Researching intercultural participatory design

What impact does culture have on tools and techniques that are used to
facilitate cooperation amongst stakeholders in Information Communication
Technology (ICT) design projects? This is a question facing the ICT development
activities at the World Maritime University in Malmö, Sweden. At the university
around 300 staff and students from 90 different countries come together every
year. Continuously finding ways to improve how they can actively participate in
design activities of useful and usable ICT support to benefit their everyday work
is a prioritized area. This short paper presents a case that illustrates the
intertwined and negotiated characteristics of culture when working with tools and
techniques for cooperation in a student ICT design project. Using the case, an
ethnographically based research cycle is explored to make sense of and ultimately
further improve the interactions between the actors in an intercultural application
domain.