Rich pictures can be used to record, reason about, communicate, and negotiate significant issues as they arise during or after participatory design. Essentially the role of the rich picture is to make explicit the stakeholders, their interrelationships, and their concerns. Interestingly, this can be done at two levels. A rich picture of the work context can be drawn
that identifies the stakeholders and the work setting. Figures 1–3 are examples of this type of rich picture. Additionally, a rich picture of the participatory design team itself can be used to identify the necessary managers, hands-on users, beneficial users, analysts, designers, and other participants. This type of rich picture can be useful in “designing design,” in composing the stakeholder meetings, and in reasoning about design processes. Comparing the work-context rich picture with the design-context rich picture provides a way of checking whether there is appropriate stakeholder representation on the design team. Consider the use of rich pictures with the following techniques seen frequently in approaches to participatory design.