Hi Teena and all,
Co-Design is, in my view, the recognition that there are different perspectives and interests in every design. This has been one major topic of the so called American Pragmatism, which got it's name from William James in 1907. Prominent members in this context are John Dewey (well know for work in the educational field), West Churchman (known for Systems Thinking), Russel Ackoff, Ian Mitroff and Peter Checkland. I also hope that Klaus Krippendorrf will not mind me including him. The American Pragmatism is not, however, a well-known school in the design research I have come across. (NB: the Wikipedia article on pragmatism is in my view a bit one-sided)
But Pelle Ehn (by most recognized as an originator of PD) wrote that "we could have learned something similar from Russel Ackoff". Ackoff started his work in this field in the 60ies.
Example: If you design a car, most designers today will recognize that manufacturing, marketing, service are important stakeholders, beside the "user". Some consider other people/the environment to be important as well. And the vanguard of car makers are looking at for instance pedestrian safety. In reality the "user" is often divided in "driver" and "owner". There are also many potential conflicts; for instance speed/performance vs the environment vs price or the looks and material of a car front vs pedestrian safety. In "environment" the living conditions for future generations is often included. Evene more; car design is not just a question for car manufacturers, there are large number of regulations as well. This means that the government has made it self a stakeholder.
A key concern of co-design is then which stakeholders to consider, and how. Stakeholder identification and model building is an entire discipline in business administration. Ian Mitroff for instance proposed seven strategies.
Participatory Design belong to co-design as it is focusing the possibility to include stakeholders or at least representatives of them, actively in the design. The argument is often that this will improve the design. This is not undisputed, of course, particularly in innovation efforts. There are also many situations where is not possible to include people (being not born yet for instance, or the costs are prohibiting) so DP cannot be the only way to consider stakeholder interests.
Those how think "if you don't bring people actively in, it isn't co-design", should in my opinion rather use the term Participatory Design than co-design to avoid confusion. PD is well-established in the design field to mean just about that.
There are of course design research and disciplines where these issues are not considered to be central at all. For instance, many architects are stressing their role as an artist, who should be as free as possible from other stakeholder interests. In the recently open exhibition in Paris on Frank Gehry's work, one of the recorded voices criticize him for allowing the clients to influence his work too much.
My perpetual super-visor prof Goldkuhl requested me years ago to write an essay/summary of stakeholder models and thinking. It discusses the implicit or explicit stakeholder models of several design approaches. It is accepted by him, but otherwise unpublished paper. I link here for those interested, with the hope of still being quoted if some it is of value:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/sjg0xpmgkk09cfo/Stakeholders%20-%20Lars%20Albinsson.pdf?dl=0
Thinking like this, over-simplistic stakeholder models for design are naive at best, dysfunctional or dangerous at worst. So this essay will contain some questioning of both User Centered Design and Participatory Design. (Some of the authors I discuss are members of this list, which is a wonderful as well as terrifying quality of the list. But my motto is: "it is never too late to give up";-)
Following the pragmatist stance I also argue that the choice of stakeholders is fundamentally an ethical choice. (The essay begins with Aristoteles)
The ethics of design is a frequent topic in design, as in this thread. To me the design of the design process is important and a good place to explicitly adress ethics. Then it can have some impact. The first step is looking at which stakeholder model different design processes/methods has implicitly or explicitly.
Best Regards,
Lars
Ps I entred the word "co-design" into wikipedia years ago. Unfortunatly it has now been changed to mean PD. When I have some time I shall work in this.
James, W. (1907). "Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking ".
Mitroff, I. I. (1983). Stakeholders of the organizational mind. San Francisco, Jossey-Bass.
Ackoff, R. L. (1981). Creating the corporate future : plan or be planned for. New York, Wiley.
Russell L. Ackoff (1967) "Management Misinformation Systems," in: Management Sciences Vol. 14, No. 4, December 1967.
Greenbaum, J. M. and M. Kyng (1991). Design at work : cooperative design of computer systems. Hillsdale, N.J., L. Erlbaum Associates.
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LARS ALBINSSON
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19 okt 2014 kl. 14:05 skrev Teena Clerke <[log in to unmask]>:
Hi Lars,
I was involved in participatory design in the early 1990s through a project with a local hospital and the university at which I worked. I am also familiar with publications, recent and less recent about participatory design.
But I am less familiar with the distinctions with co-design – so are you saying that co-design is encompassing of all users, including future (imagined) users, while participatory design involves only those who use/develop/have a stake in the design. Am I interpreting you correctly?
cheers, teena
> I note the a distinction between co-design where the stakeholders can participate and when not. For instance in designing a future education system or school it is impossible to engage the pupil as they not born yet. Then their perspective needs to be represented by others, which is risky, but to ignore them is even riskier.
>
> Participatory Design, which has been around a while, covers the situation where stakeholders, user etc participate. In my view co-design is encompassing both this, and situations where stakeholders can't participate. The key element of co-design is the recognition that there is an endless multitude of perspectives and interest. Therefore it is central to the person leading the design to make conscious and conscientious choices of which perspective to embrace.
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