I was fortunate to learn about participatory design from
Jesper Simonsen during a tutprial at the latest Participatory Design Conference 2014 in Namibia. Below I have used a couple of his slides to illustrate his understanding of participatory design as mutual learning.
Participatory design is a pluralistic discipline which unlike traditional design aims not to privilege the position of the designer. Users are included in the process of formulating a solution design, as providing expert understanding about the problem.