Practicing design with communities

Co-design approaches appear to be gaining more and more momentum across a multitude of topics as a way to harness the lived experiences and creativity of people in solving social problems. One of the most known definitions of the design work is that of Thackara (2006), who stated that designers are now

required to design with people, not just for them. He has described design as a ‘fresh lens’ to help communities to do things differently but also acknowledged that design practice has to change to work with people and communities and have a more sophisticated understanding of the different cultural contexts as well as the ability to design for them. For Young (2012), designers should position themselves more like co-designers working with communities based on ‘I know not’, but I can facilitate the ones who have the knowledge than egoists functioning as professionals working for communities based on ‘I know best’.

There are still some questions that designers need to answer in relation to ethics in participation and designing for social values, such as which voices of the users are privileged and which might be silenced by choices of method, location and process and what is the relative power of client, designer and user in the collaborative processes (Collins & Cook, 2014). Designers working with communities need to consider abandoning the singularity, universality and replicability of a ‘best practice’ model and including situated and responsive awareness of demarcation, opposition and incompatibility (Akama et al., 2019, p. 77). Here, the designers’ work moves from producing the outcomes towards enabling collaboration. This all must be included in the respectful, reciprocal and relational co-design practice of today, which begins with the way we account for ourselves as designers as well as humans who continually learn and forget, discard and incorporate, and are immersed in and shaped by the fluidity of many worlds (Akama et al., 2019, p. 78).

Altogether, collaborative forms of design and innovation reflect the erosion of the creative authority of the designer. There is a shift from ‘designer as genius’ to ‘designer as facilitator’. In open design, the designer is not absolutely in control of the creative process, although they may have an active contribution to it (Cruickshank, 2014, p. 11). New ways of constituting the participation of communities and not just users are needed. McCarthy and Wright (2015) argued that participation in co-design projects is not about turning everyone into a designer, but about incorporating and empowering multiple subjectivities to participate equally in a project of design. Manzini (2015, p. 37) made a distinction between diffuse design (everybody) and expert design (professionals). He explained that design experts are subjects endowed with specific knowledge and with conceptual and operational tools permitting them to operate professionally in the design processes (p. 38). All humans ideate, innovate and create in their everyday life to some extent. This can be seen as the diffuse design qualities. We could even consider that we all are becoming human by design as stated by Fry (2012a) in his book title.

For understanding design as a collaborative, participatory and situated practice, it is helpful to consider who is actually designing. Design becomes a communal practice, and for that reason, it is good to go through some basic definitions of

communities. It is a plural collection of ‘us’ and ‘them’ that make up participatory design in community settings (Le Dantec, 2016, p. 3). Communities can be described as communities of circumstance (e.g. Marsh, 1999), communities of interest (e.g. Fraser, 2005), communities of place (e.g. Akimenko, 2018), publics (e.g. Dewey, 1927; Le Dantec, 2016) and communities of practice (e.g. Hara, 2009; Lave, 1996; Lave & Wenger, 1991; Wenger 1999). The concept of communities of practice is relevant for this study as it helps to develop an understanding of the relevance of doing and making together.

Communities of practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991) are groups of people with a shared interest. As the design object for a service designer is a process, and the possibilities and action spaces for participating actors are derived from that process, and the actual service experience, as well as the result of a service, are co- created by these actors, the theories of communities of practice become relevant for service designers (Holmlid, 2009). A community of practice is cultivated, not imposed on an existing system (Hara, 2009, p. 4). This means that designers do not impose their ways of being and acting in the world but that the practice is co-created in the community.

Participation is a social rather than a scientific process, and little has been written on the ethics of participation within service design (Collins & Cook, 2014). It is important to note that designers participate in communities of practice with their own conventions, which are consequential to their ability to intervene in service worlds (Blomberg & Darrah, 2015, p. 183). Designers do not form communities or merely facilitate them, but they are part of the communities of practice, just as they are part of the workshops as well. ‘The successful participatory [design] process is a community of practice in the making’ as noted by Brandt, Binder and Sanders (2012, p. 149).

Positioned this way, designers cannot stay in an objective role when designing with communities. Their design choices have consequences for who is included in specifying outcomes, the ways to achieve them and who receives the benefits when the outcomes are realised (Blomberg & Darrah, 2015, p. 186). We could see co-designing (design practiced by a community) as a journey and process of transformation in how we design our world, and ourselves, with others (Akama & Prendiville, 2013, p. 31).