Who, how and where people are invited to discuss (and maybe influence) technological design rests ultimately on varying and competing assumptions about value and values.

Broadly speaking, “participation as of value” focuses on the desired ends for people's participation in technological design - e.g. efficient product-service delivery; product-service shaping through customization; or harm reduction, to name a few. Depending on which of the ends are pursued, the who, what, where, when and why questions of participation confront a diverse and divergent procedural possibilities to achieve the end. For example, experts may be used to select and initially implement technologies that are considered to be helpful in decreasing costs and increasing the efficiency of product-service development, in order to deal with competitive pressures. Alternatively, customers may be involved in the design of good customer “experiences” during early, middle and later technological design.

In most cases, the sheer complexity of process and product in “participation as of value” is a need for simplification: e.g. the use of technological experts to select “best of breed software:; the “involvement” of people early in design to introduce the project and to get “buy-in”; the possible selection of representatives from identified groups; the categorization of individuals into stakeholder groups with more-or-less well defined interests; a focus on early design and requirements “sign-off”; and the identification of users and desirable use (and “resistance” if some oppose this use). Simplification could also imply something very different: e.g. the offering of numerous generic software applications to allow users to select and customize towards their individual, group and (perhaps) collective needs. Nevertheless and despite the broad range of ends and process for participation “as of value”, people's influence on design is what it does to “make things work”.

Adding to the complexity of the first is a very-different and not-altogether-competing foundation to participation “as a value”. In this case, people's participation is not specifically or primarily for achieving other ends – which would mean its elimination if it fails to work towards those particular ends – but is an end in itself as a necessary “good”. In whatever form it takes, even through representatives, the influence of people on the shaping and deployment of technology is good for its own sake.

There may be various possible foundations for this “for its own sake”: e.g. individual rights to shape the technologies that they use and are affected by; the joy of humans shaping their own tools and work environment through their own experiences; seeing each and every person as offering a unique and important vantage point requiring an airing and potential accommodation in technological design and use; ensuring that technology does little or no harm to people, and negotiating what to do in those circumstances where it may or does.

and values fall around assumed goals and goods for particula

We conclude that