**2. A shift in participatory design**

Participatory design, a broad term, generally means design processes whereby expert designers and people not trained in design work together can engage in collective creativity [1]. It is a collection of design approaches, methods, tools, and techniques shared between many disciplines [2]. Over the past decades, a significant shift has occurred in participatory design practice, where the end-users are involved in the decision-making process. Current covid scenario has also pushed that trend to find rapid, inclusive design solutions for safeguarding citizens' healthy well-being. To tackle this critical time, design professionals have accepted information technology-based intelligent and inclusive design techniques as mainstream line methods for design communication. Designers now design the instruments for end-users' participation to make the process legit and inclusive. In cases, they take advantages of computational tools to include users' feedback during the initial stage of the design phases. To do that, the designers need to identify the design problem and have empathy on the nature of possible interactions that can be obtained with the instruments. These steps are crucial and require experts' eye to identify the design problem and empathise with the users' likely behaviour while interacting with the instruments.

Participatory design process has seen its maximum success in community design practice. The result of such creative engagement depends on careful orchestration of the process keeping in mind the need and interest of the community. This design approach enables citizens to provide meaningful input into the projects through sharing diverse opinions and aspirations. However, to come into conclusive results in architecture and urban design, the participatory modes become pseudo, as the design facilitators cultivate the impression of openness of the participants but retain decision-making in their hand. Arguments are there to utilise such a variety of participatory design approaches where the design performance depends on the system, as they are mission-oriented, and the knowledge is reduced to its instrumental value. But the current disruption in the democratisation of technology shows us that instrumental values can meet social values. In that regard, the mission-oriented participatory design approach can produce design decisions on the demand of citizen needs.

Participatory design practices, which primarily focus on designing the technologies and services, are mainly informed by the user-oriented design approach. According to Bratteteig et al. [3] an approach can have six phases as an iterative design cycle (**Figure 1**). In the cycle, both the process and product are of equal importance. The process defines the usages, and the artefact (product or service) allows those usages to explore in different stages [4]. The importance of this process lies in the technology which mediates the users' behaviour. Involving future users as co-designers significantly increases the chance that the design outcomes have values and meanings to them. However, when there is a discrepancy between the design context and usage context, the process will not be strong enough to mediate the behaviour of the users in the way it was envisioned.

*Design Thinking for Computer-Aided Co-Design in Architecture and Urban Design DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.98938*

**Figure 1.** *Use-oriented design cycle [4].*
