Hey, dear Wikipedia contributors, could you help me define Participatory Action Research? Sure! Here you are:

“[it] is an approach to research in communities that emphasizes participation and action. It seeks to understand the world by trying to change it, collaboratively and following reflection.”

In 1977, a Colombian sociologist, Orlando Fals Borda, with some other crazy people, created the first conference focused on Participatory Action Research. The methodology certainly started before this, but I wasn’t able to find other key dates before this conference.

Here, again we see the idea of immersion that we saw before with the start of ethnography. But this time the observer is not just an observer — he is also active and tries to change things. Immersion is a tool often used by Service Designers.

As a service designer, one of the best ways to understand a service and its users is often to simply use it or be part of the team that delivers the service. So, in that sense, we could say that Service Design is pretty close to some ideas of Participatory Action Research.

This article is part of the book "A Tiny History of Service Design, " a tiny two-hour read that goes through the historical events that created what Service Design is today.