RELATED TERMS: Actant; Performance; Performativity
Participants are those taking an active part in a design interaction, understood as an event. The term participant is preferred to that of ‘user’ to avoid the more functionalist connotations of that term, and to suggest that a ‘visitor’ to an event is more engaged than a reader, spectator or audience member. They are more of a performer, partaking in a degree of scripted performance mixed with improvisation.
The notion of participation posits an active involvement of participants in the generation of the work, at a profound level, through interaction with, arrangement of, or even production of, its elements.
Theoretically, a participant is understood as an actant, one whose performativity contributes to the overall field of actantiality that as design, as event, constitutes.
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