From user to other stakeholders: research on communication methods in co-design KEYWORDS : co-design, co-innovation, participatory design, designers’ way of thinking Since the 1980s, non-linear model of industrial innovation has started to emerge according to Rothwell. (Rothwell, 1992) In 2003, open innovation was proposed for the first time. (Chesbrough, 2006) With the development of innovation, the boundary of design is becoming more and more blur as well. For one thing, designer needs to cooperate with the people they serve and, for another thing, designer needs to collaborate with many other stakeholders. Co-design has been applied in numerous innovation activities. Within co-design, one of the major challenges is the communication gap. However, the research of communication methods in co-design does not keep in balance now. More attention is given to the communication with user rather than other stakeholders. Take the generative tools, probes, toolkits and prototypes for example, they are often used in co-design for sparking the creativity of ordinary people or, in another way, future user. How could we better
Name / Surname
communicate with other stakeholders and spark their creativity within co-design? How to provide a framework
Di Shi
of communication methods to solve the difficulties of communication and to improve the creativity in designing with other stakeholders? This is the primary motivation of this research. Based on this purpose, the main task is divided into five questions:
Research field/area
Social innovation & sustainable design
1. What is the bottleneck of communication in co-design? 2. What is the main feature of existing methods? 3. Based on the main feature and the bottleneck, which are found during the inquiry of the first two questions, how could this main feature break through the bottleneck? 4. Based on the reason which is found during the study of the third question, how to
Supervisor
provide a framework of communication methods to solve the problems when
Prof. Xiaoyou He
co-design with other stakeholders? 5. Whether the framework is valuable when put into practice? Based on the study of how existing methods break through the communication bottleneck in co-design with users, the core tool and procedure have been found to build the framework. Please refer to figure 1.
Future situation
Make sense of
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yr2
yr3
yr4
the feedbacks
yr5
Externalize the thinking
3 and feeling etc. through
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the intermediary model
Get the intermediary model
Design intermediary 1 model to spark thinking and support externalization
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User
Technician Designer Engineer Current situation
Others
Figure 1
Bibliography Rothwell, R. (1992). "Successful industrial innovation: critical factors for the 1990s." R&d Management 22 (3): 221-240. Chesbrough, H. W.(2006). Open innovation: The new imperative for creating and profiting from technology, Harvard Business Press.