The document discusses design-in-use and collective design processes. It notes that design does not end with the creation of objects, but continues as people incorporate technologies into their everyday lives. It examines questions around who designs, what is designed, how design work is distributed, and how decisions are made. It argues that more attention should be paid to design-in-use and the opportunities it provides for collaboration. Two case studies are presented that show complex relationships between different actors engaging in grassroots innovation. The document advocates for making the "design space" more visible and increasing actors' capabilities to initiate innovations.

1. Collective and cumulative, some
strategies of every day design-in-
use
Andrea Botero /
Aalto University School of Art and Design / DOM

2. Design

3. "... design is not the creation of
discrete, intrinsically meaningful
objects, but the cultural production of
new forms of practice…"
Suchman, L; Blomber, J; Orr E; Randall, T (1999) Reconstructing
Technologies as social practice in The American Behavioral Scientist,
Vol43 No 3, pp 392.

4. PROCESS - ACTIVITY
• Solution oriented: work through (in
imagination) an intervention in the world
• Use representations of the world to assess the
ways in which the contemplated intervention
would change the world and to negotiate a
shared vision (stories, drawings, models,
simulations, sketches, prototypes)
• Iterate the process, often numerous times,
before the design settles into some form
• “look at the whole, pay attention to the
details” (EM)

5. In-use
(2 POV)

6. • Studying people and use situations
to inform design process
• Recognize that a variety of people,
through their everyday activities,
are already engaged in continuous
and dynamic processes related to
– learning,
– creative appropriation,
– domestication,
– shaping of technology, etc
That can be interesting from a design
pov

7. Initial questions

8. – Who is really designing with whom and with
what resources is this been achieved? (UCD,
PD, )
– What it is that is being designed? (or what
is possible to design) (UX, IXD)
– How design work dynamically shifts and
drifts from some actors to others -including
the artefacts themselves. (Agency, Teams )
– How design decisions are allocated,
delegated (or denied) amongst participants
(Agency, collaboration, communication)
– (Relationship of all these to broader
discussion on “innovation”)

9. – Who is really designing with whom and with
what resources is this been achieved? (UCD,
PD, )
– What it is that is being designed? (or what
is possible to design) (UX, IXD)
– How design work dynamically shifts and
drifts from some actors to others -including
the artefacts themselves. (Teams, agency)
social production, collective action, Life projects, etc
– (Fromdesign POV: logics, problems, possibilities?)
How design decisions are allocated,
delegated (or denied) amongst participants
(Agency, collaboration, communication)
– (Relationship of all these to broader
discussion on “innovation”)

10. – Who is really designing with whom and with
what resources is thislabour and its resulting
Different divisions of been achieved? (UCD,
PD, ) consequences?
– What it is that is being designed? (or what
is possible to design) (UX, IXD)
– How design work dynamically shifts and
drifts from some actors to others -including
the artefacts themselves. (Teams, agency)
– How design decisions are allocated,
delegated (or denied) amongst participants
(Agency, collaboration, communication)
– (Relationship of all these to broader
discussion on “innovation”)

11. TRENDS/ FADS
• co-creation
• crowdsourcing
• open innovation
• user innovation
• (even) social innovation
CLAIMS: new configurations in
productive/creative activities
(democratization)

12. In design?
• UCD, PD, co-design, etc have been
creating debates (and
interventions) about new designer/
user relationships at least since
the 70’s
– Contributions to the understanding of
the landscape available for current
design practice are potentially
relevant to many issues beyond;

13. However…
Design research has been mostly
concentrating on:

14. 1
• Who should take part, when?
ASSUMPTIONS:
– design work is carried out largely by
teams, and it is organized around a
project
– It is possible to find the perfect
configuration for the team, you just
need to try hard enough

15. 2
• What roles suit everyone better, and
which new ones should be tried?
(specially designers)
ASSUMPTIONS:
– new roles are enough (change in attitude
and few new techniques)
– once we find the right method(s) exercising
the right kind of role would be
straightforward

16. 3
• Product centric
ASSUMPTIONS:
– Innovation as technical endeavor
(practices?)
– “Firms” as legitimate articulators / locus

17. • To much focus on WHO we are
(Designer? User? Producer?) and
less efforts in understanding WHAT
is everybody doing and with what
resulting consequences.
• A lot of efforts concentrated in the
fuzzy front end
• risk of turning efforts into an issue of mere
commodification of user involvement

18. Engeström, Y. (2008). From Teams to Knots: Studies of
Collaboration and Learning at Work (1st ed.). Cambridge
University Press.

19. Need better understanding
• It is not enough to say that “everyone
designs” but how? To what extent? What?
• Dynamics of collective and collaborative
endeavors (from a design POV), in
contemporary conditions (firms/organizations?
solo/teams/something else?)
• The role and contribution of design activities
(and not just of “designers” or “users”)

20. • Look before, after and to the sides
of the concept design stage (fuzzy
front end)
• Take seriously design-in-use
(identified as key component but
remains largely under supported
and under developed)

21. 2 cases
• Both are areas where some
examples of “users” initiate
development (marginally)
• Picture is more complex than
producer-user and designer-user
(government, civic sector, etc)
• New media as component in re-
configuring the “sector”

22. 1. A collective project of communal senior living
based on neighborliness, self-help and open
decision process (http://aktiviisetseniorit.fi).
(ADIK Project – Emerging Digital Practices of Communities. TEKES)

23. -Articulation between several “projects”
-Success of a failure
-Choices, material maters (e.g Limits of CMS, no place for
relationships)

24. Scenarios
“seeding”
prototype
based on
existing
component /
DW Beta

25. 2. Emerging urban forms of civic participation
(activists, government, average citizen, etc).
Sharing knowledge about the city
(ICING Project Innovative cities for the next generation)

26. - role of digital technologies (location-based services) in
facilitating citizen participation in issues related to the
urban environment and in building new relationships to the
city administration
- Issue reporting vs issue sharing
- Active citizenship? (different actors imagine new forms of
citizenship)

27. A UM Point
documents
questionable
decisions of
some fellow
citizens (UM
v1.0 - mobile
UI).
A UM Topic
gathering
contributions for
new skating
park locations.
The UI features
a map view
populated by
UM Points (UM
v 1.0)

29. • Interesting and crucial co-design
opportunities happened in design-in-use
(many opportunities for collaboration
and collective action)
– Cumulative (Design Space)
– Collective (hybrid)

30. Design-in-use realities
• Ad-hoc/mundane: does not necessarily involve
reflection as sometimes it can be side project
or a distraction from the real “project”
• Can easily settle down for some solution,
sometimes the first one, which addresses the
concern enough
• Full consideration of the consequences of
design decisions, and the benefits that arise
from exploring a design space more
thoroughly are not by default present.
• Not straightforward to document for sharing
and learning, for collaboration (explicitly)

31. Design space (fairly common term
used – by different disciplines-rarely
defined)
– the space of possibilities for realizing
a design, which extends beyond the
concept design stage into the design-
in-use activities of people
• 1) a design space is always actively co-constructed and
explored by multiple actors through their social interactions
with and through technologies and
• 2) the participating actors, resources, conditions and
supporting strategies frame the design space available

32. Design Space, some examples

33. In design-in-use
• Effectiveness/ quality / success of
designs is highly dependant on the
“design space” that a collective
sees (imagine and/or available)
• Design interventions affect the
design space (expand or contract
it)

34. • Recognize mundane everyday
designs and the opportunities for
collaboration that they entail
• Weaving together of project at
design time and projects at use
time

35. KNOTWORKING
• In-between infras (rehearse
collective and cumulative “rapid
prototyping”) this has implications
for the capabilities of the actors
involved to initiate innovations and
understand the broader design
spaces that are available to them
• Negotiation, scaffolding and
seeding strategies

36. Some implications for
design (professionla9
• Better ways to make the “design
space” more visible/accessible to
all involved
• Identifying (and increasing) design
capabilities; not only identifying
needs (REF: SEN)
• If there are new roles perhaps
midwifing could be good new
benchmark ;-)

37. gracias
Andrea Botero
andrea.botero@aalto.fi