Co-Design: User Democracy?
How is a representitive and fair reflection of the users portrayed in design? Is co-design a way of including the users, or is the design process still dominated by designers?
Abstract–In this paper, I will reflect upon how we as designers ensure that the collected data will be used representatively and that we select and highlight the, from users’ perspective, most important findings.
This will be seen in the light of the work done in our co-design course at the IT University of Copenhagen, where we worked with the sports-facilitating social network site Arena365. My group looked into how Arena365 could approach the business-to-business market, by examining the communication flow and social activities at Humac (Group report). During the semester we conducted a number of co-design-oriented methods in order to gain insight into possible touch points for Arena365. From each of these methods we emphasised certain findings, while other parts were left out. How did we qualify our decisions and how was our approach to the field influencing our research results?
Exam paper in a course on the IT University: “Co-design – Understanding and Involving users”