Project Establishment in the Context of Participatory Design: Experience from a Hospital Information System Development Project

This paper reports on a project establishment undertaking as proposed by the STEPS methodology (Software Technology for Evolutionary Participatory System Design). Project establishment in STEPS is aimed at getting an inner understanding of a project’s environment. This understanding spans getting insights about the user environment, establishing a project team and ends with an initial proposal of the next steps as proposed by STEPS. We describe the methodology we applied: sustained individual and group interactions with the staff at the hospital informed by concepts of participation, collaboration and Joint Applications Design. By reflecting on selected instances of our engagement with the hospital staff, we report as findings the observations that before our project ideas can get ground, there are preliminary reviews and concerns (auxiliary to the central theme of participation) that need to be addressed. They touch on tools, processes and the prevailing organizational culture. The...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2006
• Where: HICSS
• Authors: Salesio Mbogo Kiura
• Keywords: Biometrics, Evolutionary Participatory System, HICSS 2006, Hospital Staff, Project Establishment, System Sciences