First of all I want to thank from my heart the participants who made it a great workshop and proved me right: people really have a need to discuss and argue about co-design, to share experiences and opinions, to express interests and definitions. We love to hear about different projects – and we did in the afternoon – but in addition to that we need a space for interaction and exchange.

We had present a good thirty people, many from UIAH – designers, researchers, doctoral students; but also other researchers from other universities or institutions like University of Leuwen, TKK and VTT, and researchers and designers from Alcatel, Elisa, Nokia and Phillips.

We had prepared some themes for discussion: 1) why do we need users? 2) identifying, recruiting and motivating your target users, 3) co-design methods, 4) translating user feedback into design implications and 5) the role of the user in a design and research process.

We started the workshop with a round of introductions, asking people to tell a little of themselves, their background in co-design and the context of their work, and the one question they’d like answered or discussed during the workshop. The outcome was already a more detailed version of the themes suggested:

The first and foremost issue was the translation of user feedback into design implications. Connected to this theme were of course questions concerning the roles of different stakeholders in the co-design process, which was much discussed throughout the workshop. The necessity of interaction and communication between all parties was much stressed; as well as the difficulties of interpretation and translation. The responsibility of the designer and the researcher…who has power in a co-design process?

The other burning issue circled around topics of incorporating co-design into industrial production. How can one industrialize co-design? Can one? Should one? Who should… Co-design is often a costly method in terms of various resources, time, personnel, effort, money. Would there be an ideal stage for co-design activities? Target groups and their selection? Methods? The theme of the role of different stakeholders surfaced again!

We could indeed present the theme of the role of different stakeholders, especially the users, as an issue by itself, mentioned by many participants. In addition we could pick up such questions as How to involve users? and How to design a co-design process?, or the broader issue of the quality of end-products, especially their designability, as inherent to a co-design process. All were mentioned and discussed.

In fact, discussion flowed without need for themes, people gave examples and shared their experiences, argued and agreed, ignoring our inquiries after a break, anybody? In the end we had to chase them out and tell it was lunch-time!

During lunch discussion continued to flow. “I wanted to put up the question: but what if users are wrong? I mean, they can be!” “Oh, I wanted to ask the very same question, but thought they’d beat me up…” Also the question of user-participation methods as validation of design and development, aroused in the workshop, continued to be discussed.

A suggestion was made: why not make a wiki on Co-design, to continue searching for issues and definitions, and to argue about interpretations?