Greetings wise ones,
I am a PhD student sending out an SOS call for clarification over various design methods that have evolved over time. Specifically, I am trying to map out the history of participatory design/co design, user centered design, service design and human centered design to date.
My naive impression so far is that participatory design has evolved in a loose linear fashion out of techno-centric discourse (engineering, product and systems), into wider social contexts which created later trends in more holistic service/human centered design/design thinking methods. My aim in this clarification of the evolution of methods is to analyze how process trends followed from previous methods, and how these methods differed as they evolved. I am currently stuck at trying to decipher whether these methods changed focus/perspective/context in a linear fashion due to social/economical trends, etc, or if some methods evolved independent of others from various streams of research.
I have only just tickled the surface of my research, however, my reading to date suggests that majority of these methods trace back to engineering/system design discourse. I am largely concerned with recent history (circa 1990 to date) of where, how and why these methods changed and gathered momentum (or if just 'trendy') over time.
Any advice from reading material, insights, experiences to just general impressions will be gratefully acknowledged.
Regards,
Stefanie Di Russo
PhD Candidate
Swinburne University, Australia
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