The adjective “participatory” makes frequent appearances
in discourse about international development,
both in research and in practice. It could be
seen as a container concept, employed in reference
to many phenomena. But the general spirit of the
term holds that members of a community being researched
ought to be involved, in some fashion, in
the conduct of that research. True to form, participation
features prominently in the literature reviewed
in this article. Of the 65 HCI4D articles we
reviewed, 21 make reference to the concept, and 8
describe systems that were designed according to a
participatory approach.