I am summarizing: From Designing to Co-Designing to Collective Dreaming: Three Slices in Time by Liz Sanders and Pieter Jan Stappers, to get an idea of the method best suitable for my own project. The focus of this article, for me, is on the use of design as part of research.

My graduation project is focused on designing a technological product. Not one that is sellable per se, but more along the lines of figuring out the necessary parts of the process. According to this article, it is what is called Design Research. The focus is mainly on the design of the product and only secondly am I doing research in the process.

In the modern day and age there is less and less design originating from market pull (what people ask for) or technological push (what is invented) but more and more from through studies into lifestyles and the needs of people. E.g. designing for the future. From this research tools originate to make designing easier for non-designers. From this Co-Designing emerges, to use the ideas generated by others as sources of inspiration and innovation.

Success is no longer defined primarily by monetary value such as sales in the marketplace. Beyond monetary value, we now see experience value, the objective of which is to meet the wants and needs of people, as well as social value, the objective of which is to be able to deliver on more sustainable and convivial ways of living (Sanders, L. and Simons, G. A social vision for value co-creation in design. Open Source Business Resource. Dec. 2009; http://www.osbr.ca/ojs/index.php/osbr/
article/view/1012/973)

Picture: Sanders, L.; Stappers, P. (2014) "From Designing to Co-Designing to Collective Dreaming: Three Slices in Time". Interactions. XXI.6 pp. 24-33