What is participation design anyway?

As part of our insights phase for Diversity & Inclusion for Participation at Mozilla, we’ve identified ‘Participation Design’ as being as one of 5 important topics for focus group discussion. Here is how I describe Participation Design (and thanks to Paul) for the question:

Participation design is the framework(s) we use to generate contribution opportunities that empower volunteers to ….

• Recognize, embrace and personalize the opportunity of lending time and skills to a project at Mozilla — technical and non-technical.
• Understand the steps they need to take to be successful and engaged at a very basic level. (task trackers, chat rooms, blogs, newsletters, wikis).
• Complete a contribution with success on project goals, and value to the volunteer.
• Grow in skills, knowledge and influence as community members, and leaders/mobilizers at Mozilla and in the broader open source community.

In our focus group for this topic, we’ll explore from both contributor and maintainer perspectives — what it means to design for participation for diversity, equality and inclusion. If you want to know more about how focus groups work — here’s a great resource.

If you, or someone you know from Mozilla past, present or future has insights, experience and vision for inclusive participation design. Please nominate them! (and select the topic ‘Participation Design’).

Originally published at Emma Irwin .