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7. EXPLORING THE DIMENSIONS OF
PARTICIPATION IN LEGAL DESIGN
Nina Toivonen and Sanago de Francisco Vela
Abstract
This arcle discusses the ‘paradox of parcipaon’ in legal design and how to ad-
dress it in pracce. Law as a special social funcon needs mul-level parcipaon,
not only to fulll its duty in society, but also for its own reecon and inner de-
velopment. However, the legal culture, including classical legal analysis and many
legal pracces tend to reject anything ‘non-legal’, making it challenging for both
lawyers, users and other professionals to iniate legal design projects and to en-
gage in them. As described in design literature, pung mul-level parcipaon
into eect is a challenge also in design contexts other than law, and requires spe-
cial mindfulness and methods to succeed. This paper shows how the model of ve
crical quesons by Joseph Giacomin, the design matrix by Elizabeth Sanders and
Pieter Stappers, and the parcipaon ladder model by Frans Geilfus can be used
to frame legal design projects from the perspecve of parcipaon, and to decide
how to incorporate a more parcipatory approach to them, if desired.
1. Introducon
For Legal Design to establish itself as a unique eld of design with a mis-
sion to improve legal systems, it is necessary to develop design methods
that serve the specic purposes and features of law.1 This paper argues
for the fundamental role of parcipatory design pracces2 in Legal De-
1 Michael Doherty, Marcelo Corrales Compagnucci, Helena Haapio and Margaret
Hagan, ‘A new atude to law’s empire: the potenalies of legal design’ in Marce-
lo Corrales Compagnucci, Helena Haapio, Margaret Hagan and Michael Doherty
(eds), Legal Design. Integrang Business, Design and Legal Thinking with Technol-
ogy (Edward Elgar Publishing 2021) 1.
2 Also understood as ‘co-design’, ‘collaborave design’ or ‘parcipatory innovaon’,
see Elizabeth BN Sanders and Pieter J Stappers, ‘Co-creaon and the new land-
scapes of design’ (2008) 4 Internaonal Journal of CoCreaon in Design and the
Arts 5-18; Jacob Buur and Ben Mahews, ‘Parcipatory innovaon’ (2008) 12 In-
ternaonal Journal of Innovaon Management 255-273.
254 Nina Toivonen and Santiago de Francisco Vela
sign building on two main insights introduced and discussed in previous
research. The rst insight is that designing legal arfacts that are part
of complex social systems requires a mul-level understanding of the
various funcons, meanings, and values that the arfacts must grafy to
be usable.3 Such an understanding is best acquired by working together
with users and other stakeholders, as they can not only help build the
technical soluon, but also its meaning, acceptability, and eects.4 This
parcipatory approach goes beyond ‘user-centricity’ or ‘human-centric-
ity’, as it regards users as decision-makers, validators and agents of the
design, not just as informaon providers.5 The second insight is that al-
though mul-level parcipaon would be a must, engaging lawyers, de-
signers and other stakeholders to design legal arfacts together can be a
parcular challenge.6 That may be due to the dierent - somemes op-
posite - expectaons, understandings and atudes of lawyers and other
stakeholders towards problem solving, knowledge formulaon and the
value of co-work.7 In parcular, the legal profession is characterized by its
legal-centric and somewhat exclusive working models.8 Students at law
3 Petra Hietanen-Kunwald, Helena Haapio and Nina Toivonen, ‘Systems Theory as
a Research Framework for Dispute Prevenon and Resoluon by Design’ in Ros-
sana Ducato and Alain Strowel (eds), Legal Design Perspecves - Theorecal and
Praccal Insights from the Field (Ledizioni 2021) 86; Andrés Polanía and Sanago
de Francisco Vela, ‘Designing Interfaces for Legal Arfacts. Using Storytelling to
Enhance Digital Legal Experiences’ in N Marns and D Brandão (eds), Advances in
Design and Digital Communicaon III, DIGICOM, 27 Springer Series in Design and
Innovaon (Springer 2022).
4 Lucy Kimbell, ‘Design-as-pracce and designs-in-pracce’ (CRESC Conference,
Manchester 2009) 9; Ezio Manzini, Design When Everybody Designs. An introduc-
on to Design for Social Innovaon (MIT Press 2015) 45.
5 Elisabeth B. N. Sanders, ‘From user-centered to parcipatory design approaches’
in Jorge Frascara (ed), Design and the social sciences: Making connecons (Taylor
& Francis Books Limited 2002) 1-8.
6 Michael Doherty, ‘The relaonship between legal and design cultures: tension and
resoluon’ in Marcelo Corrales Compagnucci, Helena Haapio, Margaret Hagan and
Michael Doherty (eds), Legal Design. Integrang Business, Design and Legal Think-
ing with Technology (Edward Elgar Publishing 2021) 32; Margaret Hagan, ‘Parci-
patory Design for Innovaon in Access to Jusce’ (2019) 148 Dædalus, Journal of
the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 120, 122.
7 Doherty (n 6) 32, and Amanda Perry-Kessaris, ‘Legal Design for Pracce, Acvism,
Policy and Research’ (2019) 46 Journal of Law and Society 185.
8 Doherty (n 6) 45; Perry-Kessaris (n 7) 185; Richard Susskind and Daniel Susskind,
255Exploring the Dimensions of Participation in Legal Design
schools are tradionally trained to analyze and solve problems on their
own, normalizing the expectaon of an independent and self-sucient
legal expert. Also, when praccing their special experse, to interpret
what is ‘legal’ or ‘illegal,’ lawyers can only turn to authoritave legal in-
formaon sources, such as regulaons or court rulings. Anything non-le-
gal has lile to no value in classical legal analysis.9 Therefore, the idea
of parcipaon embedded in legal design, that legal problems could be
solved with the help of non-legal experts and their non-legal knowledge,
may seem counterintuive or even irraonal for some lawyers.10 If not
adequately addressed and unraveled, this discrepancy between ideals
and reality, or as we call it ‘the paradox of parcipaon’, may hamper the
pracce of design in the eld of law.
This paper explores parcipaon in legal design from two eld-spe-
cic perspecves – those of law and design. In secon 2 we rst explain
why a parcipatory approach to designing law and legal arfacts mat-
ters, and secondly, what may hinder the use of parcipatory methods in
legal contexts. This overview is built on system-scienc, behavioral and
socio-legal theories, with a twist of our personal experiences and project
descripons from the legal design eld. As noted in previous legal design
studies, systems sciences provide a useful analycal lens to understand
complex human phenomena, such as the relaonship between legal sys-
tems and society.11 Systems sciences also support the development of
The Future of the Professions (OUP 2015) 136.
9 Steven Barkan, Barbara Bintli and Mary Whisner, Fundamentals of Legal Research,
Tenth Edion (Foundaon Press 2015); Kaarlo Tuori, Crical Legal Posivism (Rou-
tledge 2002) 285; Hietanen-Kunwald, Haapio and Toivonen (n 3) 79.
10 Similarly Margaret Hagan, ‘A Human-Centered Design Approach to Access to Jus-
ce: Generang New Prototypes and Hypotheses for Intervenon to Make Courts
User-Friendly’ (2018) 6 Indiana Journal of Law and Social Equity 199, 202; Per-
ry-Kessaris (n 7) 3.
11 Hietanen-Kunwald, Haapio and Toivonen (n 3); Joaquin Santuber and Lina Krawi-
etz, ‘User Research Methodologies in Legal Design Projects: Lessons from Pracce’
in Rossana Ducato and Alain Strowel (eds), Legal Design Perspecves - Theorecal
and Praccal Insights from the Field (Ledizioni 2021) 93. See also Sanago De Fran-
cisco Vela and Laura Guzman-Abello, ‘Systemic design of jusce: Transdisciplinary
approach to access to jusce’ in this Volume.
256 Nina Toivonen and Santiago de Francisco Vela
design philosophy more generally, as design itself is a systemic method,
seeking to create systemic impacts.12
In secon 3 we connue our exploraon with a more pracce-ori-
ented focus. As the design literature describes, there are mulple ways
to understand ‘human- ‘or ‘user-centric’ design, but only some of the
methods and soluons created under these concepts are parcipatory
in the sense of leng users and other stakeholders have a say about the
design outcomes. In this secon we discuss how the model of ve crical
quesons by Joseph Giacomin,13 the matrix of design by Elizabeth Sand-
ers and Pieter Stappers,14 and the parcipaon ladder model by Frans
Geilfus15 can help legal designers frame their projects from the perspec-
ve of parcipaon and decide how to incorporate a more parcipa-
tory approach to them, if desired. To demonstrate the potenal of these
models, we use method and soluon examples from three legal design
projects: the SMS tool created by the Evicon Prevenon Learning Lab
at Stanford University in San Francisco, USA,16 the digital ‘Entutela’ tool
created by Labjuscia at the University of los Andes, Colombia,17 and the
Legal Service Design Toolkit created by Hápca legal design consultancy
in Colombia.18 Our exploraon will be concluded in the fourth secon
with a summary of our main ndings, their possible uses in legal design
pracce, and ideas for future research.
12 Richard Buchanan, ‘Systems Thinking and Design Thinking: The Search for Princi-
ples in the World We Are Making’ (2019) 5(1) She Ji: The Journal of Design, Eco-
nomics, and Innovaon, 85, 86.
13 Joseph Giacomin, ‘What is human centered design?’ (2014) 17 The Design Journal
4, 606.
14 Sanders and Stappers (n 2).
15 Frans Geilfus, 80 Tools for Parcipatory Development: Appraisal, Planning, Fol-
low-Up and Evaluaon (IICA 2008).
16 Sarah Verschoor, ‘How can text messages help prevent evicons?’, <hps://medi-
um.com/legal-design-and-innovaon/how-can-text-messages-help-prevent-evic-
ons-77d477135bb4> accessed 8 February 2023.
17 Camila Padilla Casas and Sanago de Francisco Vela, ‘Entutela. A digital tool to
facilitate the draing and creaon of tutelas in Colombia’ in Advances in Design
and Digital Communicaon III - Proceedings of the 6th Internaonal Conference on
Design and Digital Communicaon (Digicom 2023).
18 Angelica Flechas, Jorge García and Soa Escobar, ‘Aplicación de la metodología de
Legal Service Design de cara a contextos de derecho público vs. derecho privado’
(2021) 6 RChD: creación y pensamiento 11, 1-23.
257Exploring the Dimensions of Participation in Legal Design
2. The Paradox of Parcipaon in Legal Design
Just like any other everyday objects invented by humans, legal arfacts
have specic funcons that sasfy human needs that no other arfact
sases in a similar way.19 In this paper we understand ‘legal arfacts’
in a broad sense as anything tangible or abstract that belongs to or is
closely connected to the legal system by its funcons, and which make
law visible and something that can be experienced by its human users.
The problem, however, as addressed by the legal design movement, is
that legal arfacts are seldom designed to t their actual purpose of
use, at least not from the perspecve of their laymen users.20 Design as
a pracce-oriented philosophy is interested in promong the well-being
of people by sasfying their basic needs,21 but the common design of
legal arfacts oen leaves these needs unsased. Therefore, the ques-
on of purpose is closely connected to the queson of whom the design
soluon is intended for and, therefore, whose needs, capabilies and
movaons should be considered when designing legal arfacts.22 The
arfact’s purpose also raises the queson of how it should be designed
and by whom to opmize its funconality. When seeking to understand
the role of parcipaon in legal design, it may therefore be helpful to
start with a few ontological quesons: What is law really for? What are
legal arfacts really for?
2.1. Why Law Needs Parcipaon
As understood in modern legal thinking, law as a human invented system
can have many funcons, depending on which perspecve this system is
viewed from. Law can be used to solve conicts, to protect the vulnera-
ble, to sasfy human needs, to allocate resources, to provide services, to
enforce polical ideas, or even to ensure a living for lawyers, to name a
19 Herbert A Simon, The Sciences of the Arcial (MIT Press 2019) 111.
20 Hagan (n 10) 202; Doherty, Corrales Compagnucci, Haapio and Hagan (n 1) 3.
21 Kimbell (n 4).
22 Gerlinde Berger-Walliser, Thomas Barton and Helena Haapio, From Visualizaon
to Legal Design: A Collaborave and Creave Process (2017) 54 American Business
Law Journal 2, 11.
258 Nina Toivonen and Santiago de Francisco Vela
few.23 These purposes can also manifest in dierent ways in the form of
legal arfacts. The legal arfacts that serve the purpose of conict solv-
ing, for example, can be the procedural regulaons that guide a ligaon
process, the ligaon documents, the ligaon process happening at a
courthouse, the courthouse itself, and the nal court ruling that seeks to
solve the conict.24 From a purely legal point of view, it may also seem
logical that lawyers are the primary users of these arfacts, and there-
fore their needs should be considered when designing these objects.
However, as socio-legal theories help us understand, both the scope of
users and the purposes of use for legal arfacts are more diverse due to
the specic funcon that law has in society.
If we accept the idea that law has a unique funcon in society, it fol-
lows that the arfacts that are part of that system also share the same
funcon. According to established legal and socio-legal theories, par-
cularly the theory of social systems by late sociologist Niklas Luhmann,
the specic purpose of law is to guide human behavior by establishing
normave expectaons.25 Normave expectaons, communicated for
example in the form of legislaon or court rulings, tell people how they
are supposed to (‘ought to’) behave to sasfy interests that society con-
siders worthy of protecon, such as resolving conicts or taking care of
the vulnerable. Normave expectaons also tell us what kind of behav-
ior people are entled to ancipate from others, thus helping people to
plan their future acvies and prevent possible conicts of interest.26
Only behaviors that meet the normave expectaons set by the law can
enjoy legal protecon. This is also the core requirement of legal cer-
tainty, the central element of the rule of law.27 From this viewpoint it
becomes clear that law and legal things are intended for all members
of society, or at least for everyone who needs to use them to access
23 Niklas Luhmann, Law as a Social System (KA Ziegert tr, OUP 2004) 149; Joseph Raz,
The Authority of Law, Essays on Law and Morality (OUP 1979) 164-179; Tuori (n 9)
135.
24 Luhmann (n 23) 30.
25 Luhmann (n 23) 148; Raz (n 23) 164; Hans Kelsen, The Pure Theory of Law (Max
Knight tr, University of California Press 1967) 31.
26 Raz (n 23) 169.
27 Aulis Aarnio, The Raonal as Reasonable. A Trease on Legal Juscaon (D Reidel
Publishing Company 1987) 3.
259Exploring the Dimensions of Participation in Legal Design
the legal system and exercise their rights and obligaons. As discussed
by Michael Doherty, the purpose of law in guiding human behavior can
therefore be seen as a juscaon for the applicaon of human-centric
approaches to designing beer funconing legal arfacts.28
It is needless to say that guiding human behavior is a complex phe-
nomenon, perhaps too complex for just lawyers to take care of it. If
the purpose of legal arfacts is to communicate normave informaon
about what kind of behavior the legal system expects from its users,
ideally this communicaon and the way it is communicated should be
based on a non-biased, scienc and context-related understanding of
human behavior. This understanding can be acquired from various ex-
perts in behavioral and other human sciences, but also from the target
end-users and other stakeholders themselves. According to a behavioral
scienc theory called ‘the COM-B model’, there are three central com-
ponents, ‘capability,’ ‘opportunity,’ and ‘movaon,’ that are all needed
for any behavior to occur.29 For example, if a person needs to represent
herself at a court, to succeed in her task she needs the knowledge, skills,
and stamina (‘capability’), as well as me, money, and physical access to
the necessary materials (‘opportunity’) and enough interest to take such
acon (‘movaon’) in order to succeed at the task.30 This informaon
about users’ capabilies, opportunies, and movaons can be consid-
ered subjecve and context-related.31 Therefore, the best way to collect
it is from the target people whose behavior the design primarily seeks
to inuence.32
While parcipatory design methods can help gather the necessary in-
formaon about the behaviors the legal arfact should support, they
may also have other benets regarding guidance of behavior. Users of le-
28 Michael Doherty, ‘Comprehensibility as a Rule of Law Requirement: The Role of
Legal Design in Delivering Access to Law’ (2020) 8(1) Journal of Open Access to Law
2.
29 Susan Michie, Lou Atkins and Robert West, The Behaviour Change Wheel. A Guide
to Designing Intervenons (Silverback Publishing 2014) 59; Susan Michie, Maartje
van Stralen and Robert West, ‘The behaviour change wheel: A new method for
characterizing and designing behaviour change intervenons’ (2011) 6 Implemen-
taon Science 1, 42.
30 Michie, Atkins and West 2014 (n 29) 59.
31 Similarly Sanders and Stappers (n 2) 7.
32 Michie, Atkins and West (n 29) 66.
260 Nina Toivonen and Santiago de Francisco Vela
gal arfacts are the best experts in their own maers. Involving users in
the legal design process as problem solvers and co-designers allows them
to pursue agency and autonomy, the right to decide for themselves.33
The democrac policy making process as well as the parcipatory de-
sign for policy movement are grounded in this very idea.34 According to
a behavioral scienc self-determinaon theory, the need for self-regu-
laon and control is also one of the fundamental human needs and core
factors for movaon.35 Legal arfacts that fail to support their users’
basic need for self-determinaon hardly bring out the best results. As
described by Margaret Hagan in the context of self-represented ligants
navigang inside the court system, if people experience that they have
no chance to inuence their own case or they have only bad opons
to choose from, they may become passive or reluctant to comply with
the given circumstances and eventually lose their ‘chances for taking the
full advantage of the legal system.’36 Parcipatory design methods that
engage users as the contributors to the design outcome can improve
users’ experience of ownership and agency in the design soluon and,
therefore, give them a reason to comply with the behavioral models that
the design proposes.37
User and stakeholder parcipaon in legal design projects also enable
a learning curve for all parcipants, not just for the users, but also for
the lawyers, whose learning outcomes can eventually contribute to the
inner development of the legal system.38 This view is well adopted ia. in
socio-legal and legal realism research tradions,39 but also discussed in
33 Sanders and Stappers (n 2) 12.
34 Margaret Hagan, ’Prototyping for policy’ in Marcelo Corrales Compagnucci, He-
lena Haapio, Margaret Hagan and Michael Doherty (eds), Legal Design. Integrat-
ing Business, Design and Legal Thinking with Technology (Edward Elgar Publishing
2021) 9.
35 Edward L Deci and Richard M Ryan, ‘The “What” and “Why” of Goal Pursuits: Hu-
man Needs and the Self-Determinaon of Behavior’ (2000) 11 Psychological In-
quiry 4.
36 Hagan (n 10) 209.
37 Berger-Walliser, Barton and Haapio (n 22) 352.
38 David Johnson, ‘Design for Legal Systems’ (2020) 33 Singapore Academy of Law
Journal, 434.
39 Amanda Perry-Kessaris, ‘Doing Socio-Legal Research in Design Mode (Routledge
2021) 25; Perry-Kessaris (n 7) 8; Shauhin Talesh, Elizabeth Mertz and Heinz Klug,
261Exploring the Dimensions of Participation in Legal Design
modern legal theories, where lawyers are seen to have a dual role both
as the interpreters and the creators of the legal system.40 When engaging
with dierent viewpoints on legal maers through parcipatory prac-
ces, legal draers themselves have the potenal to learn something
new that benets their legal thinking and lawyerly pracces, and even-
tually the whole system.41 Learning is therefore a fundamental element
of posive change. As Buur and Mahews point out, ‘When presented
with an account of an exoc foreign mindset, we are compelled to view
our natural assumpons and pracces in a new light’.42 If lawyers did
not encounter dierent, outsider viewpoints to law (and to life!), the
legal system would not receive the necessary informaon to reect its
internal biases and to imagine, test and build beer working legal con-
cepts and arfacts - for the sake of its own well-being.43 Human-centric
and parcipatory design methods can therefore work as praccal tools
to gather and analyze legally relevant informaon for the internal use of
the legal system.
Parcipatory methods also have the potenal to gather knowledge of,
and make visible, the other dierent social systems and purposes that
inuence the legal design soluon. As noted in previous legal design
research, arfacts recognized inside the legal system as ‘legal arfacts’
can also have dierent uses outside the legal system.44 Contracts are
one example. If contracts are understood merely as ‘legal documents’,
it is natural to expect them to be wrien by lawyers using specic ‘le-
galese’ language and clauses that prepare pares for a possible legal
dispute.45 From a business perspecve, however, contracts can be seen
as tools that,for example, help manage business commitments, create
‘Introducon to the Research Handbook on Modern Legal Realism’ in Shauhin
Talesh, Elizabeth Mertz and Heinz Klug (eds), Research Handbook on Modern Legal
Realism (Edward Elgar Publishing 2021) 1.
40 Tuori (n 9) 285.
41 Perry-Kessaris (n 7) 26-27.
42 Buur and Mahews (n 2) 4.
43 Perry-Kessaris (n 7) 3.
44 Hietanen-Kunwald, Haapio and Toivonen (n 3) 79.
45 Helena Haapio, ‘Business Success and Problem Prevenon Through Proacve Con-
tracng’ in P Wahlgren (ed), Scandinavian Studies in Law Volume 49: A PROACTIVE
APPROACH (Stockholm Instute for Scandinavian Law 2006).
262 Nina Toivonen and Santiago de Francisco Vela
and protect value, and realize nancial benets.46 If contracts were only
designed from the legal perspecve, the other purposes might remain
unsased. The dicult-to-understand legal text might even give rise to
misunderstandings and the neglect of one’s legal obligaons,47 risking
the contractual relaonship and its importance for the business. Par-
cipatory approaches can help recognize the arfacts’ dierent uses in
dierent social environments and create soluons that make sense in all
of them.48
2.2. …and Why It is a Parcular Challenge for Legal Design
The aims and philosophy behind parcipatory legal design are easy to
accept. In reality, however, based on our impressions and experiences as
legal designers in legal design projects, and as described in the legal de-
sign literature,49 pung the idea of parcipaon into pracce is trickier.
The ‘paradox of parcipaon’ may not only be due to the legal culture
and the possible tensions that arise when it encounters the cultures of
other disciplines or professions.50 Successful communicaon and deci-
sion-making with other people, especially when there are many, who
all represent dierent backgrounds, knowledge and ideals, is a universal
human challenge – and somemes a mission impossible.51 We all per-
ceive and interpret the world from our own unique inner perspecve,
without the possibility of fully experiencing what it is to be ‘the other’.
The way we see the world and intuively trust our own percepons can
somemes mislead us,52 making mul-level collaboraon a task that re-
quires parcular mindfulness, special methods and persistence in order
to succeed.
46 Anna Hurmerinta-Haanpää, The Many Funcons of Contracts: How Companies Use
Contracts in Interorganizaonal Exchange Relaons (University of Turku 2021) 37.
47 Robert Waller, ‘Designing contracts for human readers’ in Marcelo Corrales Com-
pagnucci, Helena Haapio and Mark Fenwick (eds), Research Handbook on Contract
Design (Edward Elgar Publishing 2022) 66.
48 Manzini (n 4) 35.
49 Comprehensively Doherty (n 6) 46; Hagan (n 6) 120.
50 Doherty (n 6) 32.
51 Geilfus (n 15) 1.
52 Emily Pronin, ‘How We See Ourselves and How We See Others’ (2008) 320 Science,
1177-1180.
263Exploring the Dimensions of Participation in Legal Design
Also, despite the popular interest that design thinking has gained dur-
ing recent years, the parcipatory methods and techniques of design are
not well known. If organizing mul-level co-work is a challenge as such, it
can be a bigger challenge when parcipants need to rst be introduced
to the mindset, principles and methods of co-design. Although the de-
sign literature suggests that ‘design’ can be seen as a common language
or as a connecng factor between dierent disciplines and stakehold-
ers,53 in reality, if people do not understand this language, it can connect
them in a counterproducve way, such that it becomes the ‘common
enemy’. One reason for this could also be the way in which design as
a systemic and holisc approach challenges common thinking models.
The holisc and ‘free’ creave space that parcipatory design oers
may not be the environment where people feel comfortable to operate,
as it is not organized by similar mental frameworks, nor does it follow
the determinisc, linear logic that many classical professions are taught
to use.54 If parcipants do not recognize the way the design process
frames the problem solving, or how it can manage opposite viewpoints
and understandings and eventually help create something coherent and
sense-making out of them, they may experience the design process as
not at all organized, and lose interest in parcipang.55
Then there are of course our all-me favorite excuses – me and mon-
ey. 56 If doing a research interview or a stakeholder workshop adds the
expenses of a project, people with ght budgets and busy schedules like
to think that those things can be omied and that by doing so they can
save me and money. The ability to communicate the fundamental role
of mul-level parcipaon in a design process then becomes crical.
The above-menoned reasons are already enough to overwhelm a
legal designer who wants to successfully engage users and other stake-
holders in a legal design process. As we like to suggest in the following,
however, the concept of ‘legal’ and the dierent expectaons and mean-
ings that lawyers and society in general associate with it can give parc-
ipatory legal design projects an extra twist. In our view that is because
53 Marc Sckdorn and others, This is Service Design Doing (O’Reilly 2018) 21.
54 Fritjof Capra and Pier Luigi Luisi, The Systems View of Life. A Unifying Vision (CUP
2014) 4; Doherty (n 6) 46; Berger-Walliser, Barton and Haapio (n 22) 18.
55 Geilfus (n 15) 1.
56 ibid.
264 Nina Toivonen and Santiago de Francisco Vela
the legal system and the tradional legal culture around it tend to foster
a rather narrow understanding of what a ‘legal’ problem is and when a
lawyer is needed to solve it. The mul-disciplinary and creave design
process rebels against this narrowness and challenges both lawyers and
others to think dierently about law and the role of lawyers, causing
confusion about how to react to this challenge.
From the perspecve of the legal system only maers that have al-
ready been coded as ‘legal’ by the legal system itself – such as a queson
of ownership, the right to compensaon or the due process of ligaon
– are proper ‘legal’ quesons.57 Tradionally people have approached
lawyers with their legal maers when a problem has already actualized,
or is about to actualize, and a legal analysis is needed to solve the con-
ict between the pares and their interests. This human tendency to
react to problems only once they have occurred has created a culture
where reacve problem solving is normalized, and prevenve or pro-
acve problem solving is perceived as its ‘alternave’ (or abnormal).58
Against this tradional or reacve style of lawyering it is understandable
that some lawyers may nd it irraonal to ‘embrace a designer mindset’,
ideate and prototype with stakeholders in a joint co-creaon process.
Solving legal problems from a pragmac and ‘human-centric’ viewpoint
together with the users of the law diers signicantly from the methods
that lawyers tradionally use, but also from what the society in general
has learned to expect from interacon with law and legal experts, as
well as from legal problem solving in general. Therefore, especially in
the beginning of a legal design project, there might be some confusion
about everyone’s role in the project, not just amongst the legal experts,
but also amongst the other parcipants.
But what is the ‘legal’ work that lawyers are familiar with and what
do people expect them to do? Lawyers’ parcular skill is legal interpre-
taon, that is, the ability to determine from various facts what is ‘legal’
and disnguish it from what is ‘illegal’ using informaon sources that
have authoritave value inside the legal system, such as legislaon, case
57 Luhmann (n 23) 17.
58 Gerlinde Berger-Walliser, ‘The Past and Future of Proacve Law: An Overview of
the Development of the Proacve Law Movement’ in Gerlinde Berger-Walliser and
Kim Østergaard (eds), Proacve Law in a Business Environment (Djøf Publishing
2012) 24.
265Exploring the Dimensions of Participation in Legal Design
law, or established legal principles.59 According to the above-described
Luhmannian socio-legal understanding, this is how normave expecta-
ons are created.60 Law school curricula, theories on legal analysis, and
the pracce of jurisprudence have developed around mastering this skill
and the duty to the legal system that it involves.61 Luhmann calls this the
autopoiesis of the legal system, a self-regulaon process that recreates
and maintains the system.62 Lawyers must follow the rules of legal anal-
ysis and interpretaon, ‘the laws of the law,’ to maintain the coherence
and unity of the system and the trust it enjoys in society.63 In a legal de-
sign project, this knowledge is also crucial. However, it is applied from a
dierent point of view, or together with other dierent points of view,
and at a dierent moment on ‘a legal problem escalaon axis’, oen to
prevent legal problems or to promote ‘legal wellbeing’.64
Fig. 1. The legal problem escalaon axis.
59 Luhmann (n 23) 17.
60 ibid.
61 ibid 44.
62 ibid 18.
63 Aarnio (n 27) 3; Perry-Kessaris (n 7) 3; Roger Coerell, Sociological Jurisprudence:
Jurisc thought and social inquiry (Routledge 2018) 31-33.
64 Legal Design Alliance, ‘The Legal Design Manifesto’ (v2) <www.legaldesignalliance.
org/#v2> accessed 8 February 2023; Helena Haapio, ‘Introducon to Proacve
Law: A Business Lawyer’s View’ in P Wahlgren (ed), Scandinavian Studies in Law
Volume 49: A PROACTIVE APPROACH (Stockholm Instute for Scandinavian Law,
2006).
266 Nina Toivonen and Santiago de Francisco Vela
The unusual roles and seng of a legal design project and the way
it requires lawyers to pracce their experse beyond the tradional
borders of law may therefore explain why some lawyers feel confused
and unmovated when invited to parcipate in design projects. Legal
design in its essence is not about solving acute legal conicts or reacng
to a past event with legal consequences.65 Legal design, just like design
in general, operates in a space of many potenals, where things may
not yet be denitely ‘legal’ or ‘illegal’, but perhaps have the potenal
to become such.66 When operang inside the legal system lawyers do
not have to deal with such open uncertainty and lack of structure when
solving problems, especially if they are called to acon when an issue
has already become ‘legal’, as there oen is a due legal process and rules
regarding how to proceed with it, and therefore, less alternaves regard-
ing how to deal with the issue.67 This moment is illustrated below in g-
ure 1.
As David Johnson points out, however, lawyers also know how to deal
with uncertainty, as they use their knowledge in a certainty-seeking
way.68 This supports the purpose of law, which is to create normave
expectaons, in other words certainty, predictability and connuum in
society. The challenge for the legal design movement is to make lawyers
and anyone interested in improving the legal system understand that
design can oer eecve tools for this purpose, but from a dierent per-
specve, at a dierent moment of me, in dierent spaces, and espe-
cially – as we like to highlight in this paper - with dierent people.
3. From Human-Centric to Parcipatory Legal Design
As discussed above, mul-level parcipaon diers from what law as a
profession and a discipline has tradionally excelled in. It can thus be a
real praccal dilemma for a designer or a design team to engage lawyers
65 ibid.
66 Johnson (n 36), 392.
67 Helena Haapio, ‘Introducon to Proacve Law: A Business Lawyer’s View’ (2010) 49
A Proacve Approach, Stockholm: Stockholm Instute for Scandinavian Law 1999-
2010, 29; Petra Hietanen-Kunwald, Mediaon and the Legal System. Extracng the
Legal Principles of Civil and Commercial Mediaon (Unigraa Helsinki 2018) 33.
68 Johnson (n 52) 392; Doherty (n 6) 48.
267Exploring the Dimensions of Participation in Legal Design
in muldisciplinary co-work, facilitate it, and bring out sasfactory re-
sults. However, as the design literature shows, parcipaon is a univer-
sal challenge in all design contexts, not just in law.69 To address this issue,
designers have developed alternave ways to understand and pracce
stakeholder involvement.
The parcipatory design approach, which emphasizes design with or
by users rather than designing for users, rst emerged in Northern Europe
in the 1970s as a method to increase the value of industrial producon.70
The parcipatory approach put together the experse and knowledge of
designers and engineers and the situated experse of the people whose
work was to be impacted by the design outcome. However, parcipatory
design shares the same philosophy of human-centered design (HCD), or
user-centered design (UCD), and the dierent approaches have recently
started to inuence each other.71 They both focus on understanding the
needs of the people who use a soluon or a design and propose that peo-
ple (as ‘humans’ or as ‘users’) should be involved in the design process.72
HCD and UCD have their origins in industrial engineering and computer
sciences.73 Donald Norman and Stephen Draper suggested in 1986 that
technology and design should be molded to the user’s capabilies and
needs and not the other way around.74 In his various works, Norman has
also emphasized designers’ need to understand human behavior and
the psychology that supports (or does not support) the funconality of
everyday things.75 Recently Norman has raised the idea of shiing the
design conversaon from humans or users to humanity.76 This shi pro-
motes systemic changes that impact the societal level rather than the
69 Geilfus (n 15) 1.
70 Sanders and Stappers (n 2) 7.
71 Sanders and Stappers (n 2) 13; Buur and Mahews (n 2) 2. Despite the dierence in
terminology, there is no essenal methodological dierence between human-cen-
tered design and user-centered design.
72 ibid.
73 Buur and Mahews (n 2) 4.
74 Donald Norman and Stephen Draper, User centered system design: New perspec-
ves on human-computer interacon (L. Erlbaum Associates 1986).
75 Donald Norman, Design of Everyday Things (Basic Books 2013) 7; Donald Norman,
The Psychology of Everyday Things (Basic Books 1988) 57.
76 Donald Norman, Design for a Beer World. Meaningful, sustainable, humanity
centered (MIT Press 2023).
268 Nina Toivonen and Santiago de Francisco Vela
individual level. It responds to the cricism of the HCD and UCD models,
that they have a narrow approach to people without considering individ-
uals’ relaonship with social systems, regulaons, or life itself. 77
What the HCD and UCD approaches also put less focus on is the po-
tenal of transformaon, innovaon and learning that parcipaon in
the design process has.78 The enhancement of users’ skills and knowl-
edge is one of the disncve elements that disnguishes parcipatory
design (or ‘innovaon’) from the HCD and UCD approaches.79 As we
suggest in this paper, focusing on the quality of human-centric methods,
rather than just approaching law with a ‘human-centric’ or ‘user-centric’
mindset or ‘design thinking’, may be more useful for the purposes of law
and legal design.
In the following we introduce three frameworks to implement parci-
patory design: 1) Giagomin’s ve crical quesons, 2) Sanders’ and Stap-
pers’ matrix of design, and 3) Geilfus’ ladder of parcipaon, and explain
how they can help legal designers frame their project understanding
from the perspecve of parcipaon, and how to incorporate a more
parcipatory approach to them. We also demonstrate the frameworks
using the parcipatory methods applied in the creaon of three legal
design soluons, as described in their published project reports:
1. The SMS system created by Evicon Prevenon Learning Lab (EPLL) at
the Legal Design Lab at Stanford University80;
2. The digital ‘Entutela’ tool by Labjuscia at the University of Andes,
Colombia81 ; and
3. Legal Service Design Toolkit (LSDT) by Hápca legal design consultan-
cy82.
77 The Interacon Design Foundaon, ‘What is humanity-centered design?’ <hps://
www.interacon-design.org/literature/topics/humanity-centered-design> ac-
cessed 8 February 2023.
78 Sara Beckman and Michael Barry, ‘Innovaon as a learning process: Embedding
design thinking’ (2007), 50 California Management Review 1, 25-56; Sanders (n 5).
79 Buur and Mahews (n 2) 4.
80 Verschoor (n 16).
81 Padilla Casas and de Francisco Vela (n 17).
82 Flechas, García and Escobar (n 18), Hápca is a Legal Service Design consultancy
based in Columbia, <hps://hapca.co> accessed 8 February 2023.
269Exploring the Dimensions of Participation in Legal Design
The Stanford Legal Design Lab’s Evicon Prevenon Learning Lab used
an SMS strategy to help tenants get helpful informaon when facing
evicon. For the development of the system EPLL used dierent sessions
and interviews with legal aid experts, tenant advocacies and universies
to understand best pracces regarding using text messages to empower
people in dierent stressed situaons related to legal issues.83 SMS
messaging was used for three primary purposes: rst, for outreach and
intake for evicon help and informing people about their legal status;
second, for ongoing engagement and parcipaon of tenants by sending
reminders and updates; and third, for tracking outcomes by monitoring
tenants aer they had received assistance.84
‘Entutela,’ developed by Labjuscia at the University of the Andes, Co-
lombia, is a digital tool that helps cizens dra and create a ‘tutela’, a
legal form for accessing fundamental rights in Colombia,85 without the
help of legal assistance. For the development of Entutela, exploraons
were made with cizens, lawyers, law students and judges. In each in-
teracon with these users, the design team sought to validate the con-
ceptual and funconal elements of the tool. Once the prototype had
been created and developed in an applicaon to create forms, it was
launched live to understand its scope and impact. With the results of
this exploraon, more than 100 tutelas were created in 4 months. The
second iteraon round of the design process focused more on the tool’s
user experience, its interface (no longer on a form), and the way the
situaons that make up the body of the tutela should be wrien. These
laer validaons were only done with the users of the Legal Clinic of the
University of los Andes.
The Legal Service Design Toolkit (LSDT) by Colombian legal design con-
sultancy Hápca is a compendium of tools and methodologies for de-
83 Verschoor (n 16).
84 ibid.
85 The tutela is the primary mechanism for safeguarding fundamental rights in Co-
lombia. It was introduced in the 1991 Polical Constuon and was intended to
be expedious, informal and subsidiary. According to the Constuon, a cizen
residing in Colombia can le tutelas without legal assistance and free of charge.
However, most people who want to le a tutela need the help of a lawyer, which
implies a charge for the draing and ling. In addion, tutelas are a case of conges-
on in the judicial branch. Today, 30 years later, more than 9 million tutelas have
been led in Colombia, see Padilla Casas and de Francisco Vela (n 17).
270 Nina Toivonen and Santiago de Francisco Vela
veloping projects in the legal eld. A designer, lawyer or innovator can
take this toolbox and use the cards that best suit their project. For the
development of the LSDT, Hápca used Beckman and Barry’s four phases
of innovaon86 as a reference to dene methodologies, tools or acvies
that allowed them to invesgate the projects they had developed.87 The
toolkit is divided into four phases: Discover, Interpret, Delimit, and Pro-
pose. For each phase, a series of acvies comprise the organizaon’s
know-how.88
3.1. Five Crical Quesons to Frame the Design Challenge
Based on our experiences as legal designers, when facilitang muldis-
ciplinary legal design work, it is necessary to pay aenon to the legal
context and the language that is used to describe the context to dier-
ent stakeholders and make the roles that dierent stakeholders have
clear and visible. When the dierent components of a design challenge
are illustrated holiscally as a starng point for the project, all of the
stakeholders can beer understand their unique role and the value of
mul-level parcipaon.89 Framing the design challenge from dierent
perspecves is especially useful to highlight how dierent stakeholders
are connected to the ‘legal’ problem, although they may understand it
dierently.
One way to do this visualizaon is to use Giacomin’s list of ve crical
quesons: ‘who,’ ‘what,’ ‘when,’ ‘how,’ and ‘why’ as its basis.90 The ve
quesons help idenfy the connecons between the dierent acvies
for a design strategy. In legal design, the model can help idenfy the de-
sired behaviors and the people whose behavior the legal design soluon
should seek to inuence and who should be involved in the legal design
process. We evaluated the three projects under Giacomin’s quesons
to understand the connecons between their design decisions and the
86 Beckman and Barry (n 78).
87 Flechas, García and Escobar (n 18).
88 ibid.
89 Sckdorn and others (n 65) 10.
90 Giacomin (n 13).
271Exploring the Dimensions of Participation in Legal Design
legal designer’s desired outcomes (for a summary of the projects see
table 1).
The rst and most important queson is ‘who’. It focuses on the peo-
ple or pares involved in the design process, especially the target users.
For example, in the EPLL’s SMS project, the target users were tenants
about to be evicted. In the Entutela case, the scope of the stakehold-
ers was broader, ranging from cizens to judges to lawyers and legal-aid
help providers.91 The target users of the Legal Service Design Toolkit
were Hápca’s clients, typically other lawyers.92
‘What’ describes the type of desired acvies, behaviors and func-
ons that the design soluon should support. In the case of the EPLL,
the desired outcome was to support tenants in making more informed
choices throughout an evicon process and empower them to take ac-
on for their own cause. If a tenant does not respond to an evicon
noce, they are more likely to be evicted and face a more complicated
legal situaon.93 In the Entutela case the ‘what’ is to help and educate
cizens to dra a proper tutela without legal assistance, but it is also
about giving them informaon about the legal system and how they can
navigate within it. Hápca’s toolkit aims at educang their clients about
design methodologies. When clients contract the design consultancy to
develop a legal services project, they must involve their organizaon’s
collaborators to understand and propose ideas. The toolbox helps them
as a means to integrate their vision with the employees’ experiences.
Who? What? When? How? Why?
EPLL’s SMS
system
Tenants
who are
being
evicted
Receive legal
informaon
about the
rights of a
tenant
Before,
during and
aer an
evicon
SMS
strategy
To help
tenants
represent
themselves
throughout an
evicon pro-
cess; improve-
ment of a
legal process
91 Padilla Casas and de Francisco Vela (n 17).
92 Flechas, García and Escobar (n 18).
93 Verschoor (n 16).
272 Nina Toivonen and Santiago de Francisco Vela
Entutela Cizens,
judges
and law-
yers who
use
tutelas
Know how
to structure
a tutela
During the
draing of
a tutela
Digitally
struc-
tured
template
To help ci-
zens represent
them right;
improvement
of the tutela
process
Legal Ser-
vice Design
Toolkit
Clients /
dierent
stake-
holder
groups
Learn
legal design
methodolo-
gies
During
legal design
workshops
Tools
and fa-
cilitaon
methods
Educaon,
skills improve-
ment; sociali-
zaon of legal
service design
methods
Table 1. Giacomin’s crical quesons applied to legal design soluons
The ‘when’ is about the interacon’s form and ming.94 In the EPLL
project the understanding was that there are three crical phases when
the SMS system must provide guidance to tenants: before, during, and
aer the evicon. The ming queson is more challenging to frame in
the Entutela project, as there are many possible reasons, and therefore
mes and places, to le a tutela. The Entutela soluon that enables ci-
zens to make their tutela forms online using a digital plaorm solves the
problem of accessibility, at least for users who can access the internet.
The Hápca’s toolkit is intended to be used during legal design work-
shops with clients and stakeholders.95
The queson of ‘how’ refers to semiocs, communicaon, and design
discourse.96 The EPLL’s soluon uses an SMS strategy to send informaon
that guides a tenant through an evicon process. SMS are also useful
for monitoring and tracking how the tenant’s legal process is proceed-
ing. The SMS’s also uses easy to comprehend language. Entutela uses a
digitally structured template that guides the user throughout the expe-
rience of draing a tutela. The tool is divided into secons that are navi-
gable back and forth. Each secon has easy-to-comprehend instrucons
and guidelines to complete the informaon.97 The LSDT is composed of
94 Giacomin (n 13).
95 Flechas, García and Escobar (n 18).
96 Giacomin (n 13).
97 Padilla Casas and de Francisco Vela (n 17).
273Exploring the Dimensions of Participation in Legal Design
dierent acvies according to the design phase. These acvies have
descripons and examples of how to use them. Also, the toolkit requires
a facilitator to provide guidance and respond to quesons while parci-
pants use the tools.98
The ‘why’ refers to the purpose of the design. In the context of legal
design, it is important to address the legal purpose of the arfact, while
acknowledging that arfacts can also have many other purposes that
can have value in creang a funconable outcome. Like in the example
cases, the purpose can be guiding tenants or Colombian cizens through
a legal process while informing them about their legal rights, so that they
can base their decisions on actual opons that the legal system provides
them. The ‘why’ can also refer to an objecve that supports other ob-
jecves, like training stakeholders to understand design methodologies,
so that they can start to implement them more independently and thus
socialize the legal design thinking and methodologies to their organiza-
on and beyond.
3.2. The Matrix of Design to Understand your Approach to Users
Sanders and Stappers originally proposed ‘the landscapes of design,’ a
four-quadrant matrix, to idenfy new emerging design pracces and un-
derstand the variaons of human-centered design.99 According to Sand-
ers and Stappers, there are four dierent ways to categorize the prac-
ce of design: 1) research-led with an expert mindset, 2) research-led
with a parcipatory mindset, 3) design-led with a parcipatory mindset,
and 4) design-led with an expert mindset. Research-led refers to design
pracces dedicated to understanding design contexts, either involving
(parcipatory mindset) or not involving (expert mindset) users. On the
other hand, design-led can be understood as design pracces dedicated
to implemenng soluons for (expert mindset or parcipatory mindset)
users.100 In legal design work, this matrix can help reect whether the
approach taken in the project is ideal considering the project’s purpose
and the need to involve users in fullling that purpose. However, as the
98 Flechas, García and Escobar (n 18).
99 Sanders and Stappers (n 2) 2.
100 ibid.
274 Nina Toivonen and Santiago de Francisco Vela
exercise below will show, not all legal design projects can be placed in
just one quadrant of the matrix; they can apply the dierent approaches
simultaneously. It is also useful to say that legal design projects can opt
for many dierent ways of approaching their users, and that applying
more of ‘an expert-mindset’ rather than a ‘parcipatory mindset’ may
not make their results less eecve.
The EPLL’s evicon project could be placed in the rst quadrant of
Sanders and Stappers’ matrix (see gure 1), ‘research-led with an expert
mindset’. As described in the project report, the project involved sev-
eral consultaons with dierent professionals who had experse about
managing evicon cases, and for example about how to use SMS as an
intervenon strategy, as well as the use of research data on typical pain
points in evicon procedures.101 Although it is not possible to evaluate all
of the details of the design methods used in the project based on avail-
able data, it seems that end-user understanding was created by using
more research-lead and experse approaches than by engaging users as
actual co-creators in the project. The need to understand the impact of
SMS messages and the phases of the evicon process and their legal and
behavioral eects supports the approach taken.
101 Verschoor (n 16).
275Exploring the Dimensions of Participation in Legal Design
Fig. 2. Examples of Legal Design projects mapped on a design matrix introduced
by Sanders and Stappers in ‘Co-creaon and the new landscapes of design’, Inter-
naonal Journal of CoCreaon in Design and the Arts, 4, 5-18, 2008. © Sanders
and Stappers, 2008. Reproduced with permission.
The approach taken in the Entutela project could be placed in the
second quadrant of the matrix, ‘research-led with a parcipatory mind-
set’, but between the ‘design-led’ and ‘research-mindset’ quadrants.
In the project it was necessary to understand profoundly the various
experiences of dierent users and create common language and com-
municaon tools to reach that understanding. The project team used
dierent generave tools, such as low and high-resoluon prototypes,
to dynamically understand and meet the needs of dierent stakehold-
ers.102 The project team also conducted several interview studies with
102 Padilla Casas and de Francisco Vela (n 17).
276 Nina Toivonen and Santiago de Francisco Vela
cizens to understand their experiences in draing tutelas, as well as
with law students, lawyers, and judges to understand their perspecve
in the process.103 Although the user groups had a possibility to inuence
the design outcome, the design team made the necessary decisions to
guide and manage the design process.
The case of Hápca diers from the two previously menoned pro-
jects, because it itself is a tool to engage and acvate dierent stake-
holders and groups to design for themselves. Therefore, it could be
placed within the quadrant in the corner, ‘design-led with a parcipatory
mindset’. It was designed by legal design experts to socialize legal ser-
vice design methods and understanding, and therefore not only aims at
improving people’s parcipaon in projects but also provides them with
opportunies for learning and self-improvement. The toolkit could also
be categorized as generave design research.
3.3. Ladder of Parcipaon to Choose your Methods
Geilfus’ ladder of parcipaon idenes seven levels of parcipaon
determined by the degree of decision-making that parcipants have in
the process (see table 2).104 The rst two levels 1) passivity and 2) infor-
maon providing refer to low user involvement in the design process,
especially to the level of agency and decision-making they have in the
process. Users may be asked to parcipate for a certain period of the
process, or to ll in surveys or quesonnaires, but they have no say in
how the informaon they have provided should be used.105 The next two
levels are 3) consultave parcipaon, and 4) incenve-based parcipa-
on. Design methods that consult users and hear their opinions to cre-
ate the outcome, yet do not give users the power to make that decision,
can be called consultave. EPLL’s design methods could be categorized
as consultave. EPLL developed a prototype for sending SMS messages
to inform people who are about to face evicon. Aer the implemen-
taon phase, workshops were organized to idenfy the good pracces
of each actor involved. Virtuous cases were idened during these ses-
103 Padilla Casas and de Francisco Vela (n 17).
104 Geilfus (n 15) 3.
105 ibid.
277Exploring the Dimensions of Participation in Legal Design
sions where SMS had had a more signicant impact.106
Incenve-based parcipaon methods involve users or stakeholders
who supply labor or other resources in exchange for certain incenves. A
good example could be an organizaon that provides a test environment
for a prototype and does not get to directly decide how the prototype is
improved due to the tesng, but as an exchange gets useful informaon
about the test to improve its own operaons, or a possibility for learn-
ing.107
7Self-development
6Interacve parcipaon Entutela by Labjuscia Uniandes
Methods: Paper prototyping sessions, mockup
navigaon, prototype evaluaon, funconalies
hierarchy
5Funconal parcipaon LSDT by Hápca
Method: Working sessions with facilitator with
mulple stakeholders
4 Incenve-based
parcipaon
3Consultave
parcipaon
EPLL by Legal Design Lab Stanford
Method: Interviews with experts upon SMS strate-
gy results
2Informaon provider
1Passivity
Table 2. Examples of how legal design methods can be located on Geilfus’ ladder
of parcipaon.108
The last three steps on the ladder are 5) funconal parcipaon, 6)
interacve parcipaon, and 7) self-development. The methods mostly
used in the Entutela project could be dened as funconal parcipaon.
106 Verschoor (n 16).
107 Geilfus (n 15).
108 ibid.
278 Nina Toivonen and Santiago de Francisco Vela
The project involved dierent stakeholder groups to meet pre-estab-
lished project objecves, but they had lile to no role in the project de-
sign. For example, lawyers and law students were invited to experiment,
navigate and evaluate the prototype of the Entutela. Judges helped
idenfy the elements they considered essenal for a tutela to be under-
stood, and once the online version was launched in collaboraon with a
courthouse, the results were analyzed with the help of some of the users
who had sent their tutela through the system.109
Hápca’s toolkit can be viewed as supporng interacve parcipaon,
or even self-development. Interacve parcipaon soluons help organ-
ize stakeholders to parcipate in project design, and its implementaon
and evaluaon. They also involve a systemic and structured teaching and
learning process, as well as a progressive transion toward control and
management by the stakeholders.110As in Hápca’s case, it is important
for a design agency to create their own tools and methods that support
the specic needs their clients have in design projects, so that they can
re-apply them if needed in future projects. To support this aim Hápca
has also launched its own legal design courses under the name Hápca
Academy, where people interested in mastering legal design methods
can train their skills using the toolkit.111 Both the toolkit and the courses
support stakeholders’ possibility to take their own iniave in legal de-
sign projects, without waing for an external input from an expert. At
this level of parcipaon the roles of the designer-experts and the users
have ipped: it is the expert that is being consulted, not the other way
around.
What is noteworthy is that all of the example legal design cases rep-
resent a relavely high level of user and stakeholder engagement. This
may be due to the social and systemic nature of the design projects, as
well as the use of various design methods that as such require acve
parcipaon from stakeholders. This supports the view of legal design
as a genuinely parcipatory design approach.
109 Padilla Casas and de Francisco Vela (n 17).
110 Geilfus (n 15) 3.
111 Hápca (n 73).
279Exploring the Dimensions of Participation in Legal Design
4. Discussion and Implicaons
Our exploraon in this paper has shown that the central idea in legal
design, to make legal systems more human-centric and parcipatory, is
more mul-layered than the everyday discussion about legal design of-
ten implies. First of all, there are mulple ways to reason this approach.
The most important, and well acknowledged, reason is that the legal
system itself needs informaon from mulple perspecves to funcon
beer. Dierent stakeholder groups and the end-users of the law can
help lawyers, legal scholars, government ocials and other caretakers
of the legal system to reveal its internal biases and develop arfacts and
systems that are more in line with the purpose of law. One purpose of
the law, as understood in contemporary legal thinking, is to guide human
behavior by creang normave expectaons. This behavioral aspect of
law also necessitates that the people whose lives are being inuenced
by the results also get to take part in the knowledge formulaon and
decision-making processes regarding the design, not just by providing
informaon, but also through having agency and validang the meaning
and acceptability of the result.
There are also mulple reasons why parcipaon is easier said than
done. Parcipaon is a challenge in all design projects, and various au-
thors in the design literature have provided their understanding of the
phenomenon. However, in this paper we have focused on the special
features of the legal context that can make collaboraon in design pro-
jects trickier. Law, both as a professional culture and as a method of
problem solving, tends to reject anything ‘non-legal’. It is easy to under-
stand that the legal system can only dene, recreate and sustain itself
in society with its own communicaonal codes (‘legal’/’illegal’) and its
own communicators (lawyers, courts, legislaon etc.) for the purposes
of legal certainty and rule of law. However, proper lawyering does not
only have to refer to reacve style problem-solving, working ‘with an
expert-mindset’, or solving problems alone using only legal facts and le-
gal informaon sources. If more lawyers, but also more people in gen-
eral, understood that aside from the tradional and somewhat exclusive
styles of lawyering there is space for human-centric, parcipatory and
creave problem solving, perhaps more people would feel welcomed to
280 Nina Toivonen and Santiago de Francisco Vela
be involved in it. As we have discussed above, both of these approaches
aim to fulll the same purpose of legal certainty.
The third dimension explored in this paper is the concept of ‘parci-
patory design’ itself. Although the concept has its origins in human-cen-
tric and user-centric design approaches, it goes beyond understanding
the user to providing them with decision-making power and experiences
of learning and innovaon. The design literature reports several frame-
works and methods to plan and reect the parcipatory approaches to
be taken. In this paper we introduced three of them. Giacomin’s ve rhe-
torical quesons can help break the design challenge into areas of ‘who’,
‘what’, ‘how’, ‘when’ and ‘why’, and answering them will show what di-
recon and level of parcipaon might be needed to ensure working
results. Framing the project with these core quesons at the beginning
of a workshop, for example, will also show the parcipants what infor-
maon and perspecves are needed from them, as well as from others.
Once the desired scope of the project has been dened, legal design-
ers can use the Sanders’ and Stappers’ design matrix to reect what type
of approach to users, as subjects (‘expert’) or as partners (‘parcipa-
tory’), and design tools, tools to understand (‘research’) or to implement
(‘design’), to take. This exercise can help legal designers understand their
own role in the project (a ‘designer-expert’ or a ‘facilitator’) and the pros
and cons of their approach and create awareness about which type of
tools and methods would support reaching the desired outcomes.
The third framework, Geilfus’ ladder of parcipaon, completes the
matrix exercise and can be used to choose concrete parcipatory meth-
ods. Each level on the ladder refers to a certain type of a method. In the
case of legal design it is useful to be aware that the higher the ladder, the
more the methods on it give agency to the users and other stakeholders.
For instance, if a legal design project has elements of research-led and
expert mindset approaches, we would recommend looking for ‘funcon-
ally parcipatory’ methods that create a collecve understanding about
the topic, but also have elements that make users’ point of view visible
and give them a chance to analyze what the soluon would mean for
them. In pracce this could mean conducng interviews with experts
in the eld, but also with users, for example using social cartographies
281Exploring the Dimensions of Participation in Legal Design
as tools. 112 Social cartographies help mul-disciplinary teams create a
common understanding about the topic or challenge they need to solve
by formulang visual and tangible maps.
The exploraon journey taken in this paper was a brief one. More re-
search would be needed to beer understand the elements and tensions
of parcipaon in legal design, especially from praccal perspecves.
The queson of who should be allowed to design law and legal arfacts
is provocave which reveals how important it is to have an ongoing dis-
cussion about the topic. If legal design has a specic purpose in improv-
ing the legal system, it should be about inving dierent disciplines and
users of the law to be part of legal design teams. This also calls for mind-
fulness about not fostering a too narrow understanding of ‘the legal’
when it comes to legal design. A brief look into the parcipants’ back-
grounds at legal design events, seminars, workshops and social media
discussion threads shows that the idea of applying design in the contexts
of law seems to aract and engage mostly other lawyers. Although it is
only natural for legal experts to be interested in topics related to their
own profession, it seems, however, that there is sll a way to go for le-
gal design to be a truly muldisciplinary approach. If not mindfully ad-
dressed, there is a risk of legal design becoming a mere fragmentaon
inside the legal system, not an approach that can connect people and
generate impact and change. It should therefore be the collecve aim of
the legal design movement to create and promote alternave and easi-
er-to-access spaces for mul-level collaboraon in legal contexts.
There are many iniaves, projects, labs and working groups that are
leading by their example.113 More research would be needed to map
their goals, methods and insights on mul-disciplinary approaches to
law. One example can be found from Lan America. Labjuscia at the
University of Andes in Bogotá, Colombia, connects an interdisciplinary
team of designers, lawyers and engineers to approach real-life problems
of access to jusce from a systemic design perspecve.114
112 Miguel Navarro-Sanint, ‘Social cartography for social innovaon: A design ap-
proach’, in Proceedings of the XVII Conference of the Iberoamerican Society of Dig-
ital Graphics (SIGraDi: Knowledge-based Design 2013).
113 Some examples menoned by Hagan (n 9) 122.
114 Sanago De Francisco Vela, Laura Guzman-Abello, Sanago de Pardo Rodriguez
(2021) ‘Design for Jusce Lab: Interdisciplinarity in Times of Virtual Educaon’ in
282 Nina Toivonen and Santiago de Francisco Vela
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