Participatory Research and Design in the Portal to Peru

Abstract

This article explores the potentials and challenges of employing digital and interactive media as part of the research–design process. The Portal to Peru project features an online exhibition of Andean textiles, focusing on the work of the Center for Traditional Textiles of Cusco, Peru. The website shares the rich weaving traditions of the Andes with a broad public, including Andean studies scholars and Peruvians who live in Peru and the United States. The research and content for the website draw on key Andean textile studies texts, combined with interviews with weavers and others associated with the Center for Traditional Textiles and a portion of the extensive photographic archives of the Center for Traditional Textiles itself. This article examines this digital design project from the perspective of participatory research, participatory design, and design ethnography, seeking to identify insights about how ethnographers and others can present cultural heritage online in a way that attends to the dual nature of intangible heritage as artifact and process.