Paper explained
ONION: A Multi-Layered Framework for Participatory ER Design
How can people recognize their own needs in a formal data model?
The question
Why this work
ONION organizes participatory entity–relationship design into five stages. It carries open-ended stakeholder accounts into a structured model, with opportunities to check whether technical abstraction has lost something important.
The approach
A visual guide
From lived experience to a formal model
Observe
Gather open-ended needs and experiences.
Nurture
Develop shared stories and sketches.
Integrate
Translate contributions into a draft ER model.
Optimize
Check the draft with participants and refine it.
Normalize
Produce a standard ER model with external technical review.
What the work contributes
Workshops with Donor UA and UCU’s Volunteers Lab surfaced overlooked relationships and “invisible” entities. Participants could trace contributions into the resulting models and described changes in their understanding of other roles.
Original paper & resources
In Proceedings of the Workshop on Human-In-the-Loop Data Analytics (HILDA '25), June 22, 2025, Berlin, Germany.
Citation
Makovska, V., Fletcher, G., & Stoyanovich, J. (2025). ONION: A Multi-Layered Framework for Participatory ER Design. In Proceedings of the Workshop on Human-In-the-Loop Data Analytics (HILDA '25). https://doi.org/10.1145/3736733.3736736
BibTeX
@inproceedings{Makovska2025ONION,
author = {Makovska, Viktoriia and Fletcher, George and Stoyanovich, Julia},
title = {ONION: A Multi-Layered Framework for Participatory ER Design},
booktitle = {Proceedings of the Workshop on Human-In-the-Loop Data Analytics (HILDA '25)},
year = {2025},
doi = {10.1145/3736733.3736736}
}