety of situations. At this phase of the project I am hoping to engage the participatory design community in a participatory evaluation, critique, and brainstorming session. Since the project is intended to be participatory in a very broad way (from initial development to eventual use and evaluation) engaging the participatory design community in a dialogue as to the current state of the project and the possible avenues for its completion is seen as absolutely critical. The challenge here is setting the stage so that the workshop effectively meets its objectives. A major part of this is providing the right amount of project information in the right form at the onset and asking the right sorts of questions of the participants. This proposal describes the basic parameters of the workshop but I will be relying on the expertise, knowledge, and independence of the attendees to steer it in interesting and fruitful directions. In other words, this workshop will have many leaders and many opportunities for interesting and fruitful excursions. This should help ensure that it is intellectually exciting for all involved. This workshop directly ties into the paper that I will be presenting at PDC '02 which provides a strong link and contextual background for the workshop.

According to Alexander (1977), "A pattern is a careful description of a perennial solution to a recurring problem within a building context, describing one of the configurations which brings life to a building." He describes a pattern language as, "a network of patterns that call upon one another. Patterns help us remember insights and knowledge about design and can be used in combination to create solutions." Alexander, for example, proposes "small meeting rooms" as pattern #151 and "Half hidden garden" as pattern #111.

We are using Alexander's constructs (basically "semi-structured information") as the basis of our project. Like Alexander, we are interested in systems that are more convivial. We are also interested in design. We, however, are focusing our attention on communication systems, not systems related to architecture and building. Our core precept is that certain forms of information and communication systems are likely to be more effective at promoting conviviality in the human and environmental spheres. These systems are also more "authentic" and more equitable; unlike, for example, commercial television whose product is designed to sell merchandise, constructed by professionals with commercial - not civic or community - allegiances, fosters damaging stereotypes, is often unanswerable to the public, and is likely to be the conduit of propaganda. Thus the systems we hope to promote are more likely to be equitable and participatory. They will support what I've called in my book (Schuler, 1996) the six "community core values," conviviality and culture; education; strong democracy; health and well being; economic equity, opportunity, and sustainability; and information and communication.

This project capitalizes on several notable aspects of our era:

• Intense interest and influence in civil society worldwide.

• Increasing penetration of the Internet and the World Wide Web with attendant potential for global collaboration.

• Need for a "network-based" representation of the wide variety of thoughts and approaches related to community and civic uses of ICT worldwide.

We believe that a useful and compelling pattern language is possible (Alexander's "A Pattern Language" is an existence proof) and that we can develop one in an efficient collective, participatory way. Our strategies for developing and disseminating the pattern language are listed below:

• Use patterns as an orienting theme for a conference and information structure.

• Use a common format to facilitate pattern integration.

• Develop and refine appropriate participatory processes (combining in-person and virtual interactions) that support each phase of the development of patterns and the pattern language.

• Develop an easy-to-use web application that supports every aspect of the process including pattern submission and review, and pattern language development, access and use, and evolution.

• Publicize the web site and encourage people to post their patterns.

• Provide a scholarly avenue for pattern development and presentation (while also making the project accessible to a non-academic audience).

• Build on successes of previous DIAC symposia and the worldwide community that has evolved over the past several years.

• Work on an ongoing basis to evaluate the process and to explore the pertinent issues (including a preliminary history and analysis of the social and technical processes).

Each phase of the project has an associated "community" and "output" that is created during that phase. The type of participation has been determined largely by the community that has been involved and what needs to take place at that particular phase. The phases as we are now defining them are as follows: (1) conceiving project; (2) developing and marketing project; (3) entering patterns; (4) reviewing patterns for presentation; (5) language development; (6) language review; (7) process evaluation and critique; (8) final edits; (9) language evolution; (10) language evolution.

Objectives

This workshop is intended to be collaborative. I am telling the story of our participatory project and I'm hoping to hear their feedback based on their expertise, values, and judgement. I believe that our interactions will help me in moving the project forward and I'm trusting that the time the attendees spend in the workshop will be helpful to them in their work.

The objectives, both general and specific; for me and for participants are as follows:

• Move pattern language forward (refine patterns and/or language; make process more participatory)

• Get participatory design community involved in a long-term way on project

• Evaluate / critique the project so far

• Surface ideas for deeper and more effective participation in process

• Add new patterns (especially related to participatory design) and insert more participation within the patterns themselves

Workshop Plan

The plan is very basic but can be modified based on feedback from workshop reviewers or from participants themselves. It is a pared-down version of "Open Space Technology" in which participants largely determine the agenda based upon some initial constraints established by the convenor.

1. Workshop begins with a brief discussion of the project; its intent, rationale, approach status. I will have the set of patterns with me and I will use one or two as examples. If at all possible I plan to display the patterns along the wall in the order that the group at DIAC-02 put them in. There will be some brief discussion about this and I will answer questions. I'll also outline the basic plan for the workshop and distribute the list of critical questions (next section).

2. For about 15 minutes participants are encouraged to browse the patterns, mill around and discuss the patterns, the intent, and the process.

3. Participants offer their ideas for small group discussions that they'd like to organize. These ideas are written down on a white board. These ideas can come from the critical questions list or their own imagination. People can also use a pattern or a set of patterns as their focus. There will be some discussion as to whether the topic is too broad or too narrow or whether groups should merge or split.

4. Break into small groups based on the agenda items to discuss the agenda item to develop recommendations.

4. Discussion, reporting back, recommendations

Critical Questions

How can we improve the quality of the participation in the process to come?

What could we have done to improve the quality of the process already passed?

What new patterns can we add to explicitly add participatory design to the language?

How can we integrate participatory design orientation and methodology into existing patterns?

How could / should patterns-in-work be annotated on paper and online to support integration into the pattern language?

What observations, theories, recommendations could be integrated into the text that ultimately will describe the pattern language and how it should be used?

How should the pattern management system be improved? What new functionality should be added?

How does our choice of artifacts (patterns / pattern language) shape the outcome of the project (both positively and negatively)?

How does our particular approach to this project shape the outcome of the project (both positively and negatively)?

Workshop parameters

I'm willing to work on this with just about any number of participants since we will be breaking into smaller groups anyway. A larger number of people would just mean more smaller groups. I am, however, envisioning between 10 and 50 people. The workshop doesn't require any computer support although a computer connected to the Internet with associated display capabilities would probably be useful in displaying the full patterns and the capabilities of the online pattern management system ((diac.cpsr.org/ conferences/diac02/patterns.cgi). I will be bringing the pattern set (150-250 patterns) in paper form and ideally these could be taped to a wall in the workshop room. The workshop should be anywhere from 1.5 to 3 hours.

Anybody at PDC would be welcome to attend this workshop. People who are interested in the design and development of socially responsible ICT; broad, multi-phased participatory design projects, and emergent, collective, networked knowledge representation would make excellent participants. Anybody with familiarity with Alexander's work would bring in important insights as well.

Workshop Convenor

Doug Schuler, the workshop convenor, has been working in the area of social responsibility in computer systems for over 20 years. He is a co-founder of the Seattle Community Network (http://www.scn.org) and has authored and edited several books and articles on these topics and has presented at many locations around the world. He is currently a member of the faculty at The Evergreen State College where he teaches programs related to computers and society. In the fall of 2002 he will again co-teach Community Information Systems, a year-long program for 50 students who will work with communities around the world to co-develop web applications to support the communities.