n Understanding design Co-design
New roles for designers
“No design, no matter how beautiful and ingenious, is any good if it does not fulfil a user need.” 1 That seems rather obvious. But the role of the user (client) in the design process has changed (please see model four). Designers used to see users from a design centred observational perspective. At a later stage the user was imagined to think about what they might want or need. A different approach was when designers actually made contact with users. This participation was either in representing the user or experiencing the user. This new way of designing included the user finally in the design process and is today practised as User Centred Design. This participatory design makes clients part of the project and involves them in a collaborative design. The research group Luotain at the UIAH in Helsinki is working on various projects that include clients in different parts of the design process.
Design has developed and opened new fields for designers. New roles such as Interaction Design, Gender Design, Experience Design, Design Management, Strategic Design, etc. have emerged. Designers that have been trained in a traditional design background have taken specialised education to accommodate the new market needs and possibilities. Also Service Design is a new role for designers.
New designers Design has also opened up a new field for people traditionally considered non-designers to participate in multidisciplinary approaches. Design offers a new platform for collaboration of people from different backgrounds and with different experiences. Are you already a designer? Otherwise you might want to become one?
“We are all designers now.” John Thackara, Author of In the Bubble
Conclusion Design involves the understanding of client wants, needs, motivations and contexts as well as business, technical and domain requirements and constraints. This knowledge can be translated into artefacts, into plans for artefacts or strategies that set frameworks or give direction. Design ensures that the overall experience of products, services and spaces is useful, usable and desirable as well as efficient, effective, economically viable and technically feasible.1
1 Design Council. Retrieved from the world wide web the 2005-05-12. http://www.design council.org.uk 2 Hollins, Bill. Various papers online. Retrieved from the world wide web the 2005-05-27. http://wmin.ac.uk/dm/ 3 Thackara, John (2005): In the Bubble. Designing in a Complex World. The MIT Press. Cambridge, Massachusetts. Page 226
Design has been recognised as an important factor for businesses and it has been identified (e.g. by the Design Council) that companies that use design in a more integrated way are more successful.2
Design Centred Design O B S E RV
User Imagined AT I O N
User Represented
PA R T I C I
PAT I O N
User Experienced
Design has always been involved in change. Without changes design would not be that necessary. The changes that we are facing have resulted not only in new designs. They have resulted in a re-designing of design.
User Centred Design
RO LE IM MER SIO
As John Thackara (Doors of Perception) writes in the last line of his book In the Bubble. Designing in a Complex World: “We are all designers now.” 3
N
Service Design
Changing world
Design strives to create experiences that go across products, spaces or services. It takes the view of a product or service from the entire life cycle with a client, from before they perceive the need to when they discard it.
Co-design This model shows how design has changed towards User Centred Design. Clients are involved in the design which is called Co-design. This represents one of the dimensions that changed in design.
35
34
[ model four ] 1 Design Council. Retrieved from the world wide web the 2005-04-23. http://www.designcouncil.org.uk Diagram source: User Centred Design Conference, 2003-05-12, UIAH, Helsinki, Luotain presentation, referencing Bill Gavers