participatory design to co-creation, has attracted the interest of many people, companies, and organizations, and is growing rapidly. Designers and design researchers are exploring the creation of tools that non-designers can use to channel their own creativity. In co-design, designers use the ideas generated by others as sources of inspiration and innovation.

Designers are becoming part of teams responsible for the generation, analysis, and interpretation of the “data”: the artifacts and models that result from the co-designing process.

Design professionals are learning the skills needed to act as facilitators of the collective creativity of others.

How do they design, and what
methods do they use? User-centered
design is still very strong in UX
practice. But co-design is now
through studies that deliver insights
about what people might want or
need in the future. Companies study
lifestyles and people’s needs to come
up with new products. An example
from the Netherlands is the Senseo
pods, where coffee company Douwe
Egberts had done user studies on
coffee preferences and found that
people preferred single cups and
different flavors. The company also
noted a trend that more people
consumed coffee by themselves, and
that in taste panels many people
liked a creamy top. It resulted in new
coffeemakers, new distribution forms
for individual-portion pods, new
forms of co-branding, and new shelf
space in stores. There was no market
pull—no people asking for coffee pods
in the shops—and it wasn’t because of
a new technology.

Who designs? The design disciplines have become more integrated, with interdisciplinary design teams now commonplace in many industries. Others joining the design team include design researchers, businesspeople, marketing representatives, and engineers of various sorts.

Design research is now practiced all along the design development process, but most of the growth is taking place at the early front end, also known as the fuzzy front end, where the strategy and direction and the “what” of the development effort are designed.

The roles of designers and design researchers are also blending together and converging to the point where it can be hard to tell them apart. This is especially true at the fuzzy front end.

Co-design in various forms, from

BRINGING OUT THE EXPERTISE OF PARTICIPANTS

Skeptics of co-design still cite the famous Henry Ford quote—if you asked users what they wanted, it would not have been a car but “a faster
horse”—as evidence that participation in design should be limited to a narrow set of professionals. But more are now realizing that facilitating
the participation of users and other stakeholders involves far more effort than merely asking them “what they want.”
Over the past decades, techniques have been developed to involve people as “experts of their experience” [ 10]. Here are two principles we
have found essential in getting at the underlying user values that can inspire the design of future ways of living. In the book Convivial Toolbox [ 3]
we, together with some 50 colleagues, describe our experiences with these principles and tools and the techniques that build on them.

1

43

2

0 the empty timeline

1 the layer of facts is added DOZ
ED
STAYED IN BED
READING A BOOK
JUST THAT EXTRA BIT
FOR MYSELF
ACCOMPLISHED
A NE W RECIPE
E
SS
ED
DR
O
VE
TO
TO WN
SHOPPING COOKING
LA
Z
Y
E
V
ENIN
G

2 ‘smileys’ and ‘frownies’ are added to indicate high and low points

 

3 reasons why the points
were high or low
have now been added
The path of expression is the
structure of the process of sensitizing
and awareness-building, by which
design researchers guide participants
to a deeper understanding of their
needs, wants, hopes, and dreams
in order to identify criteria and
opportunities. It takes the participant
from considering the present
situation to identify what ingredients
are important ( 1), to then recalling
previous good and bad experiences
( 2), which are reflected on to find
underlying values ( 3), which are then
taken to guide thinking of what would
be a desirable future situation ( 4).

Part of that awareness concerns people’s values. Again, instead of bluntly asking, “What are your values?” participants can be guided to discover their values by leading them to record facts, remember their emotional valence, and then think of the underlying reasons. In the timeline exercise, each element in each layer is constructed on the basis of comparisons across the entire previous layer.