In my mail yesterday was a copy of the new book by John McCarthy and Peter Wright called "Taking [a]part -- the politics and aesthetics of participation in experience-centered design" (MIT Press). It is exciting to see their new book since their last book has had such an impact on the field. I have not read the book yet, even though I did read an early manuscript a while back.The focus of their earlier book was on the notion of experience in relation to technology. Now the focus is on participation.
This is a theme that has been around in our field since the 70s. Coming from Scandinavia, I grew up with the idea of participatory design as a phd student and was heavily influenced by the core individuals who developed the Scandinavian Participatory Design approach.
It is fascinating to see how the idea of participation has stayed relevant over the years and it is obvious that there is some kind of 'revival' at the moment. I can see that in the new interest among young phd students and others to read 'old' texts about PD and their ambition to incorporate that in new ways in their own work. This is why this book by McCarthy and Wright is to timely and relevant. Looking forward to read it more carefully.
[This book is published in the MIT Press book series "Design Thinking, Design Theory", that Ken Friedman and I are editors for. This is the seventh book published in the series. We are waiting for two new books soon, one by Enzio Manzini and one by Kees Dorst.]
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