"We Want to Hear Your Voice": Power Relations in Participatory Design

Pioneered in Scandinavia in the 1970s, participatory design (PD) has been recognized as an empowering, sensitive and inclusive approach. Thus it has been applied in a wide variety of fields, from architecture to teaching to game design. One of the goals of PD is to challenge the power imbalance, with the aim of reducing the power differential between researchers and participants. This paper borrows from Foucault´s ideas that power is relations of force as a theoretical guideline, to explore how power is exercised at the individual level in the case of a game design project. Recommendations are provided to help researchers overcome such issues in facilitating PD projects.