Sanders, E. (2013). "Perspectives on Participation in Design", Transcript Verlag.

Participation Design

The Text is about the topic of participation design, where other people get involved in the design process, than just the designer itself. People which have no idea about design, are still experts in their own field and therefore count as valuable partner in the design and development process.

Co-Working

Nowadays designers try to engage workers directly into the development of new systems of workplaces, because they are the one that already worked with it and know what they need. The process of involving people in that way is described as Co-Working.

In the case of the workers, their approach and own experiences make them able to imagine and think about their future situation. With this kind of approach, you engage and motivate people to be a part of.

Participation Design is applied in different fields from design development of the consumer, industrial and medical products and also services.

But co-creation is also often used as a marketing concept and refers to an approach for generating and sustaining brand loyalty. This isn’t the exact same thing than Participation Design / Co-Working to actually improve the solution finding. It’s more the process of let them be a part of something, so they identify themselves more with it what increases the chance to be long-lasting customer.

Participatory Design is growing

Because consumerism has reached a high point, people are starting to realise that they have to take action. Out of that there are a lot of counter-movements in development. As example the do-it-yourself area is increasing, because people want to be more creative, buy less new things and probably also want to repare their own things.

Generation Y on the other hand should have some advantages in sense of participative designing, because they grow up with social media and the internet. This is a big part of doing things in Interaction.