Cocreation

This is a preprint of an article submitted for consideration in CoDesign, Taylor & Francis, March 2008. CoDesign is available online at http://journalsonline.tandf.co.uk

Co-creation and the new landscapes of design
Elizabeth B.-N. Sanders (*) & Pieter Jan Stappers (**) (*) MakeTools, LLC, 183 Oakland Park Ave., Columbus, Ohio 43214 USA (Liz@MakeTools.com) (**) ID-StudioLab, Faculty ofIndustrial Design Engineering, Delft University of Technology, Landbergstraat 15, 2628CE, Delft, The Netherlands (p.j.stappers@TUDelft.nl)

Abstract Designers have been moving increasingly closer to the future users of what they design and the next new thing in the changing landscape of design research has become co-designing with your users. But co-designing is actually not new at all, having takendistinctly different paths in the US and in Europe. The evolution in design research from a user-centered approach to co-designing is changing the roles of the designer, the researcher and the person formerly known as the “user”. The implications of this shift for the education of designers and researchers are enormous. The evolution in design research from a user-centered approach to co-designingis changing the landscape of design practice as well, creating new domains of collective creativity. It is hoped that this evolution will support a transformation toward more sustainable ways of living in the future. Keywords: participatory design, design research, co-design, co-creation, collective creativity, user-centered design

1. Introduction
Over the past six decades, designers have beenmoving increasingly closer to the future users of what they design. Especially in areas where technologies mature, and the next new feature is no longer of value, manufacturing companies have been increasingly open to approaches that define the product based on what people need. The first advances, well consolidated now in industrial practice and education, practiced user-centered design from an‘expert perspective’, in which trained researchers observe and/or interview largely passive users, whose contribution is to perform instructed tasks and/or to give their opinions about product concepts that were generated by others. The user-centered design approach (i.e., “user as subject”) has been primarily a USdriven phenomenon. Increasingly, since the 70s, people have been given more influenceand room for initiative in roles where they provide expertise, and participate in the informing, ideating, and conceptualizing activities in the early design phases. The participatory approach (i.e.,“user as partner”) has been led by Northern Europeans. The two approaches are now beginning to influence one another. Figure 1 gives an overview of the current state of the humancentered design(research) landscape (discussed in more depth in Sanders, 2006a).

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This is a preprint of an article submitted for consideration in CoDesign, Taylor & Francis, March 2008. CoDesign is available online at http://journalsonline.tandf.co.uk

Figure 1. The current landscape of human-centered design research as practiced in the design and development of products and services.

Within thislandscape, in the area of participatory design, the notions of co-creation and co-design have been growing. The terms co-design and co-creation are today often confused and/or treated synonymously with one another. Opinions about who should be involved in these collective acts of creativity, when, and in what role vary widely. Online dictionaries do not yet have entries for co-creation, cocreation,codesign or co-design. Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, has only preliminary entries on co-creation and co-design. The authors take co-creation to refer to any act of collective creativity, i.e., creativity that is shared by two or more people. Co-creation is a very broad term with applications ranging from the physical to the metaphysical and from the material to the spiritual, as can be seen...