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This paper focuses on evaluation in Participatory Design (PD), and especially upon how the central aims of mutual learning, empowerment, democracy and workplace quality have been assessed. We surveyed all Participatory Design Conference papers (1990-2014) and papers from special journal issues on PD, focusing on systematic, explicit evaluations. The survey resulted in 143 papers of which 66 were deemed relevant. Of these, 17 papers deal with evaluation of the above mentioned aims. Based on evaluation theory, we propose seven key questions through which to characterize evaluations in PD and analyze the 17 papers. Our analysis reveals that formal evaluations of PD's aims are rare; generally lack details on methods; are researcher- and not participant-led, and that a corpus of work around evaluations needs to be developed. We suggest more explicit, systematic evaluations of PD's central aims to enhance accountability, learning and knowledge building, and to strengthen PD internally and externally.

The paper attempts to open a discussion on user participation in the new situation, where information technology penetrates everyday and becomes part of our physical environment. Participation in the planning of built environment is legally enforced in urban planning, and the paper asks, if the participation in the design of ubicomp environments should be treated in a similar way.

Accountability is an important issue for design, in more than one sense. In software engineering literature, accountability is mainly seen as a goal for quality assurance of design processes. In ethnomethodological studies, accountability is a central concept for understanding how people organize their everyday actions and interactions. Where the different research approaches meet, in Human Computer Interaction (HCI) and Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) literature, new and hybrid understandings of accountability arise. In this paper, I explore and compare uses of the concept of accountability in a selection of texts. Finally, using a specific case as an example, I discuss what focusing on ethnomethodological understandings of accountability might imply for design of information technologies.

In a short time the research group PLAY has established an unorthodox but effective work style, where a creative approach to research in information technology is combined with a strong focus on achieving high-quality results. Being a young research group (both regarding the time it has existed and the average age of its members) has presented PLAY with both challenges and opportunities. We face the challenge of building a credible basis for research in the academic community, but also think that we have the opportunity to contribute innovative results to the research community and our industrial partners.