Adapting participatory design to design information system with rural Ethiopian community

Most of the Information and Communication Technology for Development initiatives introduced to communities in developing countries fails to deliver its promises due to the lack of intended beneficiary involvement. Participatory Design assumes to be effective as long as its nature of participations and methods are contextualized to a given settings. To this end, we discuss the implication of considering local (rural community) culture of participation practices, and propose a procedure to be followed in the early phases of information system development process. Finally we argue that, such adaption could advance the Participatory Action Research methodology.