Increasingly, the roles of designer and end-user are becoming blurred. Since the emergence of participatory design, the involvement of the end-user in the design process has continued to grow. This involvement has been facilitated by new ways of making, manufacturing and distributing products, helped in part by the World Wide Web.
The shift in the role of designer as final decision maker, to that of co-collaborator with end-users, has been steadily growing in the past ten years. This paper seeks to tease out the field of co-design and differentiate it from mass customization. This paper will question why end-users increasingly want to be a part of the design process, and how this can facilitate a greater emotional bond between the product and the end-user. In addition, the authors outline a new approach that can be applied to the product design process titled ‗user-completion‘ which operates at the intersection between mass manufacture and craft practices.
ICDC2012 Glasgow
The shift in the role of designer as final decision maker, to that of co-collaborator with end-users, has been steadily growing in the past ten years. This paper seeks to tease out the field of co-design and differentiate it from mass customization. This paper will question why end-users increasingly want to be a part of the design process, and how this can facilitate a greater emotional bond between the product and the end-user. In addition, the authors outline a new approach that can be applied to the product design process titled ‗user-completion‘ which operates at the intersection between mass manufacture and craft practices.
ICDC2012 Glasgow
