Abstract

This dissertation analyzes the development of the Seattle Public Schools' Budget Builder World Wide Web Site. The analysis is primarily concerned with the social and political issues which affected the development of the site, but looks at the technical issues as well. The analysis highlights factors which encouraged or discouraged citizen participation in the site design.

Because this report describes an Internet-based web site, we decided that the commentary would best be contained in another web site "behind" the original one. The introduction discusses the decision to produce the dissertation as an online document. Concerns such as access to technology, the ability to read the data in the future, on-screen readability, and hypertext presentations are all addressed.

The dissertation springs from a sociopolitical view of technology that says there are social, political, and economic barriers to including individuals and communities in technological development. Changing the way in which technologies are designed requires more substantial social change. User-centered design practice has developed many promising techniques to incorporate users of technology into the development process. However, user-centered design is almost always used in corporate settings and operates on the model of technical professionals directing development. True community input into technical design requires turning to models of participation drawn from community building work and the democratic technology movement.

The analysis looks at how power and responsibilities were split among the three groups involved in the creation of the Budget Builder. The Seattle Public Schools, which had the least interest in community participation, had the most crucial element for the design: data about budgeting costs and systems. The other groups, which were most community-focused, had more replaceable assets: the Cross City Campaign for Urban School Reform provided the project funding, and the University of Washington Graduate School of Public Affairs provided technical expertise.

Contents | Introduction | Background | Methods | Description | Conclusion | References