The changing narratives and practices of design in the 21st century have moved the goalposts with regard to designer—stakeholder participation. This has been influenced by technology companies and design thinking practices. However, some skepticism is necessary when considering the benefits of these practices. For example, do they dilute the criticality of traditional design roles and what is the role and effect of uninformed stakeholders in the design process?
I can’t remember when I first heard the term co-design, or any of its related terms such as participatory design or collaborative design. But it was probably sometime in the 2010s, reflective of the new interest in design from business, in particular among technology companies and alongside the increasing evangelisation of the plethora of methods and processes that has come to be known as Design Thinking.
At some stage during this period people started referring to software development as design and methodologies such as ‘Agile’ and ‘LEAN’ began to creep their way in. The terms user-centred and human-centred design also made an appearance and at some stage front-end interactive graphic design became known as user interface (UI) design. Clearly the increased ease of use, affordability, and availability of design software that ushered in, what has been called, the democratisation of design has also played a part in this – for better or for worse.
For those of us from the graphic/communication design world, much of this was mysterious. Many of these terms and functions were things that we had been doing in some shape or form for years, but hadn’t yet put a name to. Other aspects of this ‘new design’ were anathema – for example, the idea that a software developer or coder could be called a designer. But that’s another discussion.
But until the creeping acceptance of formalised collaborative design methods, terms such as ‘design by committee’ were far more common and rarely used in a positive way. Why on earth would a designer want an uninformed and untrained stakeholder anywhere near a design process? It was an unintuitive concept that years of industry experience suggested was a recipe for disaster, both for the artefactual design outcome, as well as the design process and designer—stakeholder dynamic.
As usual, there are also disciplinary issues in the co-design (and Design Thinking) narrative. Both concepts have largely emerged out of software development and product design, with other design disciplines playing peripheral (if any) role. Additionally, many of the terms, practices and job roles (often around design leadership) in relation to participatory design, have emerged from technology and business – independent of design practice as it is generally understood.
So where does this leave actual design as a practice and designers as professionals? It remains problematic, as it has always been. And perhaps it always should be. People have long gone to designers to address difficult, ‘wicked’, problematic issues. That’s what we are good at and it is the reason that the whole discipline of design research was developed – to try and understand how we think and how we solve stuff, with Design Thinking being a further stage to enable (in theory), non-designers to use design approaches.
Democratic and community involvement in design projects is absolutely a good thing. But, co-design and its allied terms are often used within business to spin an inclusive, democratic and fuzzy narrative around what are otherwise straightforward consultancy practices (that are often not especially collaborative or participatory). Moreover, the jury is still very much out about the degree to which participatory design (at least in the way it is currently practiced with regard to the aims and practices that have emerged from business) benefits either the participants, the design process, or the design outcomes. And no amount of shenanigans involving terms like ‘human’,’user’, ‘collaboration’, or ‘participation’ is going to change that.
Communication & Graphic Design Research 