Participatory Design with Proxies

A variation of participatory design in which people who are familiar with target users or who closely resemble them are included in the design process as proxy participants. Proxies — such as parents, teachers, caregivers, or Speech-Language Pathologists — provide domain knowledge, interpret user behaviour, and offer feedback that augments or substitutes for direct input from users whose communication is severely limited. PDwP is particularly valuable when designing for children with significant communication disorders, people with severe cognitive disabilities, or other populations where direct designer-user communication is extremely difficult. While proxies can reveal insights that would otherwise be inaccessible, their input should be triangulated with direct observation, as it may be influenced by their own biases rather than accurately representing the user's experience.