Political alignments in Participatory Design

How do political alignments influence how people participate in design projects? How do design affordances shape democratic participation in digital platforms? Based on the four digital democracy positions proposed by L. Dahlberg, we developed a set of cards to discuss the political alignment of participatory design projects. Unpacking how people prefer to participate in projects with a political lens is important because of their design implications. For example, participants who are aligned with deliberative forms of participation might prefer mechanisms such as consensus; while participants who are aligned with rational forms of participation might prefer decisions to be taken through voting. These cards are a design tool that has been proofed to successfully unpack important considerations in several Participatory Design projects.