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Co-Design and Design

Robert Butler

Product Design

‘Co-Design is inclusive, encompassing collaborative, co-operative, concurrent, human-centred, participatory, socio-technical and community design among others.’ (Eliab Z. Opiyo; Imre Horváth, CoDesign, 2008)

Co-Design is different from traditional forms of design in the sense that the stakeholder for the which the product/service is being designed for is actively involved in the whole design process from start to finish giving ideas and experiences, as opposed to traditional design practice where a stakeholder asks for something and a designer comes back with a finished item. Co-Design is a technique that should, in theory, make products and services more meaningful to the customer, giving them what they actually need, rather than what designers may think they need. ‘(Clients) view and rate the ideas, typically achieving over 90% consensus.’ 

(www.co-designgroup.com, n.d,) thus proving success rates of the co-design process in both idea generation stage and the final proposition are very high, and greatly successful.

The concept of Co-design has been around for a long time. Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) was a philosopher and is said to be the first person to say that the judgements we make in situations are due to similar previous experience(s). ‘Kant held that the most interesting and useful varieties of human knowledge rely upon prior judgments, which are, in turn, possible only when the mind determines the conditions of its own experience.’ (www.philosophypages.com, 2006). This is the basic theory used by co-designers, that everyone has their own opinion and experiences regarding products and actions relating to products, and that these experiences/ideas should be used to design objects, which solve problems from previous models, or to generate new models.
The co-design as we know it today started to evolve and appear in the late 70’s/ early 80’s. Stanley King, Dip.Arch. (Leics), M.Arch. (UBC), MRAIC) is claimed to have been the inventor of the current day Co-design process during the period of 1969-1973 during his postgraduate research at the University of British Columbia. He was also principle author of the design book ‘Co-Design - A Process of Design Participation’, 1989
In 1979, he founded ‘The Co-Design Group’ with Merinada Conley, Dip.Arch.Tech. (Hons), A.Sc.T., M.EDes.(Arch), MRAIC; Bill Latimer, B.Arch., B.Eng., MAAA, MRAIC and Drew Ferrari, Dip.Arch.Tech (Hons).,BES (Arch). All of whom were also co-authors of the book ‘Co-Design - A Process of Design Participation’, 1989.
The Co-Design group is an informal association of architects based in Vancouver and Calgary who have completed well over 300 public design workshops in small towns and revitalised inner city areas.
King and ‘The Co-Design Group’ are the first to bring co-design into the form we see now today, the concept may have been further developed over the years but the same principles apply still today.

Traditional Design Practice, Clients only see what is being done when they are given a chance to see, and don’t have any design input. Designers design what they think clients want/need. 

The Co-Design process, Designers take a selection of the target audience and involve them in the design process throughout. The product/service created should then be appealing to rest of the target audience.

 Co-design is very relevant to the modern day design process. It is a technique that can be used to design products and services with more meaning and to create a less wasteful industry. With fossil fuel supplies being depleted at a staggering rate, creating a less materialistic, throwaway world is very important. Creating products with personal meaning to consumers, persuading them to hold onto things instead of buying numerous new editions may slow the consumption of these resources.  Currently with the credit crunch hitting the economy hard, co-design techniques can be used to streamline failing companies using information and experiences from customers and companies, which continue to be successful, to keep these failing companies buoyant through the hardest times. 

Within the design industry itself, creating a product, which is designed by its eventual purchasers, is an overall cost effective solution. ‘Most software design decisions are typically made during the first 10% of the design and development process and can determine 90% of a product's cost and performance’ (Aaron Marcus and Associates, n.d.) Involving clients from the start of the design process may increase costs slightly compared with traditional techniques, but it will make sure that there are no expensive mistakes caused by lack of contact with this target market. ‘The public needs a language that can give its creativity a focus and help individuals turn their intuition and knowledge into a workable idea.  That language must also be able to bridge the gap between the vision of the common resident and the technical thinking and jargon of the architects’ (King S, Conley M, Latimer B and Ferrari D, Co-design: A process of design to participation, Jan 1989) This extract implies that if you offer potential customers a chance to give their ideas and knowledge, of which they are not able to put to full use, to designers, they can then translate their ideas into concepts and prototypes. The clients then feel involved in the design process and are more likely to invest in that product and possibly more likely to invest in products from that manufacturer in the future.
Co-design is not a practice that is only usable in specific design areas; it can be used in most, if not all, design specialties. One of the areas in which it is a strong is service design, particularly regarding public facilities/amenities in towns for example. Residents of areas will most likely have strong feelings, positive or negative, about these facilities/amenities which should provide lots of information and create a lot of ideas. In product design, co-design can be used to find a niche in a very tight market, i.e design of mp3 players.
Co-design is not just another on of the many techniques which are used in the design process, it is a very effective

Bibliography

Skrivener, S.ed., 2008.CoDesign International Journal of CoCreation in Design and the Arts. Taylor & Francis.

Garth Kemerling, 2006, Philosophy Pages. [online] Available at http://www.philosophypages.com/ph/kant.htm [Accessed Oct 2010]

 

King, S. Conley, M. Latimer, B and Ferrari, D 1989. Co-design: A Process of Design to Participation, Van Nostrand Reinhold.

 The Co-Design Group, 1979-, The Co-Design Group. [online] Available at http://www.co-designgroup.com/group.html [Accessed Oct 2010]

Neubloc, 2009. Rightsource Software Design & Development. [online] Available at http://www.neubloc.com/news.asp?nid=5 [Accessed Oct 2010]

Sarah Drummond, 2010. CO-DESIGN REALLY ISNT THAT NEW,. [online] Available at http://sarahdrummond.wordpress.com/2010/01/07/co-design-isnt-really-that-new/

[Accessed Oct 2010]