A Question of Participation in Design

The future of design development lies in participation with the users. Designers shall no longer consider the user as a passive participant whose sole purpose it to be studied at. No longer shall a researcher serve as a translator between designers and users. This structure, originally known as classical design, only leads to a major loss of insights and information instead of achieving the best design results with all participants in mind.


Today there's a move towards a participatory design process where users, researchers and designers alike are all on the same level which allows them to create the concept together as one. One of these participatory methods is called Co-Design.

Co-Design: Participatory Design & Co-Creation

Co-Design is made up from Participatory Design, Co-Creation and Open Design Process. While using this method, all participants are on equal grounds and are actively working on solving the problem as a unified team. This allows the creation of more divers teams, where all members can use their skills and experiences to form the design.



There is often confusion when it comes down to differentiating between Co-Design and Co-Creation or Participatory Design. This is mainly the case because Co-Design describes the overall a participation method and is often mistakingly used for either Co-Design or Participatory Design. It is therefore important to note that Co-Design includes both methods.

While Co-Design describes the collective creativity across a period of a design process, Co-Creation specifies an act of collective creativity between two or more people. Co-Creation works with "lead users", those are people who have already explored innovative ways to solve the investigated problem, and "lead customers", who are "truly" creative and can have a bigger impact on the project. Here, once again, goes to prove how important experience has become in today's design processes. 

A good example for where Participatory Design is needed would be a hospital - here it is essential to create a surrounding with doctors, nurses and patients. The end goal of Participatory Design is to please the interests of the majority of the stake-holders.

Many of today's marketing strategies falsely use customisation as a form of Co-Creation - Nike for example support customers to influence the shoe's design by changing its colours. This is not Co-Creation - it is an illusion the marketing companies like to use so that the user feels like they can influence the design. In other words: Customisation is not equal to Co-Design or Co-Creation.

There are, however, certain areas where Co-Creation is not necessarily needed - for example in fashion. Here, instead of being an active influence on the design, users often want to become passive "consumers" which allows them adopt the design.

It is important to note that Participatory Design is no new method to design / innovation. Henry Ford could not have mass produced the automobile without the help of Preston Tucker; Ray Kroc had never have built the MacDonald's empire without initially having the MacDonald's brothers laying out the foundations. And the saying "Behind every great man is a woman" is also another indication of participation - where wives serve a supportive role in a husband's success. To summarise: innovation never comes from ONE individual. It is therefore always important to credit all participants in a project. 

Cultural Probes

Cultural Probes is a research method for gathering information and is used for when target groups are unknown or unfamiliar. Cultural Probes are an example of participatory research where target people are encouraged to influence the first stages of the design process. Cultural Probes include more visual and physical methods which allow designers to understand the results of target group more easily.

Bodystorming

Bodystorming is a design method where problems are solved at the place where the problematic phenomena occurs. When using the Bodystorming method all participants related to the project should visit, observe and experience the surrounding where the issues can be found. This is another exemplary part of Co-Design where all participants can view the problem in its surroundings.

Information Visualisation

Information Visualisation is used to simplify data and making it more accessible and understandable to others. This is especially important when wanting to communicate information to participants who are not familiar with the content.

To create an understandable visualisation there are certain requirements that should be followed:
  • what is the context? → this includes title, location, date, ratio (x and y axis), gender, age, number of participants
  • who, where and when? → these are the most important captions that should be noted; also ask yourself - who pays for the person to express such opinions / give out such information (tobacco industry for example)
  • is a legend needed → in example of underground map
Be aware that data can be faked and that because of that there lies a certain responsibility when publishing such information. It is also important to keep in mind that there are different ways of interpreting data and that one should be cautious of how it is presented - a total number of eight participants does not mean the whole world.

As a small exercise we had the task to visualise some sort of data that we come across during our life.





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Bibliography (Images): CoDesign: International Journal of CoCreation in Design and the Arts by Elizabeth B.-N. Sanders and Pieter Jan Stappers (2008); page 11