Participatory Co-design for Sustainable Development

Abstract

Although already popular in product and service design, co-design is a more recent entry into the development field. With roots in participatory development and design, co-design is "collective creativity as it is applied across the whole span of a design process" (Sanders and Stappers 2008), where design process can refer to any broad development of service, enterprise, or product. Collective creativity indicates that co-design includes creative approaches or tactics (Lee 2008) to participation, e.g., collaborative visualization, and not just conventional research methods, e.g., interview and focus groups. The approach has its roots in the democratic urge of (Scandinavian) participatory design although it tends to be promoted in design circles as a creative workshop method for product and service innovation. Recent applications, particularly in policy and community settings, have raised the question of power and participation anew (Blomkamp 2018). The practical prompt to these recent discussions regarding the limitations of co-design per se have also been prompted by projects applying