Tools and techniques: ways to engage telling, making and enacting

Participatory design is not one approach but a proliferating family of design practices that hosts many design agendas and comes with a varied set of toolboxes. In this chapter we will give examples of toolboxes with the ambition to show that there is a richness of tools and techniques available that may be combined, adapted and extended to form the basis for yet new PD practices. It is shown how the making of things, the telling of stories and the enactment of possible futures together provide the basis for forming a temporary community in which the new can be envisioned.
The introduction frames tools and techniques within participatory design and describes participatory design as various practices of participation. The following sections give examples of how designers and non-designers participate in PD practices through activities focusing on telling, making and enacting. The final section reflects on present and future challenges.

We present a wide selection of tools and techniques for PD, describing how they support participants in making, telling and enacting aspects of future design. The aim is to stimulate further proliferation of formats and procedures that may bring PD to new design challenges and to new designer/user communities. Our claim is not that tools and techniques have to be applied rigorously. Instead we suggest that sensitivity to the coherence of making, telling and enacting provides sufficient grounding for designers (and non-designers) to make the tools and techniques relevant for whatever participatory action they are involved in.
Thin includes being aware of what is accomplished as particular tools and techniques become part of specific participatory design practices. Finding out how these in combination can create formats and procedures that can create engagement, a common image of the vision or PD development task, and last but not least, create ownership for the results.