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Co-Design as a Process of Joint Inquiry and Imagination

Introduction Many innovation projects are currently organized as co-design processes (i.e., as processes of creative cooperation). The term codesign can refer, for example, to the organizing of open innovation processes, in which people from different organizations share and combine ideas and knowledge, or to involving users or customers as participants in the design process.1 One might even argue that design is always co-design because it is inherently a social process.2 Co-design comprises diverse approaches, ranging from research-oriented ones (e.g., applied ethnography) to design-oriented ones (e.g., using generative tools), and with a focus on user involvement, ranging from approaches in which researchers and designers move toward users (e.g., usability testing) to approaches in which users move toward researchers and designers (e.g., participatory design).3 Co-design often builds on the tradition of (Scandinavian) participatory design.4 In this paper, I follow Sanders and Stappers’s use of the term co-design to indicate “collective creativity as it is applied across the whole span of a design process.”5 Another useful definition is provided by Kleinsmann and Valkenburg, who describe codesign as “the process in which actors from different disciplines share their knowledge about both the design process and the design content... in order to create shared understanding on both aspects... and to achieve the larger common objective: the new product to be designed.”6 This definition draws attention to the sharing and combining of knowledge and to developing shared understanding—issues that are discussed here. Diverse benefits are associated with co-design: from improving processes of idea generation and service or product development, to improving decision-making and promoting cooperation and creativity, to improving users’ and customers’ satisfaction and loyalty over the long-term.7 Despite the prominence of co-design as a strategy, it receives little scholarly attention, and the ideas behind it are rarely discussed critically.8 This situation might be caused by the popularity of labelling projects as co-design and the conceptual dilution or confusion that results. 1 Henry W. Chesbrough, Open Innovation: The New Imperative for Creating and Profiting from New Technology (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2003); and Henry W. Chesbrough, Wim Vanhaverbeke, and Joel West, eds., Open Innovation: Researching a New Paradigm (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006). Sari Kujala, “User Involvement: A Review of the Benefits and Challenges,” Behaviour and Information Technology 22, no. 1 (2003): 1-17; Harald Rohracher (ed.), User Involvement in Innovation Processes: Strategies and Limitations from a Socio-Technical Perspective (Munich: Profil Verlag, 2005); and Bo Edvardsson, Anders Gustafsson, Per Kristensson, Peter Magnusson, and Jonas Matthing, eds., Involving Customers in New Service Development (London: Imperial College Press, 2006). 2 Louis Bucciarelli, Designing Engineers (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1994). 3 Elisabeth B. N. Sanders and Pieter Jan Stappers, “Co-Creation and the New Landscapes of Design,” CoDesign 4, no. 1 (2008): 5-18; and Marc Steen, Tensions in Human-Centred Design,” CoDesign 7, no. 1 (2011): 45-60. 4 Douglas Schuler and Aki Namioka, eds., Participatory Design: Principles and Practices (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1993). 5 Sanders and Stappers, “Co-Creation and the New Landscapes of Design.” 6 Maaike Kleinsmann and Rianne Valkenburg, Barriers and Enablers for Creating Shared Understanding in Co-Design Projects, Design Studies, vol. 29, no. 4 (2008): 369-86. 7 Marc Steen, Menno Manschot and Nicole De Koning, Benefits of Co-Design in Service Design Projects,