Focusing on Humanistic Outcomes on the Sociotechnical Axis of Cohesion of the IS Discipline: User Participation in Distributed Participatory Design

Following a recent plea to recommit to the sociotechnical perspective as a foundation of the IS discipline by connecting instrumental and humanistic outcomes, we present a study of user participation in distributed participatory design, which was initiated by UNICEF and executed largely by youth to develop a digital game to raise attention about climate change. We apply an integrative framework for user participation, which consists of well-established concepts and show that it can be fruitfully used in a new context. We found genuine user participation carried out by the adolescents. The user participation had a focus on individual users and the form of direct and indirect participation, where the juvenile participants took informative and consultative roles. The project resulted both in functional and democratic empowerment, and as such represents an instance of information systems development and research, which emphasises a humanistic orientation and outcome while not neglecting any instrumental outcomes.