In the text, participatory design is described as designers and people not trained in design working together in the design process. I like, that people aren’t seen as users but as experts of living and working. We as designers have an actual influence on people’s lives with our practices. That’s why I find it important, to include the people, since they are the ones who’s lives we strive to improve. I like the term “human-centered”, because it takes away the power from the business or capitalist perspective and gives more power to the humans involved in the process. Also, businesses profit from it, since taking care of the workers involved, increases the motivation of the workers.
In today’s society, people are turning the back on consumerism and looking for ways to be socially and environmentally responsible. I also agree, that the internet plays a big role in design in terms of ordinary people being more involved in designing. Also described in the text “Thoughtful Interaction Design”, PD is practiced iwithin communities. I think all kinds of design is practiced within communities. We need to stay in contact with the people, we are designing for. I doubt it’s possible to be a designer and to not include other people in the process. Otherwise the design wouldn’t be good. I think for a lot of brands, co-creation and co-designing have become common practice, to create an image closer to customers.I agree that you don’t have to stay in direct contact with the customers, because I have seen this kind of approach in the IT field. A lot of the tools presented in the text remind me of my old workplace.
Most companies want to design products, that sell better and meet people’s need. I do believe, that the focus often lies more on the money made, than the actual benefit the has on the users day-to-day life. I think this is quite common in our capitalist society. I believe that PD has to start as early as possible in a design process, because I agree, that the earlier you start, the greater the impact will be, especially when we talk about social design. But I think the challenge here is, that designers more than often aren’t given the power to actually change social structures. As said in “Design is invisible”, designers are expected to operate within the constrains given to them.
This text describes what design is and how we can make use of it. I agree, that design porblems never completely specify their condition. I think designers often have to figure out the giving conditions themselves, since sometimes, what designers see as giving conditions could differ from what the client sees as giving conditions. Just as in the text, I also think that designers can make the biggest contributions in teams, because design problems require different kind of skills and knowledge. As in the previous text, it is stated, that solving design problems can change the world.
I found the difficulties of design very interesting, that’s why I noted them down.
I already new about a lot of the approaches described, because I worked in IT.
I particularly agree with this sentence. I’ve one read an article, I’m not sure where, but it said, that language polices knowledge. Meaning some texts are written in a very hard way to understand, so that knowledge only is acessible for certain groups of people.Something that I’ve noticed a lot in IT projects is, that the people get lost in details so that they forget the bigger picture, which is also mentioned in the text. I’d say I’ve at least heard of a lot of things mentioned in the text.
New terms: