Botero PDF

Expanding
Design Design in
communal
endeavours
Space(s)
Andrea
Botero
Expanding
design
space(s)
Design in communal endeavours
Andrea Botero
Aalto University publication series
doctoral dissertations 85/2013
Aalto University
School of Arts, Design and Architecture
Department of Media
Aalto arts Books

Helsinki
books.aalto.fi
© Andrea Botero
Graphic design: Nina Kajavo

Language editing: Hilal Jamal
Photographs: by members of the research group
Paper: Munken Pure 120g and Munken Pure 300g

Typeface: Arnhem
isbn 978-952-60-5173-4
isbn 978-952-60-5174-1 (pdf)
issn-l 1799-4934
issn 1799-4934
issn 1799-4942 (pdf)
Thesis supervisors:
Professor Pelle Ehn
Professor Sampsa Hyysalo
Preliminary examiners:
Dr. Mark Hartswood, University of Edinburgh, uk
Dr. Per-Anders Hillgren, Malmö University, Sweden
Opponent:
Dr. Monika Büscher, Lancaster University, uk
Printed in Unigrafia
Helsinki 2013
Acknowledgements
My understanding of the joys and perils of design through a communal

endeavours lens comes from insights gained in a variety of communal en-
deavours I have engaged in with the complicity, passion, and love of Teemu,
Luna, and Stella. I cannot begin to express how much I have learned from
them. The intellectual interest in the themes I elaborated in this work is
rooted in the learning possibilities with which two woman have provided
me. Anita Weisman’s course on Industrial Sociology at the National Uni-
versity of Colombia, and Lucy Suchman’s seminar on Work Practice and
Technology at the University of Oslo. I am very grateful to these women.
My supervisors Pelle Ehn and Sampsa Hyysalo have been generous both
with their time and knowledge. Pelle’s approach to design has been a
constant source of inspiration to me. I am grateful to him for agreeing to
be my supervisor without quite understanding where I wanted to go. He
posed important and timely questions and forced me to think through
my choices. I am indebted to Sampsa for the best academic writing learn-
ing experience I have had and for taking on the feat of teaching me how
to turn my work into a dissertation. He also gets the prize for providing
the most detailed and constructive feedback ever. All doctoral students
should be so lucky.
My academic home for the past years has been the disparate and enthu-
siastic community of Arki research group at Media Lab Helsinki. There,
my third mentor Kari-Hans Kommonen, our research group director, has
been a key piece in my journey. He provided funding, books and ideas
plenty. I am grateful to all past and current members of the group. I could
not have done this without the brains, muscles, and warm hearts of Joanna
4 expanding design space(s) – design in communal endeavours
Saad-Sulonen, Sanna Marttila, and Mariana Salgado. They have worked

on projects with me and shared in my struggle as we wrote proposals and
articles, and grappled with much more. Aside from reading and comment-
ing on every aspect of this manuscript, they have fed my children and me,
and they have embraced me at times when I needed it the most. I was for-
tunate to collaborate with Roman Suzi, Mika Myller, and Eirik Fatland in
the design and production of the prototypes used in this research. It was a
pleasure and intellectual challenge. I am very grateful to Maria Koskijoki,
Taina Rajanti, and Iina Oilinki, who, through joint work, assisted me by
shedding some light on the workings of the anthropological and the so-
ciological imagination.
My Thesis pre-examiners Mark Hartswood and Per-Anders Hillgren
deserve recognition for their very careful readings of the manuscript, for
pointing out to me the many ways in which it could be interpreted, and for
the important suggestions they gave me to move my work forward beyond
the dissertation. I am extremely happy that Monika Büscher has agreed to
act as the opponent. I very much look forward to hearing her comments.
I want to express my deepest gratitude to those whose day-to-day input
gave meaning to this journey. The Active Seniors association believed in
the project and was willing to experiment with us. Eila, Sirkka, Marja-Liisa,
Riita, Tuula, Jorma, Paavo, and all other active seniors and residents of
Loppukiri endured our fiddling with their endeavours and honoured my
many requests. Many residents and activists of the Arabianranta neigh-
bourhood, as well as some open-minded officials in different departments
of Helsinki City, contributed their time and ideas to my work.
For someone who was raised and educated in the periphery of the ma-
jority world (Colombia) and ended up designing and doing research in
the periphery of the hyper-developed world (Finland), it has been essen-
tial to confront and test ideas widely. I am grateful for the opportunities
to discuss my work and spend some time with: Merryl Ford at Meraka In-
stitute in South Africa, Lawrence Lessig at Stanford University in Califor-
nia, and Shin Mizukoshi at Tokyo University in Japan. Cesar Peña, Aydee
Ospina, and Jaime Franky trusted me and helped open doors for me so
that I could speak at the Andes University and at the National University
in Bogota ¡Gracias mil! Towards the end of this journey, Maria Fernanda
Olarte and Tania Bustos invited me to their reading circle on thinking
with care; I can’t thank them enough for that opportunity.
Penny Hagen’s re-reading of my work has helped me understand it bet-
ter. Even though I don’t know her personally, Lucy Kimbel’s work has had
acknowledgements 5
a very similar effect. Bo Westerlund’s research has been a good stepping-

stone. Without Aaron Schartz’s python wizardry and general cleverness,
many things would have been out of place. I have also benefited from re-
ceiving thoughtful comments on the manuscript from my dear friends
Tuukka Tammi, Pauliina Seppälä, Olga Goriunova, Katja Battarbee, Hans
Poldoja and David de Los Reyes. I owe them tons of chocolate for their clev-
er thoughts, suggestions for improvements, and the afternoons of good
laughs. My peers and colleagues at the doctoral program in Media Lab have
provided interesting challenges. Andrew Patterson, especially, kept me
company in the metaphorical delivery room of this book, our shared office
on the 3rd floor. In our department, Lily Diaz, Mauri Kaipanen, and Timo
Honkela all had their turns providing me with guidance. Phillip Dean,
the “big boss”, has made many things possible, and Pekka Salonen has
kept things running. Hilal Jamal, Nina Kajavo and Sanna Tyyri-Pohjonen
worked with me to turn a flat dissertation into what to me looks like a
proper book. Thank you!
Nothing gets very far without a good start or long term commitments.
This research has had just that thanks to Hector, Maria Eugenia, Carolina
and Sandra Botero Cabrera. They have not only been there for me always,
but also they have concretely contributed ideas, words, and criticism to
all aspects of my work. In particular, Sandra has disentangled my broken
English arguments so many times that she deserves a bit of heaven. To
my extended family in Bogotá and in Tampere, my friends here (Carolina,
Paola, Eliana) and there and my lovely neighbours (Raquel and Andrea),
thanks for the hugs, the spiritual support, and the occasional child care.
Thanks to Pippuri for companionship. I am almost done; I cannot believe
it. GRACIAS!
Andrea, Kallio, May 3rd 2013

Abstract
The present research inquires into the contemporary shapes and strate-
gies of situated and participatory perspectives on design. It proposes a
re-conception of the notion of design space to capture the wider interplay
of possibilities, practices, and partly assembled technologies, as well as
developing competencies and social arrangements that are the basis for
ongoing design choices.
In so doing, this work looks at the arrangements that evolved at the
intersection of two design research engagements. The first engagement
deals with the life project of an association of seniors developing an alter-
native housing arrangement with its related growing-old-together prac-
tices. In particular, the first case study draws on a mutual journey to de-
sign and develop what the community refers to as their everyday life man-
agement system or Miina, which helps them coordinate their daily joint
practices. The second engagement looks at forms of active citizenship
in the interactions of citizens both with each other and with officials in
the city administration as these interactions are enacted through locative
technologies. In this case, the research takes advantage of the collabora-
tive design process for an online platform service, namely Urban Media-
tor, for sharing locative media content about the urban environment.
The research highlights aspects that are relevant to the development
of design approaches which do not only deal with designers and their de-
sign processes, but which can also deal with how both the things under-
going design and the design process itself are simultaneously embedded
in existing everyday life arrangements. Drawing on work from different
fields, especially Design Research and Science and Technology Studies,
the design space framework introduced herein elaborates nuanced navi-
gational aids for long term design engagement. The main purpose of this
framework is to help recognize the inescapability of confronting collec-
tive design spaces and the relevance and potential that their explicit con-
struction as collaborative endeavours can have in particular settings.
Original Articles
I Botero, A., Kommonen, K.-H., Oilinki, I., & Koskijoki, M. (2003). Co-Design-
ing Visions, Uses, and Applications. In Electronic Proceedings of the 5th
International Conference of the European Academy of Design. Techne-
Desing Wisdom, Barcelona, Spain: European Academy of Design / Univer-
sidad de Barcelona.
II Botero, A., & Saad-Sulonen, J. (2008). Co-designing for New City-citizen

Interaction Possibilities: Weaving Prototypes and Interventions in the De-
sign and Development of Urban Mediator. In J. Simonsen, T. Robertson, &
D. Hakken (Eds.), Proceedings of the 10th Participatory Design Conference
pdc08 (pp. 266–269). Bloomington, Indiana, usa: cpsr/acm.
III Botero, A., & Kommonen, K.-H. (2009). Coordinating Everyday Life: the De-
sign of Practices and Tools in the Life Project of a Group of Active Seniors. In
Proceedings of the cost 298 Conference: The Good, the Bad and the Chal-
lenging (Vol. II, pp. 736 – 745). Slovenia: abs-Center and cost 298 Action.
IV Botero, A., & Saad-Sulonen, J. (2010). Enhancing Citizenship: the Role of

In-between Infrastructures. In T. Robertson, K. Bødker, T. Bratteiq, & D. Loi
(Eds.), Proceedings of the 11th Biennial Participatory Design Conference
pdc10 (pp. 81–90). Sydney, Australia: acm.
V Botero, A., & Hyysalo, S. (2013). Ageing Together: Steps Towards Evolution-
ary Co-design in Everyday Practices. CoDesign, 9(1), 37–54.
VI Botero, A., Kommonen, K.-H., & Marttila, S. (2010). Expanding Design Space:
Design-In-Use Activities and Strategies. In D. Durling, R. Bousbaci, L.-L.
Chen, P. Gauthier, T. Poldma, S. Roworth-Stokes, & E. Stolterman (Eds.),
Design & Complexity: Design Research Society International Conference
(p. 18). Montreal, Canada: drs.
Table of Contents
Abstract 6
Original Articles 7
1. Introduction 10
1.1. Design-in-use, progress made 15
1.2. From workplaces to communal endeavours 18
1.3. Focus of the research 24
Presenting the articles 28
Outline of main contributions 33
2. Situating design 36
2.1. Use before use 38
Using (ucd) 40
Participating (pd) 43
2.2. Design after design 46
Evolving 50
2.3. Understanding a Design Space 54
3. Research design, cases, and methods 62
3.1. Research design 63
3.1. Cases: activities and materials 66
Loppukiri co-housing community and Miina 66
Citizens, city officials and Urban Mediator 70
3.2. Methods and analysis 73
4. Expanding design space(s) 78
4.1. Design space 84
4.2. Design time-space 96
4.3. Design things-space 103
Conclusions 106
References 112
Articles 122
1
Introduction
introduction 11
“… Design is not creation of discrete, intrinsically meaningful objects, but

the cultural production of new forms of practice.”
suchman et al.1999, p: 404
Historically, design methods and models of design processes assume that

designers or design teams just come along and develop elegant solutions
based on briefings given by customers or invented by the designers them-
selves. In this scenario, the design can then be developed further for pro-
duction and finally taken to the market. Based on this model, it is expected
that people will either sense the elegance and truthfulness of the solution
and embrace it forever or simply ignore it. The naivety of this view has been
broadly questioned (Cross 1981, Margolin 2002).
Nevertheless, the image of design as a one-shot activity based largely on
the insight of peculiar individuals who produce ready-made solutions con-
tinues to be a common reference in popular culture and is actively main-
tained by many producers, designers, curators, and the media, as well as by
customers and users of products and services. To counterbalance some of
these misplaced assumptions and build a more transformative practice,
some sectors of design research and practice have begun to elaborate a
more encompassing perspective on design over the course of the last dec-
ades. The most generative of the strategies taken has been to place design
activities and design knowledge on more explicit collaborative grounds.
Seeds of these developments could already be seen in the design meth-
ods movement of the 60s, which initiated a discussion on the need to go
beyond drawing and introspection as the main design techniques. The
design methods movement contributed to identifying new forms of prac-

tice by collecting and adapting tools and techniques with the aim of sup-
porting multidisciplinary design knowledge and facilitating the collabo-
ration between multidisciplinary team members (Jones 1992, Mitchell
1992). This was partly inspired by “The Sciences of the Artificial” (Simon
1996) and the general project of searching for scientifically robust mod-
els of design (Margolin 2002). With the disillusionment suffered by many
early proponents of the movement when it brought about an over-ration-
alization of design activities and unhelpfully abstract models, the agen-
da for building a more encompassing design practice was largely aban-
doned (Cross 1981).
Nevertheless, during the 70s, various experiments across different de-
sign areas revived interest in new forms of multidisciplinary collabora-
tion, in particular in the rediscovery of neglected sources of design knowl-
edge in use situations and in new ways of relating to those situations (see
e.g., Cross 1971, Papanek 1973, Ehn 1988, Greenbaum & Kyng 1991, Nor-
man 1988). In this context, at least two movements are particularly prom-
inent when searching for a relevant and coherent body of knowledge to
elaborate further on new models of design practice. The first one is com-
monly known as User Centred Design (ucd). The ucd movement has left
its imprint by helping designers and organizations incorporate knowl-
edge from use situations into design processes in systematic and efficient
ways and by considering mainstream product and service design and de-
velopment processes and needs. The second movement, often referred
to as Participatory Design (pd), has been instrumental in re-structuring
design processes more broadly by articulating the social and political im-
plications of this re-structuring. The pd movement outlined an agenda
for initiating collaborative design projects that recognize the role of tacit
knowledge and work practice as legitimate and inescapable resources for
design. It can be claimed that, as a result of the contributions of these two
movements, multidisciplinary collaboration has been greatly expanded
and aligned in design research and practice, and also our understanding
of the ways in which design activities articulate other aspects of human
existence and how they are situated1 has increased significantly.
Design research that supports the unfolding of collaborative design
activities has certainly moved areas of design disciplines beyond the ro-
1 Chapter 2 situates ucd and pd movements and literature more precisely.

introduction 13
mantic stance of the lonely designer or the design movement’s over-ra-

tional design team2. Today, successful experiences that link design to the
work of a diverse group of people that expands to include users as well as
other relevant stakeholders indicate that there is much to gain from that
objective3. In many situations, collaborative design is seen as a viable – if
not the only possible – model of practice. Despite these advancements,
our understanding of how to go about setting up, carrying on, and more
broadly, sustaining collaborative and open-ended design processes in ex-
plicit ways is still limited (see, e.g., Harstwood et al. 2002, Voss et al. 2009,
Fischer 2003, Björgvinsson et al. 2012b). From a design research point of
view, the current situation presents at least the following gaps4:
1 Around and beyond innovation “fuzzy front end”. Current research mostly
focuses efforts on developing collaborative techniques and interventions in
those stages of innovation process in which the design concept is evolving
and being defined. Following common typologies of research and develop-
ment stages in innovation literature, this happens at what is often referred
to as the “fuzzy” front end5. However, articulating a more temporarily ex-
tended and evolving understanding of collaborative design, beyond bound-
ed projects, could allow us to seize and scrutinize more explicitly the oppor-
tunities and limitations for participatory and co-design activities. This is
2 In recent years, the body of research exemplifying the possibilities, limitations, and
conditions for carrying out multidisciplinary and collaborative design and research
in diverse settings has grown. My work follows a series of doctoral dissertations in
our department that deal with these interconnected issues (see: Diaz-Kommonen
2002, Salgado 2009, Leinonen 2010).
3 State of the Art discussion on the current debates on collaborative design research
can be found for example in the CoDesign and Design Issues Journals, the Participa-
tory Design Conference, the Nordichi conference, some streams of dis-Designing
Interactive Systems Conference and in the Design Research Society Conference to
mention but a few.
4 I will elaborate further on these gaps in Chapter 2 after having duly anchored them
in research literature.
5 Innovation management literature describes the front end of innovation as the
stage where the generation of an idea and concept design takes place (e.g., Khurana
& Rosenthal 1998, Murphy & Kumar 1997). The stage roughly ends around the con-
cept’s approval for development or its termination as a viable project to continue. It
is considered to be ”fuzzy” because information is usually scarce, costs associated
with change low, and ability to influence results high. These depictions of innova-
tion are made based on r&d process from the point of view of producer/manufactur-
ing organizations (Godin 2006).
particularly relevant for processes that do not match strict research and de-
velopment (r&d) project forms.
2 Away from only role-based accounts and prescriptions. Current research

into the implications of collaborative design strategies tends to assume that
new roles for designers (change of attitude coupled with new methods) will
be sufficient. This type of research tends to give normative prescriptions of
what all the actors should be doing by proposing alternative roles for them.
For example, designers and design researchers need to act as facilitators,
gardeners, and initiators in a manner that allows users to act as designers,
researchers, and so on. While these type of propositions are certainly rele-
vant and needed, there have been fewer efforts to develop a more precise
understanding of what it is that everybody is actually doing, with what re-
sources, when, and how these activities evolve in time. Elaborating a better
understanding of the role of diverse design activities in actual use could al-
low us to inquire further into the consequences of particular arrangements.
3 Lack of frameworks to guide interventions that are not constrained to a

specific focus of attention. The shift from the role of the product or the
brief as the loci of the design process to a focus on users, their experience,
and their context has been a welcomed development. Today, however, it is
also possible to find design (research) processes whose sole focus ends up
being the right conditions to conduct user studies or on how user centred or
participatory events should be configured, with little or no mention of an
actual shared thing being developed (a design, not necessarily a product).
In reality, from a design perspective, briefs, products, users, designers, and
their contexts as well as processes should be kept in sight and none can be
particularly neglected.
4 Towards a nuanced understanding of the distributed nature of design

agency. In overcoming some of the limitations of understanding design pro-
cesses as the prerogative of particular individuals, current design research
carries the implicit assumption that collaborative design work is carried out
largely by teams (small or extended) and is best organized around a project.
We lack ways to look at, describe, and engage collectively in processes dis-
tributed more radically in space and time and within more complex socio-
material assemblies.
introduction 15
I propose to look closely into the developments that have identified de-
sign-in-use as a critical component and into the ways they contribute to fill
some of the above-mentioned gaps and point the way forward. In particu-
lar, the notion I am referring to here as design-in-use is inspired by a prop-
osition articulated by Henderson and Kyng (1991) who referred to design-
in-use as a key component in achieving truly collaborative design prac-
tices. Back then they identified issues such as tailorability and adaptation
as supporting strategies to build upon when seeking to facilitate people’s
efforts to continue to design “at home”. I take their call to be one of explicit-
ly taking into consideration the creative work everyone does (and must do)
to achieve appropriate and sustainable solutions in their everyday life. In
contrast to this, the tendency in design practice and theory has been to over-
emphasize the implications of design activities at project time as opposed
to design at use time (Fischer & Scharff 2000) or design after design (Red-
ström 2008). To better understand what is still needed I will provide a short
overview on the state of affairs, before expanding on it later in Chapter 2.
1.1. Design-in-use, progress made

It is worth noting that the idea that a variety of use situations display de-
sign-like characteristics, although not mainstream, is not particularly new
in design theory. It was present in discussions around un-self conscious
design (Alexander 1964) and implicit in some dimensions of the idea of
vernacular design (see, e.g., Brand 1994). In an earlier era, when manufac-
turing and development was tied to the industrial mass production pro-
cess, the idea that design-in-use is a reality was mostly of philosophical in-
terest for designers. In practice, though, it had very little significance in de-
fining or stirring the professional side of design practices (Clement 1993,
Nardi 1993, Shove et al. 2007, Suchman 1994). During the last decades
there has been a growing interest in that matter around professional de-
sign circles, as new social and technological developments have made the
issue more pragmatically relevant. As a result, more conversations around
the topic have started to appear. For example: Fulton Suri (2005), Brandes
et al. (2008), and Wakkary & Maestri (2007, 2008) have provided empir-
ical illustrations of some of the resourceful, adaptable, and emergent
qualities of creative design related activities in contemporary every day
contexts and their implications for various design practices. In the realm
of software design and the production of interactive systems, Moran has
also introduced the idea of adaptive design while discussing its similitude
and differences with professional design (2002). Büscher et al. (2001) have
argued for the importance of foregrounding bricolage activities (ad-hoc
and creative combination of materials and technologies) in use. Similarly
Hyysalo & Lehenkari (2001a) and Diettrich et al. (2002) have documented
how design “in the wild” might also display spaces for explicit collabo-
ration. Extending some of these insights towards sustainability, Meroni
(2007) and Jegou and Manzini (2008) have explored how creative commu-
nities exercise design and drive social innovation through their ongoing
activities and have called for engagement with the ways in which profes-
sional design can amplify those practices.
In relation to supporting interaction design work in particular, the last
decades have seen the development of a series of evolutionary oriented
frameworks for carrying on collaborative design that explicitly identify
the need to recognize and support end users’ design activities as part of
the design engagement. Among them are Meta-design (Fischer & Scharf
2000, Fischer & Giaccardi 2004), Co-realization arrangements (Hartswood
et al. 2002, Voss et al. 2009), and, most recently, Infrastructuring (Björg-
vinsson et al. 2010, 2012a, Ehn 2008, Pipek & Wulf 2009) and Thing De-
sign (Binder et al. 2011, Ehn 2008). All of these approaches seek to articu-
late good practices to account for and support ongoing design processes.
Despite these advances, in many ways design-in-use activities continue to
be unarticulated in professional design practices and the need to explic-
itly link them to collaborative, open ended design processes in everyday
life contexts remains (e.g., Brandes et al. 2008, Büscher & Cruickshank
2009, Hyysalo 2010, Kanstrup 2012, Shove et al. 2007).
From a design research point of view, elaborating and expanding our
understanding of the nuanced dynamics of temporarily extended collec-
tive design activities is particularly important at this point in time. On
one side, user centred and participatory approaches to design (and inno-
vation in general) are being positioned as potential key elements in ad-
dressing the growing crisis in collective well being around the world (see,
e.g., Büscher & Cruickshank 2009, ideo 2001, Manzini & Rizzo 2011, Mul-
gan et al. 2010, Sanders & Stappers 2008, Thackara 2006). In this context,
methods of collaborative design as well as skills for stakeholder involve-
ment – with or without design twist – are being developed, applied and
rediscovered in many areas, including marketing, as well as business and
innovation management. A considerable amount of discussions in those
disciplines revolve around concepts like co-creation and the associated
new sources of value creation to be found in customer activities (Normann
introduction 17
& Ramirez 1993; Prahalad & Ramaswamy 2004). Such discussions also in-
clude new insights into the ways users are sources of innovations (von Hip-
pel 1988), how innovation can be shifted to users via toolkits (von Hippel
& Katz 2002) or online platforms (Jeppesen & Frederiksen 2006, Sawhney
et al. 2005), and the types of contributions to be made by undefined crowds
(Surowiecki 2005, Howe 2006), as well as the value of more distributed
and “open” ways of organizing innovation processes (Chesbrough 2003).
Some of the developments in these directions imply the risk of turning
collaboration and participation into a mere issue of streamlining and com-
modification of stakeholder involvement and collaborative activities, in the
service of business as usual6. In the worst-case scenario, given simplistic un-
derstandings of everyone as a potential designer, broader expectations that
in the long run design work could be cheaply and effectively outsourced to
a “crowd” are being created7. In such circumstances, the progress made
so far in relation to new models of design practice might seem irrelevant.
Furthermore, contemporary research into innovation processes and
its claims on democratization and openness are also a challenge for col-
laborative design approaches. User driven innovation activities (von Hip-
pel 2005), the emergent rhetoric of crowdsourcing (Brabham 2008, Brab-
ham 2012, Howe 2008), and open design (Abel et al. 2011), as well as the
Do-it-yourself culture (Gauntlett 2011, Levine & Heimerl 2008) – partici-
patory culture (Jenkins 2006) and new insights into the dynamics of social
6 By commodification of user involvement I mean to suggest that the main focus of in-
quiry is limited to the development of user involvement techniques and methods
that are streamlined, efficient, modular, easy to use, and organizationally “friendly”
in contexts dominated by narrow views on corporate benefits (including traditional
views on how r&d should be organized). In a similar vein, human geographer Nigel
Thrift discusses the ways in which new understandings of customers as the centre-
piece of the value creation processes of an organization are today using design as a
core. He argues that these understandings often result in a mere interest in “har-
vesting” and “tapping on” users creative activities. This mostly means that consum-
ers’ ingenuity is played upon and activated under highly unbalanced circumstances
(Thrift 2006).
7 This argument is also asserted by other commentators who see this interest in user
and customer participation as a mere private capture of community-created value
(Kleine & Wyrick 2007) and a problematic reworking of consumption's creative po-
tential (Goriunova 2007) and perhaps as an easy way to blame the user for failures in
the design and deny responsibility (von Bush 2012). There is also need to discuss is-
sues of invisible and immaterial labour (including no compensation) involved in
these type of developments (e.g., Biggar 2010, Brabham 2012, Kleemann et al. 2008,
Lazzarato 1996)
and peer production contexts (Benkler 2006, Bauwens 2006) push collab-
orative design perspectives toward finding ways to better specify what it
is that their exact contribution entails8.
Rather than a naïve celebration of everybody’s capabilities to do things
on their own or an overreaction to the co-optation option, I am interested
in elaborating a repertoire of strategies and tactics as well as nuanced
navigational aids for long-term design engagement that recognize the
inescapability of confronting collective design spaces, and the relevance
and potential that their explicit construction as collaborative ones can
have in particular settings.
1.2. From workplaces to communal endeavours

The present research inquires and probes into some of the contempo-
rary shapes and strategies of situated and participatory perspectives on
design, following recent developments that aim to understand them in
more mundane contexts that stretch from workplaces and organizations
into everyday life (e.g., Bødker 2009, Hagen & Robertson 2010, Simonsen
& Robertson 2012) and public spheres (Bieling et al. 2010, Björgvinsson
et al. 2012b). Concretely, this means that I have carried out my research
through personal involvement and analysis of two cases where design en-
gagements support the development of practices in these broader settings.
The first engagement articulates with the life project of an association
of seniors developing an alternative housing arrangement called Loppu-
kiri9, with its related growing-old-together practices (case A). This part of
my research draws particularly on our mutual journey (Figure 1) in the
design and development of what the community calls Miina, an Everyday
Life Management System10. Miina can be generally described as an intranet
type of media for their co-housing arrangement (Figure 2).
8 From the perspective of the contribution from professional design practice, the
”participative turn” has also raised concerns in regard to the transformation of de-
signers into mere managers of post-it notes (Manzini 2012) and, in the worst case,
managers of expropriation disguised as work focused on the community (Yudice
2008, de Los Reyes & Botero 2012)
9 Loppukiri is the name the association gave to the building; the word translates into
English as ”last spurt”.
10 The core of the practical design work in this engagement was partly funded by
Emerging Digital Practices of Communities adik, tekes project (2004-2007) and
4G Design, tekes project (2002-2003).
introduction 19
Figure 1 Snapshots from the seniors’ case (A):

Workshops and activities with Active Seniors
Figure 2 User Interface of Miina – Calendar view

(Based on the demo version of DailyWorks)
The second engagement looks at forms of active citizenship in the in-

teractions of citizens with each other and with officials in the city admin-
istration, as they are enacted in everyday practices for “issue reporting”11
and “issue sharing” through locative technologies and media (case B). In
this case, I take into consideration my involvement in the design process
for an online platform service for sharing locative media content about the
urban environment, which we called Urban Mediator (um)12.
In both cases, I focus on the collective design spaces emerging in be-
tween what, to pre-empt one of the core conceptual results of the study,
can be called the “communal endeavours” of these settings. Character-
izing these settings in terms of communal endeavours helps to capture
their shifting and drifting nature. They are endeavours in the sense that,
11 Basically meaning the unidirectional reporting of mundane fixes, bugs, and sugges-
tions related to city infrastructure and life (usually in the form of reports about pot-
holes, broken streetlights, graffiti, illegal dumping of refuse, etc.), which might be-
come a more ambitious ”issue” formation. The second meaning refers to the more
specific sense of a controversy (contested views on traffic planning, security, etc.)
around which publics might come into being (Marres 2007).
12 Core of the initial design and development work was partly funded by the Innovative
Cities for the Next Generation icing, eu project (2006-2008).
Figure 3 Snapshots from the Urban Mediator case (B) – workshops and um protos
Figure 4 User Interface of um – Map view
for the people involved, certain practices can be small-scale enterprises

whose commitments stretch over time (cooking together as a strategy
for growing old actively). However, they can also be rather temporary en-
gagements of high intensity that evolve – or not – into more stable con-
figurations (active citizens joining to influence a particular city planning
process). In this capacity, communal endeavours stand midway between
being the project of a recognized community of practice13 (all the senior
residents of the same cohousing arrangement) or teams14 and being sim-
ply the coordinated actions of unidentifiable collectives or ad-hoc groups
(citizens documenting graffiti spots in the city).
13 In the sense developed by Wenger (1998), the term communities of practice (CoP)
refers to groups of individuals participating in a communal activity who are continu-
ously creating their shared identity by engaging in and contributing to those practic-
es. In this sense a communal endeavour is much more loose and might be at times
less dependant on issues of identity.
14 For a review on the historical development of the concept of teams see the work of
Engeström (2008), who also identifies other collaborative work formations like
“knotworking”.
introduction 23
A loosely tied
designing for A collective group
collective designing for
action ad-hoc groups
a common
cause Common practices
unal
c o m m vo u r s
en d e a
A community
of practice A team
Shared practices
sense of
belonging designing for designing for
community team work
Figure 5 Communal endeavours embrace issues shared

by different types of collective arrangements
This means that sometimes actions and concrete tasks are organized
through the coordination of a specific team (like senior residents in charge
of a particular cooking turn or particular team of city officers in charge of
developing a plan). Other times, organization comes via the short-lived
initiatives of an ad-hoc group (seniors organizing a theatre outing or citi-
zens interested in raising discussion around trash in the city).
A communal endeavour tends to drift between issues that are relevant
to a collective or a community, or between a loosely tied group and a well-
defined team and everything in-between (Figure 5). A common facet is
that to achieve a communal endeavour people come together, most likely
through a shared platform (an association, a cohousing arrangement, or a
citizen initiative), to negotiate a set of objectives and eventually coordinate
some of their practices in ways they find practical, meaningful, and re-
warding. While doing that, parts of these platforms can be temporarily “so-
lidified” and mediated by various institutional arrangements and diverse
artefacts such as those made by contemporary new media technologies15.
15 New media technologies are key components in the growing feasibility of these
types of endeavours due to the kind of flexibility that a computational foundation
affords. This is resulting on scaling up and bringing new visibility to communal en-
deavours in contemporary everyday life (e.g., Botero et al. 2012, Gauntlet 2011)
Thus, focusing on communal endeavours allows one to use similar entry

points for the interventions, change the scale of analysis and develop a
common framework, despite the fact that the cases might appear dis-
similar at a first glance.
The sites, tools, media, and practices that relate to communal endeav-
ours are also perfect places to study the dynamics of collaborative design,
not because they will be representative of all design situations, but be-
cause collaboration in these settings cannot be avoided either in design
nor in use. They offer ample opportunities to scrutinize closely some of
the issues at hand, in the hope that they could offer insights that could
be generalized to other collaborative design settings. Consequently, the
empirical body of the work consists of materials collected during my par-
ticipation in these two different design research projects, both of which
had important research, design, and development components. Thus,
the themes and concerns of the study have evolved through engagement
in practical design and production work. This draws on a research strat-
egy already established in design whose central tenet is as Nelson and
Stolterman put it: “making meaning by causing things to happen” (2002 p.
49). In this strategy, design practice and, in particular the artefacts that
are generated through it, take a central place in the conducting of the re-
search (Koskinen et al. 2011). In addition to that strategy, at times I also
borrow elements from action research (Lewin 1946, Reason & Bradbury,
2001) to help structure the interventions. When looking at the materials
and carrying out some of the analysis, I rely on elements closer to a case
study approach (Yin 2002).
I discuss more specific details about the research design, the empirical
data collected, and the analytical approach in Chapter 3. To provide an
overview, Table 1 introduces the settings, entry points, design devices,
themes, and the main intervention frameworks used in both engagements.
1.3. Focus of the research

In this section, I introduce the main focus of the study via the research
questions and the themes with which each article in the compilation deals.
As my inquiry is structured through both practical engagements in design
projects and analysis of them aided by theoretical reflection, both the pro-
jects and the research directions have evolved as the activities unfolded.
Thus, the questions that I now present have not existed in this shape from
the beginning.
a seniors case – growing old b um case – sharing urban
together knowledge
setting A collective project that experiments and A design research initiative exploring
develops an alternative social arrange- possibilities for new interaction mecha-
ment for growing old with its associated nisms between citizens and city officials
practices and infrastructures to be supported by locative technologies
entry points An existing initiative by a senior citi- Our design research proposal for which
zens association to which our design we sought contributors and allies in dif-
research contributed. ferent contexts.
What is the role of new media in sup- What type of new media might support
porting the communal endeavours of the emergence of communal endeav-
a co-housing arrangement for senior ours in the parallel everyday practices
citizens? of citizens and city officials?
How to design and develop it together Which are relevant stakeholders?

with the relevant stakeholders? How can they be brought temporally
together?
design themes •• Negotiating, coordinating and evolving •• Practices of reporting and sharing
everyday life. urban issues and knowledge (e.g.
•• Practices for growing old actively citizen activism and urban planning)
and together. through locative information.
•• Elderly care (public services) •• Active forms of citizenship (public
•• Resource sharing and peer production services)
•• User created content, peer produc-
tion and open access/data
frameworks of Participatory Design (pd) including Participatory Design (pd), including de
r eference for the designing for practices signing for practices and Infrastructuring
d esign interven-
tions Co-realization (cr) Meta-Design/ End-User Development
(eud)
my own position Contributing designer and researcher. In Contributing designer and researcher.
and role addition I was project manager for 2 of In addition between 2007 and 2008
the externally funded projects that sup- I coordinated the contribution of our
ported the collaboration reported here university to the broader eu project that
funded the development efforts.
articles I, III & V (+VI) II & IV (+VI)
main design Miina: A web-based intranet providing Urban Mediator Helsinki: A web-based
devices everyday life management support platform where different stakeholders
for the activities and agreements of a create, share and process location-
shared housing community. based information about the urban
environment.
(dw – DailyWorks Open Source Software)
(um – Urban Mediator Open Source
Software)
Table 1 Entry points, setting and frameworks for each engagement

The starting point of the inquiry was framed within the interest of our
research group16 to probe the feasibility of long-term design engagements
with more open-ended goals. This brought a first general question: In
which ways does extending collaborative design engagements matter? As
the design interventions in the cases became more concrete and shared
objects (prototype systems and media) emerged which were brought to
various contexts of use and evolved, it became relevant to understand
more specifically: What modes of engagement can participants have when
their contributions are seen in the long-term? However, to avoid the trap
of getting stuck with the not so helpful message of messiness (collabo-
ration is messy, people are difficult, just embrace it and use some meth-
ods), it was clear that some navigational aids with strategic value would
be needed. I found a relevant way to articulate many insights through the
notion of design space. To this end, it became important to frame the re-
search through the following main questions:
How does the notion of design space help (or not) in the management and
understanding of temporarily extended collaborative design activities?
How does this notion need to be refined in light of the realities of extended
collaborative design engagements?
The research articles that are part of this dissertation can be grouped into
three themes related to these questions. These are: (1) Setting the stage:
defining the boundaries of the research program; (2) Refining the ques-
tions and empirical analysis; (3) Contextualizing: framework and impli-
cations of the research inquiry (see Table 2).
Accordingly, the design projects can be considered constructions that
explore various aspects related to these research questions. The research
articles discuss these questions from various standpoints and document
and analyse the observations made, as well as the actions taken during the
engagements. To wrap things up, this introductory essay draws a compar-
ison between the different articles and offers conclusions across them, to
be able to answer the main research questions.
16 Arki is a multidisciplinary research group that is part of the Media Lab Helsinki
at the Aalto University School of Arts, Design, and Architecture. The focus of the
group is the co-evolution of digital technology and the practices of everyday life
from a design perspective. Arki means “everyday” in Finnish (for more, see http://
arki.mlog.taik.fi)
1 setting the stage: I) Botero, A., Kommonen, K-H., Oilinki, I., & Koskijoki, M. (2003)
defining the boundaries Codesigning Visions, Uses, and Applications. In Proceedings of
of the research program 5th European Academy of Design Conference: ”TechnE Design
Wisdom”. ead, Barcelona, Spain
III) Botero, A., & Kommonen, K.-H. (2009). Coordinating everyday

life: the design of practices and tools in the life project of a group
of active seniors. Proceedings of the cost 298 Conference: The
Good, the Bad and the Challenging (Vol. II, pp. 736–745). Slove-
nia: abs-Center and cost 298 Action.
2 refining questions and II) Botero, A., & Saad-Sulonen, J. (2008). Co-designing for new
empirical analysis city-citizen interaction possibilities: weaving prototypes and
interventions in the design and development of Urban Mediator.
In J. Simonsen, T. Robertson, & D. Hakken (Eds.), Proceedings of
the 10th Participatory Design Conference pdc 08 (pp. 266–269).
cpsr/acm. New York, ny, usa.
III) Botero, A., & Kommonen, K.-H. (2009). Coordinating everyday

life: the design of practices and tools in the life project of a group
of active seniors. Proceedings of the cost 298 Conference: The
Good, the Bad and the Challenging (Vol. II, pp. 736–745). Slove-
nia: abs-Center and cost 298 Action.
IV) Botero, A., & Saad-Sulonen, J. (2010). Enhancing Citizen-

ship: the Role of In-between Infrastructures. In T. Robertson, K.
B.dker, T. Bratteiq, & D. Loi (Eds.), Proceedings of the 11th Biennial
Participatory Design Conference pdc10 (pp. 81–90). acm. New
York, ny, usa.
V) Botero, A., & Hyysalo S (2013) Aging Together: Steps Towards

Evolutionary Co-design in Everyday Practices. Co-Design Interna-
tional Journal of Co-Creation in Design and the Arts, 9(1), 1–18.
3 Contextualizing: frame- VI) Botero, A., Kommonen, K., & Marttila, S. (2010). Expanding
work and implications of Design Space: Design-In-Use Activities and Strategies. In Pro
the research inquiry ceedings of the Design Research Society Conference: Design &
Complexity. drs. Montreal, Canada.
V) Botero, A., & Hyysalo S (2013) Aging Together: Steps Towards

Evolutionary Co-design in Everyday Practices. Co-Design Inter-
national Journal of Co-Creation in Design and the Arts, 9(1), 1–18.
Table 2 Articles and their grouping

presenting the articles

The first article introduces a kind of “research program” charter and draws
together the main concerns that guided setting up interventions in our
research group (Article I – Botero et al. 2003). The article brings forth a
distinction between strategic and tactical modes of technology assimi-
lation, already suggesting that collaborative design practices should en-
able communities to adopt a more strategic stance and avoid the need to
respond mostly ‘reactively’ in the face of technological pressures. At that
time, I was especially intrigued by the possible implications of design re-
search activities whose point of departure was a collective project and its
associated practices, instead of locating it in some individual user and
her static needs or a particular technology. In this article, design-in-use
is discussed briefly in terms of social innovation and is already identified
as a key component. An interest in a more holistic scope for design is ar-
ticulated through the concept of “applications” -instead of just needs or
products or users. In the following articles, I abandoned the notion of ap-
plications in favour of practices. The article uses as one case the starting
point of our collaboration with an association of senior citizens building
a communal house (Active Seniors). The preliminary results of our inter-
actions back then already contain some design seeds that grew later into
concrete interventions and prototypes that we realized in close collabora-
tion. The piece thus shows how we already hypothesised that for planning
long term engagements, design seeds can be planted through small con-
tributions that later can generate new venues for collaboration and help
participants begin exploring a relevant design space. At this point in time,
the main activities reported centred only on early engagements and con-
cept designs rather than in analysing any actual design-in-use since the
senior’s own project was only starting to take form. However, including it
in this compilation nicely conveys the persistence and also the evolution
of the ideas that these design engagements have pursued. For this article
I was responsible for the framing, reporting on the work done, and draft-
ing the implications for future work. My other co-authors, who were all
involved in one way or another in carrying out the work, commented on
and shared their feedback and ideas for the content.
As the research advanced, I was interested in pointing out more pre-
cisely how from early design seeds more full-fledged designs (concrete
propositions) co-evolve in use. By this time, we had done a lot of proto-
typing efforts, in particular an everyday life management system for the
seniors who were already living in their co-housing arrangement (called
introduction 29
Miina). More importantly, at this point it became possible to apply simi-

lar ideas to a new context dealing with citizen participation in urban is-
sues. The latter would go on to become my second case study17.
A guiding inquiry for this next stage was looking through which types
of design interventions and experiments we could trace back the oppor-
tunities to explore design-in-use (Article II – Botero & Saad Sulonen 2008).
In this second article, Joanna Saad-Sulonen and I reflect on the need to
weave together new processes and spaces for experimentation within de-
sign-in-use. We point out how these are particularly needed to create sus-
tainable innovation opportunities within participatory processes in ur-
ban issues. From the point of view of the design strategies that the project
took advantage of, we analyse how during the early development of Urban
Mediator (um), design seeds were planted, together with different stake-
holders, and how prototypes were weaved together as a strategy to help
“emerge” shared explorative spaces (later referred to as design spaces)
among stakeholders. In this case, no particular community (or associated
practices) existed a priori like it did in the case of the seniors. In this ar-
ticle, I was responsible for the idea, selecting the focus, and making the
final edition. My co-author, who had lead the participatory design activi-
ties described in it, contributed throughout the paper, which represents
the first time that we tried to articulate our thoughts together.
The third article outlines in more detail the collaboration with the ac-
tive senior citizens who were building their communal house (Article III –
Botero & Kommonen 2009). In the article, Kari-Hans Kommonen and I
look closely at the Active Seniors’ envisioned and realized practices for
shared meals, neighbourhood help, and promotion of an active social
life. In particular, we asked what resources and skills did the Active Sen-
iors need to design their own housing/life? The article elaborates a more
refined understanding of social practices as a locus for the design inter-
ventions and presents a reflection on the relationship of the themes in
the broader project of the seniors to the design of Miina, the everyday life
management system for the cohousing project. This concept was only in
an envisioning stage during the writing of the first article. At this point in
17 I share this second case with my colleague Joanna Saad-Sulonen who is also using
the project as empirical material for her dissertation. Her focus is on the specific re-
lationship of design processes such as the one carried out with um to participatory
and collaborative urban planning strategies (Saad-Sulonen Forthcoming 2013). Arti-
cle II will be included in both of our compilations.
time, it had been actually built and was in use. The main responsibility
of the work for this third article fell on me; I wrote the empirical part and
selected the framework. My co-author commented throughout the text
and contributed with ideas for the discussion and conclusion sections.
After my practical involvement in both projects and being able to fol-
low the deployment of um in a number of real pilots and projects, I want-
ed to look more closely at the conditions under which multiple actors
imagined new relationships through the possibilities that prototypes cre-
ated and made visible (Article IV – Botero & Saad Sulonen 2010). Written
in collaboration with Joanna Saad-Sulonen, the fourth article looked at a
bigger set of the empirical material accumulated in the second case and
asked: where and how did the required innovations take place in design-
in-use? We used examples from several pilots in which um was used both
by citizens and city administrations to experiment with the collection
and processing of locative data and media. With the help of those exam-
ples, we went through some of the ways the platform was reinterpreted
and weaved together with existed and the kinds of issues the interven-
tions raised and how they become visible to the different stakeholders.
The main responsibility of the work for this article was mine; I chose the
focus and direction and did most of the writing. My co-author helped in
selecting and writing up the examples chosen for the empirical part of it;
she also contributed with data from trials I was not directly involved in,
helped frame the conclusions, and wrote parts of the introduction.
After delving deeper into the materials of the second case, it became
evident that I needed to return to the experience with the Active Seniors’
case. The intention of the fifth article is thus to try to open up, in more gen-
eral ways, how collaborative design activities in design-in use can be ren-
dered explicit, organized and kept alive taking into consideration all we
knew by then (Article IV Botero & Hyysalo 2013). In this article, written to-
gether with Sampsa Hyysalo, we outlined a proposal for developing long-
term co-design engagements by distilling a set of design strategies for
“aging together”. The set of strategies builds directly on what was learned
from the experience with the seniors case and indirectly touches upon
aspects that were already more elaborated in the um case but that had
not yet been outlined. We present the design strategies using empirical
details from the collaborative engagement with the seniors. The analysis
of the case shows how many important co-design opportunities only be-
come evident in use and what types of strategies we devise to work with
this fact. The article proposes that there is a need to elaborate a more
introduction 31
nuanced repertoire of resources to guide reflexive co-design work. De-

signing with the aging together type of strategies thus calls for extending
collaborative design beyond and around the traditional research and de-
velopment (r&d) projects form in important ways, and our reflections in
this piece aim towards that goal. For this article I took responsibility for
writing the empirical part, my co-author contributed by framing the di-
rection of the article and helped in placing it in the research context and
in distilling the main strategies.
Parallel to the work on analysing the cases, I started to further contex-
tualize and construct a framework by which to discuss some of the activi-
ties and insights gained through practical work.18 For this purpose, design
space became a fruitful notion to build upon and discuss some of these
ideas (Article VI: Botero, Kommonen & Marttila 2010). In the sixth arti-
cle, together with Kari-Hans Kommonen and Sanna Marttila, we sought
to reposition what is a fairly normal assumption in design practice: the
existence of an abstract “design space” that designers usually explore in
the concept design stage, which helps constitute the ”problem” and from
where they work out alternatives. This space tends to be treated as an ab-
stract, Euclidean, and temporarily limited construction. In contrast, we
develop an idea of the design space as an emergent and expanding set of
possibilities that are also explored – at different times – by a collective as
practices and their supporting technologies co-evolve. Based on a litera-
ture review and reflecting indirectly on our experiences in different pro-
jects (including the cases presented here), we offered an analytical and
practical framework for understanding and locating design research in-
terventions and a tool for mapping design activities over time (developed
further in this introductory essay in Chapter 4) that continuously reflects
in the structure and openness of such spaces.
This sixth article makes the case for paying attention to design-in-use
in particular. The specific conception of the design space that is elabo-
rated in the article attempts to deal with two things: First, it locates and
maps a variety of design activities, as different stakeholders perform them,
regardless of whether or not they perceive their role as designers or what
they do as design or use. This offers a simple and clear way to illustrate
18 This became particularly acute when we participated in a larger national project

aimed at developing tools for user driven open innovation called: Flexible Services –
User Driven Open Innovation (tekes 2009-2010)
the inescapable extension of design activities into design-in-use, as we

saw them unfold throughout our projects. Second, the framework quali-
fies stakeholders’ design-related activities in terms of possibilities that
are accessible to participants on a continuum from design towards use
(later I specify more the design-in-use part), which helps understand im-
plication of different collaborative design strategies and associated re-
sources (materials, designs, etc.) through time. The proposal helps to dis-
cuss the ongoing, and social nature of a design endeavour in terms that
are attuned to contemporary discussions (and critique) on the nature of
innovation. It also reflects in an elegant way many of the observations
made during the unfolding of the cases. For this article, the responsibility
of organizing and editing the paper was mine. I made the contextualiza-
tion in terms of the design space notion and elaborated the examples that
illustrate it. The visual composition of the framework evolved through it-
erations between all of us, aided by the fact that we all were familiar with
the materials of the cases and where using this as a tool to communicate
insights in other projects. My co-authors contributed in opening up and
describing the elements of the framework, provided explanation of the
cases and in identifying the strategies suggested.
On the basis of the articles and concerns listed above, in this introduc-
tory essay I aim to present a more general narrative in order to link and
compare the insights gained in the cases in more systematic way, and with
a view to drawing more general conclusions. Two main themes will be
elaborated: First, the preoccupation with situating design in current de-
sign practice and research is presented and analysed. Second, a proposal
for recognizing design space(s) and their expanded composition is intro-
duced as a way to understand, organize, and reflect upon design interven-
tions in a situated and strategic manner, one that would also be flexible
and open to ad-hocking. Aided by this framework, I compare and clarify
the insights each case brings in to support the main arguments. The two
themes thus weave together concerns and issues that arose throughout
the development of the actual projects, as well as exemplify our practical
attempts to reflectively deal with them.
Accordingly, this essay is structured as follows: in the remainder of this
section I will present a summary of my main findings and contributions.
In Chapter 2, I provide a general depiction of the development of situat-
ed design perspectives. I trace the current preoccupations of most of the
design research carried around this area. The chapter ends by introduc-
ing the need for an updated version the notion of design space. I propose
introduction 33
this as a way to move beyond salient gaps I identified in extant research.

This chapter thus maps the territory to which my research contributes
in particular. In Chapter 3, I look in detail at the research approach em-
ployed and present the cases and the materials I collected. In other words,
I will explain how I claim to know the things I discuss along the study. In
Chapter 4, I compare the experiences from the cases. This time, I look at
them more thoroughly in terms of the constitution and unfolding of their
respective design spaces and what they can tell us about the configura-
tion of new productive collaborative design relationships. The chapter
draws together the experiences to point out a proposition for how design
space, design time, and design things articulate the results of the work.
I summarize the design strategies deployed in the cases, the resources
at hand and what was learned from them. In Chapter 5, I close by bring-
ing together the main themes and reflecting upon the opportunities and
limitations of the research.
outline of main contributions

Before proceeding, I will briefly summarize the key findings and contri-
butions of my work:
1 The design engagements reported here confirm that collaborative design

can be organized in fruitful ways on an ongoing, open-ended time frame. It
shows that doing so has important implications: on the one hand, for the
ways in which endogenous production of technologies by communities can
be made possible (and supported); on the other hand, on how the collec-
tive’s emerging norms, values, and regulatory principles interact within the
supporting technological forms. These themes are of increasing importance
in the light of framing and approaching contemporary social problems.
Implication: the current situation in design research of mostly focusing ef-

forts on activities and interventions at the concept design stage (fuzzy front
end) is important, but limited. Collaborative design when explicitly ad-
dressed before, after, and to the sides of the concept design stage is perti-
nent and has implications for the final outcomes, the scope of design possi-
bilities, and the future horizon of communal endeavours.
2 The notion of ‘design space’ is re-conceptualized to capture the wider inter-

play of possibilities, practices, and partly assembled technologies, as well
as to develop competencies and social arrangements that are the basis for
ongoing design choices. This helped to identify a variety of crucial activities

with design related implications (e.g. compose, aggregate, remix, extend)
whose acknowledgement supports collective endeavours in aligning design
interventions and activities in their temporal and social fabric.
Implication: Design research and practice needs to engage more seriously

in identifying and benefiting from multiple and poly-centric interventions in
time and space. It also needs to understand the ways in which those inter-
ventions close or open relevant design spaces and what the resulting conse-
quences are.
3 The work introduces some resources and strategies for organizing extended
collaborative design engagements in practice, in particular when it comes
to new media for supporting and carrying out communal endeavours. It il-
lustrates the importance of setting the context (grounding the collaboration
setting) and cultivating new forms of design work (identification of design
seeds, following of indigenous spin-offs, facilitating forking) and some of
the required learning strategies (partial failures, reflective practices) to pay
attention to. The repertoire of practices and strategies documented offer
guidance to the sorts of activities and venues needed to allow ongoing col-
lective design processes room to breath and grow (e.g. infrastructuring and
midwifing).
Implication: Besides developing new techniques and methods for collabora-

tive design and proposing new roles for participants, long-term design en-
gagement requires from both the “communal endeavour” and the “profession-
al” designers a broader and reflective repertoire of strategies and resources
and the collective articulation of shared principles.
introduction 35
2
Situating design
situating design 37
From an earlier exclusive focus on the role of the “object” and “the design
brief” as the focal points of the design process, it is more common today
that designers and researchers feel compelled or are obliged to situate
design activities in a wider and more complex socio-technological con-
text. Here, how a project is approached and the roles are played by the
participants also matters, beyond only accounting for results (Findeli &
Bobaci 2005, Krippendorff 2006). Efforts to situate design practice and
knowledge19 – and to a certain extent problematize them – from within
the design fields can be found from a variety of starting points. However,
I propose they can be recognized more clearly in those discourses where
efforts to understand use and user involvement have been more systemati-
cally articulated.
While use or user involvement concerns are certainly not the only things
at stake when “situating design”, the issues raised when interested in deal-
ing seriously with the messiness of current and future use situations, as
they relate to a design process, have made practitioners aware of a wider
spectrum of issues. Those include the depth and breath of networks and
configurations at play in technology production, both in the brief and
around it (Voss et al. 2009, Suchman 2007, Williams et al. 2005), sources
of design knowledge present in contexts of use (Bannon 1992, Ehn 1988,
19 There is an intentional reference here to “Situated Knowledges: The Science Ques-

tion in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective” (Haraway 1988) and “Lo-
cated Accountabilities in Technology Production” (Suchman 2002).
Hyysalo 2009b) and the role of tactics and strategies at play in a variety of
processes (Svanæs & Gulliksen 2008) among many others.
Figure 6 summarises some of the elements present in various design
practices and how in design research steps have been made to character-
ize design as a matter not only of form giving issues (mostly concerned
with the brief and a product) but also one that concerns with using (con-
cerned also with context of use and user representations) and participa-
ting (concerned further with structuring the process and reflecting on
roles and contributions of participants).
Because of the interplay of issues emerging, I discuss, in particular,
User Centred Design (ucd) and Participatory Design (pd), as distinctive
movements that have been at the forefront of bringing together a coherent
body of knowledge and research around these issues to the awareness of
practitioners20. I do not discuss co-design as a separate movement or even
as a domain per-se, since I see it more as a label to demark a concern, a con-
temporary opportunity, that draws on both the traditions of ucd and pd
explicitly or implicitly. In my overview of ucd and pd, I will make a distinc-
tion between three things: a “label” (a name tag in common use that iden-
tifies an issue to deal with), a “movement” (a recognized community with
an agenda condensed in foundational texts, activists trying to make a case,
researchers, practitioners and followers), and “factions” (specific appli-
cations and adaptations of a general movement’s agenda done by group
of practitioners and followers that stress certain aspects of the agenda
differently, depending on local conditions and their own interpretations).
2.1. Use before use

While discussing the variety of ideas and ideals that can be encountered
when problematizing use, Redström (2008) proposed a spectrum that in-
cludes: at one end, concerns for ‘use’ before use, starting from the now
classic ambition to test and try out ‘use’ in advance of actual use during
20 The so-called critical design movement (Dunne, 2005, Dunne & Raby, 2001) is also a
relevant development worth mentioning in contemporary attempts to situate design.
However, I will not elaborate on it, because I consider my cases and my research ap-
proach as embedded in a more pragmatic interventionist practice that does not ex-
actly relate to staged controversies about design achieved through objects, which
are typical of critical design strategies. On a complementary direction, adversarial
design can become another interesting movement to follow (see DiSalvo 2012).
[ form giving ] [ + using ] [ + participating ]
An extended
The brief The design Represen- design team
team tations
Imagined Prototypes
The hero user
designer
Product / object
Context of use Process and roles
1 classical design practice 2 user centered design practice 3 participatory design practice
Figure 6 Situating design practice

and knowledge, a few steps
the design process; on the other end, concerns for supporting design after
design, or efforts to create a larger space of possibilities for defining use
through use itself (Redström 2008 p: 421). In the following sections I will
make use of this spectrum to provide an overview of the broader project
I refer to as situating design knowledge while at the same time identifying
some of its limitations.
using (ucd)
User Centred Design as a recognizable label has its origins in the early
80s in the United States of America. Back then, the acronym User Centred
Systems Design (ucsd) was coined to group a series of specific practices
developed and put in place to ensure that product and system develop-
ment would take into account human factors early enough in the process
(Norman & Draper 1986, Norman 1988). These early days were heavily in-
fluenced by cognitive psychology and ergonomics, which meant that most
of the practices and research discussed specific methods for testing the
behaviour of systems and products and ensuring they met specific user
requirements (Gould & Lewis 1985, Nielsen 1994). In the early days, a lot
of effort was placed on developing practices for iterative evaluation and as-
sessment of products with the hope that this information could eventually
drive design. This was specifically evident in the Human Computer In-
teraction (hci) field and a big driver of the usability movement; however,
its discourse has also permeated other design fields as well. This specific
faction continues to be active today in many circles, although it has been
criticized for, among other things, not accounting for the broader social
context of use and for treating the human aspect as one more factor (Ban-
non 1991). Another common concern raised has been that this faction of
ucd deals much more with evaluating the nitty gritty of designs than with
doing actual design work (Bannon & Ehn 2012, Constantine 2004).
Today User Centred Design (ucd) is in reality more nuanced. Other fac-
tions have built upon cognitive psychology and ergonomics research but
also upon concerns from traditional design practices21 and from areas
21 Several iconic designers have been a reference point for the broader ucd movement,
in particular Dreyfuss and his classic “Designing for people” (1974). Similarly, pro-
fessional design consultancies like ideo have been developing arguments that
cross beyond those of cognitive and psychological ones, even touching upon aspects
of business results (Kelley & Littmann 2001) and innovation capability building
(Brown 2009, ideo 2011).
situating design 41
such as information systems design. In doing this, ucd practitioners have

incorporated tools and approaches from e.g. social sciences to comple-
ment earlier reliance on mainstream market research thus highlighting
the importance of other dimensions beyond mere usability. Today discus-
sions in ucd around concepts like interaction (Preece et al. 2002), empathy
(Koskinen et al. 2003), experience (Shedroff 2001, Kuti 2009, Hassenzahl
2010, Buxton 2007), co-experience (Battarbee 2003), emotions (Norman
2004), pleasure (Jordan 2006), and meaning making (Krippendorff 2006)
bring to the foreground the importance of the many generative aspects
needed to articulate design knowledge when there is a humanist focus.
Related to this, some advocates of ucd prefer Human Centred Design, as
opposed to the simple ucd label (e.g. Krippendorff 2006, Steen 2011), to
stress the need for focusing not only in the narrow role of the user, but in-
stead pay attention to wider conceptions of the human existence.
In terms of the movement as a whole, I condense the ucd’s main con-
tributions around two things. The first one has been to position a set of
standards targeted at product development activities like iso 13407 (iso
1999)22. These standards have contributed to achieving legitimization, in
organizational contexts, for ucd related practices and knowledge (Phil-
ip & Rourke 2006). This has been key; as in these contexts, certain type of
design work has been hard to sell or make visible over development re-
sources. In this sense, ucd has provided clear tools to structure a design
team’s work and to integrate its multidisciplinary knowledge, into criti-
cal business stages, particularly at the fuzzy front end of product develop-
ment (Gulliksen et al. 2005, Svanæs & Gulliksen 2008).
The second critical contribution is to have streamlined and popular-
ized the observation of users in natural settings23, linking these to em-
pirically oriented design methods and ways of working. The focus of the
ucd movement has been bringing knowledge of a use situation early on
to the process and making a case for it by illustrating how acceptance and
fit in the market can be affected by such processes. Such user-oriented
strategies have became relevant once differentiation, niche markets, and
22 These standards are closely related to usability work, and while some discuss design
processes, their guidelines are still very ambiguous from a design stance.
23 The ucd movement has been key in the adaption and diffusing process of ethno-
graphically inspired approaches from traditional anthropology circles into corpo-
rate settings and product development. For a view into the story of the relationship
between ethnography and design see (Wasson 2000).
customization have become much more critical to business practices as

technology matures (Leonard 1998), and when industrialization and mass
production are not the only games in town. In this way, the ucd move-
ment has also given more legitimacy to one persistent knowledge claim
made by designers, namely that they have the role of “representing” the
user by acquiring a certain type of design knowledge expertise. That is, de-
signers that master ucd processes are prepared to translate – in action-
able terms – concerns regarding delight, aesthetics, engagement, com-
fort, utility, and experience, as much as style, and do it in a “designerly
way” (e.g., Mattelmäki 2006, Vaajakallio 2012). This would appear, vis-à-
vis other types of concerns that come from an engineering perspective:
technical efficiency, productive considerations, and quality control. The
reach of this second contribution is clearly visible in the popularity of
tools such as use scenarios (Carrol 1995), techniques such as Contextual
Design (Beyer & Holtzblatt 1997), and the popularized activity toolkit for
Human Centred Design packaged by ideo (ideo 2011).
There is no doubt that concerns regarding user orientation have brought
a wave of fresh air and new insights to professional design practice. There
is now increased awareness and interest in practitioner’s circles to look at
broader sets of issues when designing and organizations are now much
more receptive to these types of issues. However, it has been questioned
whether ucd is able to recognize all the complexities of what is at stake.
On the one hand, its relationship with actual making and development
work is still unclear (Iivari & Iivari 2006, Stewart & Williams 2005). On the
other hand, researchers have also commented on the need to question
how “users” or “experiences” are phenomena that do not exist a priori or
in isolation; they are only evident when there is something there to use
or experience, and in relation to broader constellations of things (Shove
& Pantzar 2005, Shove et al. 2007) and networks of working relationships
(Suchman et al.1999, 2002). People’s everyday activities evolve and the
dynamic process of learning, creative appropriation, domestication, and
shaping of technology that unfolds (Shove et al. 2007, Haddon et.al. 2006)
and takes place even under adverse circumstances (see e.g. Eglash et al.
2004). More than often, it represents a long process of mutual adaptation
of technology and practices (Leonard 1998, Bowker & Star 1999, Hyysalo
2010) and even non-use (Oudshoorn & Pinch 2003). On that account the
ucd movement still has little to offer when design practice needs to relate
to longer timeframes beyond the traditional development lifecycle and
r&d frameworks. Moreover, there is a need to recognize that identities
situating design 43
such as designer or user are not stable or separate; rather, as Suchman

argues, they function as categories that describe people positioned “dif-
ferently in terms of their histories and future investment in projects of techno-
logy development” (Suchman 2007 p: 279).
participating (pd)
Unlike the mainstream factions of the ucd movement (whose main inter-
est has been to insert ucd practices as a routine in product development
processes) Participatory Design (pd), as a movement, has placed greater
emphasis on probing and experimenting broadly with the ways relation-
ships of use, design, and production are normally conceived (Greenbaum
& Loi 2012. Suchman 2007, Törpel et al. 2009). The vehicle to achieve this
has been mostly to interrogate the designer- use dichotomy by focusing
on ways to include users as creative partners. From my perspective, the
agenda can be interpreted as being broader24.
As is the case with ucd, diverse factions of the movement have placed
efforts on different aspects. The Scandinavian Participatory Design ap-
proach (spd)25 is commonly known as the movement’s original agenda
setting faction. The story starts around the 70’s, when through action re-
search, several research projects created alliances between labour unions
and technology designers/researchers to propose new workplace practices
and technologies that could strengthen democracy at work (see Floyd et al.
1989, for an overview of the early experiences). An aim was that, through
a participatory process, new practices and technologies would question
taken-for-granted configurations of technology production and innova-
tion processes. However, more broadly speaking labour unions, who had
been very successful in bringing wages into collective bargaining with
high success in Scandinavia, lacked means to tackle employer driven re-
forms done by the means of introducing new technology that undermined
worker skills. For them pd type of process where interesting as a way to
bring technological change into the bargaining process as well. In that
24 Even though most of the foundational pd texts never refer to or use the word innova-
tion, many of the issues that pd has been tackling, pioneering, and experimenting
with deal with re-configuring production and innovation processes, in deeper levels
than ucd for example. In later years, this connection has been made more explicit
(e.g., Bødker et al. 2004, Buur & Matthews, 2008b)
25 Sometimes also referred to as the Collective Resource approach (cra) (See: Green-
baum & Kyng 1991)
aim, spd was not successful. Nonetheless, it did introduce more local-
ized means for workplace democracy and collaborative technology devel-
opment by offering alternatives to assumptions such as those of consid-
ering firms or management as the only proactive agents in bringing new
technologies and in defining work practice or of users not having knowl-
edge or competence relevant for design work (Ehn 1988). spd projects in
the 70s pioneered a series of approaches to creating conditions for mu-
tual learning between participants through an ethnographically inspired
inquiry for design. These projects also experimented with the creation of
spaces for dealing with conflicts and the emergence of shared innovation.
Through these and many other subsequent projects, tacit knowledge and
skills were reclaimed to be important sources of design knowledge. The
experiences showed the importance of hands-on-work and evolving pro-
totypes as relevant ways of replacing abstract requirements and briefs
(Ehn & Kyng 1991, Gregory 2003). More importantly, ways to understand
and use these resources were experimented with collectively (see Bjerk-
nes et al. 1987, Ehn 1988, and Greenbaum & Kyng 1991 for foundation-
al texts). In the process, the many practical, social, and political impli-
cations of these approaches have been charted (Simonsen & Robertson
2012 provides an updated view of some of the current developments).
The specific label of Participatory Design (pd) has its origin when cer-
tain concepts and methods from those Scandinavian experiences in the
70s travelled to North America and other parts of the world and confront-
ed new circumstances (Schuler & Namioka 1993, Kraft & Bansler 1994).
As a result of new conditions, a lot of interest started to concentrate more
on the practicalities of achieving informed and meaningful participation
with non-expert designers and other stakeholders, giving rise to a more
pragmatic faction that, to the opinion of some, is what tends to dominate
the agenda lately (Blomberg at al. 1997; Iversen et al. 2004). pd features
a large body of knowledge around tools, techniques, and methods, rang-
ing from the possible collaborative inferential dimensions of self-report-
ing research methods, like probes (Mattelmäki 2006), all the way to more
comprehensive frameworks, like must (Bødker et al. 2004). This is com-
plemented by current efforts to organize and classify pd activities and
tools (Sanders et al. 2010, Brandt et al. 2012) to help those interested in
trying out meaningful stakeholder involvement.
Recent developments in related fields such as marketing and innova-
tion management have been very successful in positioning new concepts
such as co-creation and customer centricity (Prahalad & Ramaswamy
situating design 45
2004), co-configuration (Victor & Boynton 1998), and user driven innova-
tion (von Hippel 2005), among others at the forefront of business prac-
tices and policy. These developments seem to be configuring the emer-
gence of new factions within pd. In a widely cited article on the CoDe-
sign journal, Sanders and Stappers (2008) link developments from the
pd movements, and other early design traditions to what they identify
as an emerging landscape of design they term “co-design”. They suggest
that the “best known proponents” for collaborative approaches to design
are to be found today in innovation and marketing approaches (Sanders
& Stappers 2008 p:8), making the time ripe for a new type of participa-
tory practice that can extend to all types of pressing issues. This practice
should be committed to supporting everyday people’s creativity and their
value to design processes, in particular at the fuzzy front end. Although
they distance it from the marketing and innovation management propo-
sitions, they stress less the experimentation with re-configuring relation-
ships. Similar arguments are also advanced in a newly developed blend
of participatory design, user innovation, and anthropological studies re-
ferred to as Participatory Innovation (Buur & Mathews 2008a, 2008b).
Taken as a whole, pd has been instrumental in opening up design work
to new types of knowledge, by proposing the role of radically extended de-
sign teams, sometimes acknowledging the social consequences of this
move. In doing so, the movement has revealed both processes by which
different types of design knowledge can be productively linked to change
processes and how it is possible to de-centre design authorship without
losing expertise. Moreover, in seeking alliances with other (often under-
represented or marginalized) stakeholders outside of the typical producers’
realm, pd has also shown that innovation activities can be effectively start-
ed, bootstrapped, and sustained in many unconventional configurations,
often with interesting and even emancipatory results for those involved.
Another key contribution has been to identify the importance that con-
crete activities have in producing and performing design-related knowl-
edge collectively. pds insistence on prototyping as a way of anchoring tac-
it knowledge in a collective way (e.g. Bødker & Grønbæk1991) and its criti-
cal engagements to extend drive and stage design process through events,
such as workshops (e.g. Kensing & Madsen, 1991), have provided tools to
manage stakeholder participation in early design phases (e.g. Agger-Erik-
sen 2012, Binder & Brandt 2008, Bødker et al. 2004), especially along the
concept design stage and fuzzy front end (Buur & Matthews 2008a, Sanders
& Stappers 2008). This has lead to the emergence of an understanding of
various new possible roles for professional designers, going beyond rep-
resentative, and including those of facilitators, triggers of change, activ-
ists, capacity builders, and so on (see e.g. Manzini & Rizzo 2011, Lee 2008,
Tan 2012 for more thorough elaboration on a variety of emerging roles
ascribed to designers).
The pd movement’s approach also has limitations. A commonly men-
tioned drawback is that despite its ambition to design future practice be-
fore technology and regardless of its insistence on the emergent qualities
of design, in practice, most of the developments of the different pd fac-
tions have been unable to overcome engagements beyond early deploy-
ment of prototypes (for a review and critique, see Hartswood et al., 2002;
Voss et al. 2009). Some even have argued that at present pd does not offer
many resources through which to tackle evolutionary aspects (Giaccardi
2004). This is so perhaps because it has not connected its agenda well
with other ad-hoc collaborative practices in the wild (Dittrich et al. 2002,
Hyysalo & Lehenkäri 2002b, Hyysalo 2010) or that it lacks a more clear
position towards its relationship with end-users’ designs and their sta-
tus (e.g. Johnson & Hyysalo 2012, Kanstrup 2012). Another issue that has
been pointed out is how under the current landscape of design, it is hard
to locate, from the onset, all possible future users, not to mention how
to guarantee their participation (Bødker 2006, Clement et al. 2008). For
some, it is obvious that sometimes people are not necessarily waiting to
be taken into consideration by a participatory process and that there is an
unproductive stance that needs to be challenged, specifically when some
factions of the movement tend to portray designers as heroes that fix sit-
uations, leaving users to be portrayed as some sort of victims in need of
salvation (Spinuzzi 2003, Stewart & Williams 2005). Another increasingly
visible concern is manifested in the need to specify more accurately and
interestingly expert design competences and contributions, which tend
to be eclipsed by facilitating skills inherent in most of the activities that
pd processes advocate (Findeli & Bobaci 2005, Manzini 2012).
2.2. Design after design

Having surveyed the territory and the aims of two relevant movements
attempting to advance the project of situating design project, I now will
summarize some of their key components by locating salient gaps in ex-
tant research.

situating design 47
Gap 1: Around and beyond the fuzzy front end: Current research, both
around ucd and pd mostly focuses its efforts on developing collaborative
techniques and interventions at the fuzzy-front end of innovation, where
concept design is mostly performed (Sanders & Stappers 2008, Buur & Mat-
thews 2008). While this work has been important in finding a voice for a de-
sign approach and demonstrating the relevance of the practices of these
movements, without extending the reach and connections around and be-
yond the fuzzy front end, our understanding of the complexities at stake is
ultimately limited. Research in related fields suggest that crucial encoun-
ters in the designer-user relationship can only manifest themselves when
social practices develop (Jenkins 2006, Hyysalo 2010, Voss et al. 2009).
From a design perspective that means design-in-use needs to be more criti-
cally scrutinized as a site for collaboration. Articulating a temporally ex-
tended and evolving understanding of collaborative design, could allow us
to seize more explicitly, and – critically elaborate – opportunities for collab-
orative design activities beyond the concept design stage, something par-
ticularly acute in settings that do not fit current fixed r&d project forms.
Gap 2: Away from strictly role-based accounts and prescriptions: Be-

sides the attention devoted to influencing at the fuzzy front end, design re-
search has had a keen interest in untangling the implications of collabora-
tive design strategies for the role participants in such process have: e.g.
who the designers are, where should the users be, how to enrol producers,
when not to forget the intermediaries. The tendency in both ucd and pd,
and more generally in design research, has been to give normative prescrip-
tions of what all these actors should be doing by ascribing to them roles26
(e.g. facilitators or gardeners). While these kinds of propositions are cer-
tainly relevant and needed, there have been fewer efforts to understand,
more precisely, what it is that everybody is actually doing (Redström 2008),
with what (Agger-Eriksen 2012, Kimbell 2012) and when they are doing it –
independent of their perceived identity. We also lack an understanding of
how these activities evolve in time (Büscher & Cruickshank 2009). As a re-
sult, it becomes relevant to ask not only what role people play or should
26 Tan (2012) provides an illuminating literature review of the status of roles in design
research. While she asserts that there is lack of research on the specifics of design-
ers’ roles and that therefore more research on new roles should be made, the
amount of interest she found on the issue of new roles in general, attests to the im-
portance given to this matter at the expense of almost any other concern.
play, but also what role do the different design-related activities play? This
could allow us to inquire further into the consequences of particular ar-
rangements, roles, materials, and resources when it comes to both design
and design-in-use as well (Kimbell 2012).
Gap 3: Lack of frameworks to guide interventions not constrained by a

specific centre of attention: A call for attention and focus on users (ucd)
and on structuring a more inclusive process (pd) has been a welcomed
development for disciplines often too centred on concerns around the right
shapes and colours or peculiar technological capabilities for their own sake.
It has taken some time to realize that, without attention to and awareness of
practices, one could ask: design for what? However, today it is also possible
to find design (research) processes whose sole focus ends up being finding
out what is the “right” user study or what type of process or roles will yield
a more human approach (user centred or participatory) with little mention
of an actual shared thing being developed (a design, not necessarily as a
product, though). Without a shared thing should we not ask: collaboration
for what? In reality, all aspects (brief, objects, and things and contexts of
use and production, as well as users and designers’ histories and trajecto-
ries) should be kept always in sight, and none can be particularly neglected
(see e.g. Coxton 2009, Findeli & Bousbaci 2005, Hyysalo 2010, Manzini
2012). The brief is rethought in active exchange with the understanding of
use and of the development context; users and context of use are shaped
and shape previous objects, products, and things; an understanding of what
can be done needs to be coupled with what could be changed, what needs
to be maintained, and how that might be achieved (Büscher et al.2009)
Gap 4: Towards a nuanced understanding of the distributed nature of

design agency: In overcoming some of the limitations to understanding de-
sign processes as the prerogative of particular individuals, current design
research carries the implicit assumption that collaborative design work is
carried out largely by teams (small or extended), and it is best organized
around a project. We lack ways to look at, describe, and engage collectively
in processes distributed more radically in space and time and in “socio-ma-
terial assemblies” (Björngivsson et al. 2012, Ehn 2008, Kimbell 2012).
This state of affairs is summarized in Table 3, which also introduces

themes currently under development to partly address the above-men-
tioned gaps.
[form giving] [using] [participating] [?]
Evolving and Ongoing?

(Design-in-use as key
component)
design Design process as an ideal Design process as conquering Design process as opening the 1 Around and beyond the fuzzy
process model. the fuzzy front end of product fuzzy front end of R&D for other front end: acknowledgment
R&D and filling it with use stakeholders (struggle and of continuous, conflicting and
concerns. negotiation). parallel contributions.
designer’s The designer is the hero The design team articulates Design stakeholders should 2 Away from only role based
role (designer = demiurge role). the work (designer = user rep be recognized and reinvented accounts and prescriptions:
resentative role). (designer = facilitator and Collectives / networks and
gardener roles should also be their trajectories, evolving
exercised). roles and activities.
locus of The brief and the object are Context of use should be Process and roles can be 3 Frameworks that do not
design the locus. the locus the locus require a specific centre to
focus attention on: Polycen
tric locus as both more realis
tic and likely to yield results
Table 3 Situating design practices and knowledge,

current gaps and emerging themes
In the developments of these emerging themes, a salient strategy has

been to take “time” into account as a more fundamental component for
design. We see this both in terms of raising it as a key variable when doing
interaction design (see e.g. Mazé 2007, Redström 2001) and in generally
identifying it as a neglected dimension when structuring design practices
(Kyng & Henderson 1991, Fischer 2011).
evolving
In what follows, I will present three developments that have sought to ar-
ticulate good practices to account for and support extended design pro-
cesses and designs that engage with the increasing predominance of de-
sign-in-use instances. In the context of my work, they introduce the ration-
ale behind some of the work carried out in the cases and provide a frame
to better understand the strategies suggested in this thesis.
The first one is referred to as Co-realization. Co-realization (Hartswood
et al. 2002) deals with a principled synthesis of ethnomethodology and Par-
ticipatory Design developed to address what Dourish and Button (1998)
called the “paradox of ethnomethodologically informed design”. This
means that the implications of a new system for work practices do not be-
come evident by studying the work as it is now; they will only be graspable
during the system’s subsequent use, as Dourish and Button so vividly il-
lustrated. Co-realization thus proposes that there is a need for more radi-
cal and shared practice between users and it professionals than proposed
by pd. These practices should be grounded in the lived experience of us-
ers in-situ, beyond the deployment of prototypes in important dimen-
sions. From a co-realization point of view, designers should continue to
be present at the workplace for extended periods of time, allowing both
the workers as well as designers to jointly realize where the system and
work practice could be taken and then iteratively realize these develop-
ment directions as they emerge (Hartswood et al. 2002).
Co-realization, co-location, and emergence are important and unavoid-
able dimensions that end up clarifying and opening up possibilities for
further development (Voss et al. 2000, Voss et al. 2009). Co-realization en-
gagements are concrete in the sense that a shared object is not only envi-
sioned but also continuously realized and followed-up on for longer peri-
ods of time and via mutual commitments and alliances between various
stakeholders (Hartswood et al. 2007, Büscher et al. 2009). Co-realization
has been successfully deployed in research projects around various medi-
cal it applications and manufacturing is systems.
situating design 51
Along parallel lines, the second development is located in between

Meta-design and End User Development (eud). On the one hand, Meta-
design has been proposed as an alternative system design practice that
bridges participatory activities towards those of evolving working life con-
texts (Fischer & Scharff 2002, Fischer & Giaccardi 2004). This should be
embedded in current “cultures of participation” (Fischer 2011, Jenkins
2006) framework. A central tenet of Meta-design is to develop during ‘de-
sign time’ systems that are under-designed, yet complete. The resulting
Meta-design environments are then made available to “owners of prob-
lems,” who participate directly in the evolution of the systems. Having said
that, it is important to clarify that for proponents of Meta-design strate-
gies this is not about open-ended design; rather, Meta-design is about
taking into account a concrete domain and a particular system. Meta-
design discusses the centrality of creating a framework for seeding both
technical and social components (Fischer & Ostwald 2002) to allow for
periods of intense participatory activities and more slow-paced interven-
tions, and then closing up with an enhancement and re-structuring pe-
riod during which the system is sharpened and fine-tuned.
As co-realization, Meta-design is also based in concrete outcomes (e.g.
systems), but, in contrast to it, its strategies include developing sufficient
flexible functionality to allow users to make re-designs during ‘use time’
without or with minimal developer involvement. It also identifies the need
to develop ways to help users share those changes and adaptations with
others in order to support further design-in-use. Some of the concrete
techniques and tools for achieving this are referred to as “End User De-
velopment (eud). The eud proposition builds directly on the discussion
initiated by Henderson and Kyng (1991) to ‘continue design in use’ in
order to enable users to influence the information systems of their work
(Lieberman et al. 2006). It merges it with parallel strands of research on
end-user computing and programming (Nardi 1993). eud thus seeks to
understand adaptation and the ‘tailoring’ of technology to changing re-
quirements at use-time by developing highly flexible tools and systems
that are within reach of non-professional software developers.
The third and last development is more conceptual in nature. I locate it
along two lines of discussion: on the one hand, a call for serious engage-
ment in Infrastructuring (Björgvinsson et al. 2012a, Björgvinsson et al.
2012b, Ehn 2008, Pipek & Wulf 2009); on the other hand, propositions for
engaging in Thing Design (Ehn 2008, Binder et al. 2011). Infrastructuring
propositions take as a starting point previous work around the growing
importance of information infrastructures as an integral part of contem-

porary life (Star & Ruhleder 1996, Star & Bowker 2002). Star and Bowker
suggested that, when interested in the how to infrastructure, what should
be taken into consideration is more ‘when’ something is being perceived
as infrastructure by its users than it is ‘what is’ an infrastructure that
should be taken into account. While most design approaches tend to fo-
cus on particular artefacts, neglecting – more or less – the surroundings
in which the artefacts are placed into, it is precisely these surroundings,
which become a concern for Infrastructuring (Pipek & Wulf 2009). Ac-
cordingly, when doing infrastructuring a lot of design work should turn
towards a continuous alignment between contexts and the ways in which
this is socially achieved (Björgvinsson et al. 2012). From this point of view,
infrastructuring becomes an engagement in experimenting with ways of
achieving this alignment (Hillgren et al. 2011, Pipek & Wulf 2009) while
accounting for the creative ‘design’ activities of professional designers
and users across the divide and beyond technology (Karasti & Syrjänen
2004, Pipek & Syrjänen 2006) without necessarily privileging either view.
Thing Design, on the other hand takes infrastructuring work to the
realm of what Science and Technology Studies (sts) scholar Latour has
called Dingpolitik27 or ThingPolitics (Latour 2005). In this move, the inter-
est for infrastructuring as a central concern in design activities expands.
Put another way, it relocates to exploring milieus where socio-technical
configurations around public controversial things emerge; usually includ-
ing design oriented interventions around social issues, alternative media
production, public services and space, and related governance implica-
tions. This interest becomes Thing Design where these configurations
bring into being not only “matters of fact” but instead bring into being
“matters of concern”28 through design activities, as a way of “Thinging”.
27 DingPolitik is a neologism introduced by Latour and his collaborators among other

places in the exhibition Making Things Public (Latour & Wiebel 2005). The term is a
provocative contraposition to the concept of RealPolitik, a German term used to de-
scribe modest, no non-sense (realistic) politics based on “matters of fact”, which is
the usual way of dealing with naked power relationships. For Latour and his collabo-
rators, DingPolitics in contrast should be preoccupied with “matters of concern”
and those that gather and should gather around them carrying with it connotations
of trouble, worrying, and respect (Puig de la Bella Casa 2011).
28 ”Thinging” represents a modern take on the ancient Nordic and Germanic assem-
blies (a Ting) for which ”matter of concerns” for a community were discussed and
made public (see: Binder et al. 2011, Ehn 2008, Latour & Wiebel 2005).
situating design 53
That is, we are dealing not with “Design things” but Things to design with.
An aim for engaging in these types of public controversial things is to con-
trast claims of democratizing innovation, stemming from innovation stud-
ies focused mostly on value creation for businesses, with other alterna-
tive practices, including grassroots or subculture approaches. For Thing
Design, the constellation of relationships and resources that need to be
realigned to reimagining innovation in these settings are – for design-
ers – much more a matter of supporting future appropriation (Büscher &
Cruickshank 2009), continuous matchmaking activities between collabo-
rators that are unaware of each other, and even facilitating the prototyp-
ing of alternative futures (Hillgren et al. 2011, Moll 2012).
Co-realization and Metadesign approaches have been mostly applied
in the workplace domain, often in technology-intensive and high value set-
tings where a good fit between technology and work justifies high design-
er presence and costs and where the constellation of actors, even though
large, is relatively stable (as they relate to the same domain or applica-
tion area). The third approach, Thinging and Infrastructuring, presents
the contours of a series of practices that are not as such formalized, but
rather introduced as challenges for collaborative design practice to con-
front and build upon. In addressing matters of concern, this challenge
appears as a timely reminder of relevance to the communal endeavours
that I have presented as settings for this work. While many of the princi-
ples of these three propositions hold beyond the workplace and the pub-
lic sphere and can certainly apply beyond technology development, some
are in need of adjustment for settings with more undefined participants
and less stable concerns or mundane settings. None of them – on their
own – fully addresses the gaps in extant research that I have summarized.
When thinking of design as a set of practices spread over time and per-
formed in multiple sites including use, then, not only does design-in-use
need to be acknowledged and understood better, but also we could ask
– as was proposed by Dietrich, et al. – how can those different and coex-
isting practices be understood in dynamic relation to each other? (2002).
To help us account for the dynamic relationship between such coexist-
ing and ongoing design practices we need to rethink concepts. I propose
that one such concept should be an expanded notion of design space. In
terms of communal endeavours, the existence of multidimensional de-
sign spaces is an unavoidable feature. Thus, in this type of settings, a bet-
ter grasp of the evolving qualities of this notion is needed, one that could
avoid the proposition of simply “ad-hocking” one’s way through it.
In Table 4, I use the example of a simple button to illustrate possible

expansion of concerns in different directions, when situating design at
large. From design spaces dealing with the button’s shapes all the way to
those dealing with the communal endeavours associated with a button.
In the next section I will elaborate the background thinking for proposing
the notion of design space as a potential framework to approach some of
the gaps identified in the projects of situating design, in particular, as it
refers to communal endeavours settings.
2.3. Understanding a Design Space

In this section, I update and clarify the parts of Article VI that explain
why a reconceptualization of the notion of design space is needed, where
the framework comes from, and the particular stance of the concept in
my work.
As a starting point it is fair to say that the word pair design space is evoc-
ative enough to have been found relevant both in design research pro-
jects and in practice. It is not an uncommon concept in design research
literature29; it is part of the standard jargon of professional practice and
it has also made appearances in more general innovation literature, as
we will see later.
Even though the term is fairly common, seldom is it defined what space
actually is or consists of. A short detour to some common uses of the word
in design discourse helps to clarify some of the assumptions it presently
carries and to identify its current limitations and potential. In general
terms, we can say that the concept of design space is used to highlight the
fact that, during the initial stages of a process, there is freedom to choose
from many options and to explore alternatives (e.g.: Fischer & Giaccardi
2004, Gaver 2011, McKerlie & MacLean 1994, Sanders 2001, Westerlund
2005). Sometimes the term also seems to refer to all design relevant infor-
mation that is available for designers in a design process (e.g.: Hassenzahl
& Wessler 2000, Sharrock and Anderson 1994). Another use is to describe
it as a territory that expands and contracts; for example as the brief or
29 See (Sanders & Westerlund 2011) for an overview of current uses in relationship to
their proposal for developing co-design space as a concept. Moreover, there are few
recent doctoral dissertations that deal centrally with the concept (Giaccardi 2004,
Heap 2007, Leerberg 2004, Westerlund 2009) and several references to it in current
design research (see, e.g., Binder et al. 2011, Gaver 2012, Höök & Löwgren 2012).
[form giving] [using] [participating] [evolving?]
Policies, regulations, agreements, etc
Will I see it in 100 Y?

Do my children get
access?
Organization
Co-worker?
Family? Co-realization
+ Feedback + Friend? Public? Meta-design
Infra
design space
save save Meaningful save Meaningful save structuring
file collection
ThingDesign
Rights
Reuse
Remix
Changes in operating systems, new file formats, aggregators and search engines, etc
Shape Task Work practice Communal endeavours?

(E.g. a button to press) (E.g. the whole process (Saving files but also creating (Acknowledging changes in
of saving a file) collections, sharing them infra, practices, media and
and preserving them) tools over time)
Table 4 Situating design practices and knowledge, possible

design spaces of a simple save button
challenge for the project changes during the process (e.g.: Gero & Kumar
1993) or as the conceptual space that relates to a project is clarified (Heap
2007). It has also been used in relation to the increased scale and complex-
ity in human interactions made tangible by technology, which presents
different, and sometimes new spaces for design action (Giaccardi 2004).
Recently the term has also been linked to the wider discussion regarding
the role of place, space (Binder & Hellström 2005, Sanders & Westerlund
2011), and materials (Agger-Erikssen 2012) in present day design practices.
In terms of potentials, the metaphor of a territory seems to help those
engaged in design activities deal with contingency, as exploring a terri-
tory calls for flexible strategies (Heap 2007, Binder et al. 2011). Making
explorations and carrying out experiments around a territory is not the
same as following a rigid linear process and being in total control of it, as
design sometimes has been presented. Moreover, the concept also works
well to develop an understanding of design process not from the point of
view of problems, but rather from the vantage point of view of proposi-
tions and action. In particular when we conceptualize it as a ”territory of
possible solutions” (Westerlund 2009 p: 35, see also Gaver 2011).
In terms of limitations, there are two common threads emerging in
this design research literature. First, a design space is usually described
from the point of view of a typical design actor – a designer or an organi-
zation involved in the creation of a product or solution. It is as if profes-
sionals are those who explore the design space and define it. Sometimes,
of course, this exploration can be done in collaboration, as advised by
ucd or pd traditions. However, in such cases, it is almost implicit that it
is a designer initiating the explorations or inviting people to do so. Sec-
ond, the design space tends to be treated, if not as an abstract space, as
a territory that is open or visible at the initial steps of a process or in con-
cept design. In fact, the assumption seems to be that the design space is
a feature of the early stages of the design process (as understood from a
maker/producer’s angle only) and that there is no need to return to it or
perhaps no possibilities of inhabiting it for long.
This stands in contrast to other takes on the matter in more recent de-
sign research that characterises design space as emerging landscapes of de-
sign co-constructed over time and space (Binder et al. 2011). It appears even
more limited when looking at other uses made visible by empirical inves-
tigations in several strands of research located in-between User Innova-
tion (ui) literature and the science and technology studies (sts) literature.
Their discussions point out other relevant dimensions of a design space
situating design 57
that have not been fully acknowledged in design practice and research. To
start with, the ui literature offers clear evidence that illustrates how, be-
sides producers and designers, at least the so-called lead users (von Hippel
2005) have capabilities and actually engage in envisioning and construct-
ing a design space by themselves. These studies show how this user activ-
ity has lead to the creation of completely new product genres (e.g., Bald-
win et al. 2006, Flowers & Henwood 2010) and contributed in important
ways to the emergence of new fields and industries. Such arguments em-
pirically challenge the tendency to treat the point of view of the designer
(or producer) as a given. When looked at broadly, distributed accounts of
innovation, like the ones provided by ui literature, show particular ways
in which a design space is collectively explored and how it can be con-
structed by a network of peculiar stakeholders – like users – motivated by
l logics other than that of mere product development (von Hippel 2007).
However, these conceptualizations still convey an idea of the design space
as a somehow predetermined or predefined area, which is then “mined”
(e.g., Baldwin et al. 2006 p:8) by particular stakeholders, including users.
The second strand comprises a range of research contributions in sts
that argue for expanding even more radically the scope of what counts as
innovation. Insights from these works suggest an even richer and ongo-
ing view of the design space that is being explored as innovations (prac-
tices and technologies) emerge and develop. These accounts, for exam-
ple, have pointed out the ways in which individual user customizations of
technology reframe the design space of such technologies (Eglash et al.
2004). They have also shown how the social practices that users engage
in and extend form a big part of the design space that is ultimately collec-
tively charted and created. In these accounts, the sceneries of everyday
life (Shove & Pantzar 2005, Shove et al. 2007), the development of particu-
lar practices, and user interests (Hyysalo 2007, Tuomi 2003), including
the horizon of actual skills and the bounded imaginations of different
stakeholders, all determine the potential for both future practices and
technologies (Hyysalo 2009, Hyysalo 2010). Finally, they also contribute
to a new understanding of the ways in which agencies and boundaries
between people and technology might be imaginatively and materially
reconfigured (Suchman 2007) and provide a means to map the trajecto-
ries, histories, and resources beyond the front end of innovation (Pollock
& Williams 2008; Hyysalo, 2010).
Such understandings of the design space go beyond the abstract and
limited fuzzy front-end design space usually acknowledged by producers
and designers. The two important and most immediate implications of

these insights for reconceptualising the meaning and significance of de-
veloping new notions of design space are: first, exploration and construc-
tion of a design space – in line with the idea of a collective endeavour – is
done by a variety of actors (not only producers or designers, or designers
inviting users into some user centred process) at different points in time
and always in relation to certain resources. Secondly, an understanding
of a particular design space should be expanded to include other things,
social practices, protocols, and agreements and not only the immediate
surroundings of particular technological artefacts and choices.
In his PhD dissertation, Bo Westerlund has elaborated an understand-
ing of design space in terms of a conceptual tool to design and under-
stand design processes (2009) that offers a good starting point to elabo-
rate upon. Through his research, Westerlund found that design space
explorations, in practice, are not only done from the point of view of prob-
lems or briefs, but rather from the vantage point of view of possible solu-
tions. Those solutions, he claims, are what actually constitute the design
space. When done in collaboration and in an open-ended manner with
different stakeholders, the explorations seem to be more thorough and
meaningful for those involved. From this perspective, the design space
is turned into a useful concept to reframe and develop more up-to-date
design process by focusing on possibilities rather than dwelling on prob-
lems alone, which is the common stance in many current design models.
While his conceptualization identifies the co-operative nature of this ex-
ploration and moves the focus from problems to possibilities, it could be
refined further to include:
1 A way to map trajectories, histories, and resources around and beyond

the fuzzy front end. The design space could be a performative tool to com-
municate where we have been and where we are now, or even “where we
could be”, to all those with a stake in the process. This could certainly aid in
communication between those involved in a joint venture and help bridge
tactical and strategic conditions.
2 A view that accounts for the activities everybody is engaged in (not

only their roles), regardless of whether they consider them as design
(or use). This can complement role-based accounts of particular events
(e.g. facilitator in workshop, designers in a co-design session) with a more
situated view of how, e.g., the roles evolve over time. So that collabora-
situating design 59
tive design strategies could be recognized at multiple levels and more criti-
cally explored.
3 A wider definition that includes not only well-formed solutions and the
presence of users, but includes collectives, practices, materials and re-
sources that are present in a design endeavour at particular moments; in-
sofar as they could be potentially rendered as design-able or not. This also
opens the possibility of polycentric strategies to be acknowledged, instead
of centring inquiries and actions around a particular focus (the object, the
user, and her context or the process and the roles).
In most design research, the identities of those involved: designers, users,

and producers are usually considered stable, despite the interest in explor-
ing new roles (Redström 2008, Suchman 2007). Thus, in Article VI, we fol-
lowed Redström’s invitation to develop ways to explore “what it is that we
do rather than who we are” (2008 p:410) with respect to a design process in
order to avoid unproductive user-designer dichotomies. Based on our ex-
periences and in line with the accounts of Binder et al. (2011), we argued
that a design space is neither pre-existent nor static; rather, it emerges as
the presence of different designs, stakeholders, tools, technologies, and
materials, as well as social processes and agreements evolve. In this piece,
we introduced a preliminary definition of design space as “the space of po-
tentials that the available circumstances afford for the emergence of new de-
signs at multiple levels”. Put differently, this means that a design space is
not an abstract feature, but rather a relational quality among people, things,
and activities at particular times. Within such space, all those who are “de-
signing” make choices and eventually, instantiations of a design come to
being, transform, or even disappear. These are ongoing relationships that
precede and extend beyond any given design stage, and, as such, intention-
al design interventions need a more nuanced framework to locate, man-
age, and critically reflect on their collaborative nature on an ongoing basis.
Figure 7 illustrates a set of different versions of the design space and
suggests the contours for an expanded version of the design spaces avail-
able. The illustration aims at summarising central elements of the classi-
cal version of the design space, delimited by what surrounds an object as
understood by the detached work of a disembodied designer. The design
space in this view is only there to be grasped or affected in an ideal concept
design stage. The second version of the design space, typical of user cen-
tred design practice, seems to concentrate on the ways in which observing
use situations and contexts – via the work of a more embodied but still dis-
tant design team – is made possible. The third version relates to current
co-design and participatory design practices, whose design space version
focuses more on what is possible by the joint exploration in the process,
via the shared work of multiple co-designers who all have new roles. A
design space also visible at limited encounters that are staged by some
particular actors. A reframed notion of design space should recognize
more explicitly that there are multiple design spaces, and that such spac-
es come together through time, in the interactions of collectives, tools
and resources at hand. Through this recognition, design-in-use becomes
an important site for multiple actors, their social interactions with and
through technologies and processes to converge or be mobilized by dif-
ferent stakeholders, in an ongoing basis (Floyd & Twidale 2008).
What I am after is to elaborate in more detail, a nuanced conception
of design space(s) that is temporally expanded, situated, and attuned to
current insights of how design and innovation process actually unfold
and how we might imagine them anew. In order to update and elaborate
the proposal for such a conception of the design space, I will first turn
to my empirical cases to introduce the research design, the settings, the
materials, and the analytical approach that form the basis of the insights
presented in Chapter 4.
Figure 7 A glance at different versions

of a design space
Brief
User Time
Designer traditional view of design space

Object
Product
Time
user centered view of design space

User / context
Design
team
Roles Process
Time
participatory view of design space

Extended Prototype
design team
Tools
Collectives Resources Practices
Time
Materials Evolving roles
Design space(s)
design use design-in-use

3
Research design,
cases, and methods
research design, cases, and methods 63
This section presents the research design strategy followed and the em-
pirical materials gathered accordingly. First, I explain my general research
design, which weaves together design engagements as part of the research
strategy. Then, I provide an overview of the cases, the type of materials, and
the data accumulated through engagement with the participants in both
projects, and I describe briefly the main design devices we built. To close,
I recount my choice of analytical strategy.
3.1. Research design
My basic strategy draws on several methodological choices founded on a
pragmatic philosophy that is common to design research, although there
are varied flavours to it. A central tenet of this strategy can be formulated,
in Nelson and Stolterman’s words, as: “making meaning by causing things
to happen” (2002 p: 49). Some have placed the accent in the design “pro-
ject” as the variable that should drive the inquiry (Diaz-Kommonen 2002,
Findeli 1998, Findeli 2008), while others concentrate on highlighting, in
a different manner, the relationship between the activities of design and
of research (e.g. see discussions on Fallman 2008, Jonas 2007, Leinonen
2010), giving different priorities to each, depending on the type of engage-
ment or objectives. A more pragmatic proposition reframes these discus-
sions by proposing the existence of a general constructive design research
strategy (Koskinen et al. 2011). This means research projects are framed in
ways such that planning and doing are not separate and a central place is
given in the inquiry process to a construction30. This construction is usually

in the form of a prototype, even a concept of a product, a system, a space
or media (Koskinen 2008, Koskinen et al. 2011) that helps channelling
activities, questions. Because the construction is intentional, the prod-
uct of iterative reflection-in-action, it helps at the same time to articulate
hypotheses (Leinonen 2010).
Since my interest has been in examining ‘doings’, specifically the ways
in which designing can be enacted collectively in a comprehensive sense,
my main course of action has been engagement in practical design and
production work during my participation in two different design research
projects. Each design engagement was planned and conducted so that it
could generate opportunities for contributing to the design and devel-
opment of concrete constructions (e.g., concepts, scenarios, prototypes)
and their associated practices, in collaboration with others. I have care-
fully documented those processes and the results (e.g., design devices,
artefacts, scenarios, etc.). In doing that I been attentive to the particular
design practices that generate those results and to the everyday practices
those results aim to contribute to, as they pertain to the idea of communal
endeavours that I introduced in Chapter 1.
In using the term “practices,” I refer to those embodied, materially
mediated arrangements of human activities that are continually repro-
duced and that are shared and evolve in a variety of social settings (Schatz-
ki 2001). I follow the assumption that practices are organized through
practical understanding (Suchman et al. 1999) and constitute a kind of
silent and ubiquitous "consumer production" (De Certeau 1984). This
has been suggested as a useful entry point to understand interactions be-
tween design and use, beyond traditional designer-user dichotomies (see
e.g., Suchman et al. 1999, Kimbell 2012) in line with similar propositions
regarding the reconfiguration of dynamics of consumption and produc-
tion (Shove & Pantzar 2005) and new conceptualizations of the on-going
processes of innovation, which also happens in ‘what people do’ (see e.g.,
Hyysalo 2010, Shove et al. 2007).
30 Similar methodological concerns are presented in related fields, such as informa-

tion systems, where there are research methods under the rubric of constructive de-
sign research approach and design science research (see e.g., Hevner et al. 2004).
The concerns in this tradition focus more on how to scientifically validate the design
steps involved in making the construction (e.g., system).
At the same time, the constructions and the engagements in general

have provided insights into how to think about collaborative design, and
provided resources to try that out in practice. The insights I have gained
in these processes are structured and presented with the notion of the
design space framework. Therefore, in addition to the constructive de-
sign research strategy, I also borrow elements from action research tra-
dition (Lewin 1946) that are evident in the ways the broader projects were
framed. Both design cases have a background in the Participatory Design
approach, which has given a set of starting premises and tools for con-
ducting the projects (see Table 1: Entry points, setting and frameworks for
each engagement). On the one hand, pd has a history of Action research
oriented strategies (see Bannon & Ehn 2012, Spinuzzi 2005). With an Ac-
tion research approach the engagements are usually relying on a spiral
of steps, each of which is composed of a circle of planning, action, and
fact-finding about the results of the action aimed at “…the pursuit of prac-
tical solutions to issues of pressing concern to people” (Reason & Bradbury,
2001, p: 1). This is very compatible with the constructive design strategy,
as the research is at the same time providing some useful results (in this
case not only very concrete tools and media, but also ideas, scenarios and
other resources for action) for those engaged in the processes. On the
other hand, for the PD tradition, participants are actively influencing the
agendas and results of the engagement, since they are seen as “co-design-
ers” there is an inbuilt sensitivity to pay attention to, follow, and docu-
ment their design related activities (Spinuzzi 2005).
In taking a step back and comparing the engagements and carrying out
the analysis, at times I draw on elements that are closer to a case study
approach (Yin 2002, Stake 1994). I chose different cases to complement
my picture on the subject. By contrasting and probing these partly simi-
lar and partly different interventions, I wanted to shed light on a wider
phenomenon by illuminating some of its central parts. In other words,
by describing unique and specific events (instances of change), a whole
is explained by triangulating data from multiple sources and settings (Yin
2002). Concretely, it means that I have followed the development of these
interventions and uptake of the “designs” through a long-term commit-
ment to the sites of deployment (measured in years in both cases). I have
then reflected upon these engagements with the help of my peers and col-
laborators through several interconnected activities: joint analysis ses-
sions (via co-design workshops and project meetings), literature review in
current design research, and writing peer-reviewed articles and their fur-
ther discussion in conferences and seminars. This second activity weaves

together more clearly the theoretical reflections with the various design
choices made, making the comparison possible.
3.1. Cases: activities and materials

loppukiri co-housing community and miina
Loppukiri (in English: last spurt) is an alternative arrangement for senior
housing initiated and developed by the Active Seniors association31 in Hel-
sinki, Finland. For the activists involved the main motivation was to pro-
pose and try out ways of growing old that would be more communal, safe,
and appealing than a lonely flat yet more personal, intimate, and active
than the current senior service housing solutions in Finland32. The project
of the association was largely inspired by the Scandinavian co-housing
movement (e.g., McCammant et al. 1994) and in concrete by several Swed-
ish senior community housing experiments that became familiar to some
of the founding members of the association.
During the planning and construction years of Loppukiri, the Active
Senior association had to adapt general co-housing principles to the re-
alities of the Finnish context and in the process propose and experiment
with new service arrangements for elderly care. For this, they designed
and developed unique solutions ranging from ownership schemas for the
flats, organizational rules for the community of inhabitants, and ways of
cooperation with different parties and organizations that made it possible
to realize their vision in a feasible way33. Even though the project is far from
being perfect, it has nonetheless proven to be an important experience.
31 The Loppukiri house is located in the Arabianranta neighbourhood in Helsinki, a

relatively new regeneration district, which is also home to Aalto University School of
Arts, Design, and Architecture. More information about the Association, its goals,
and its current activities can be found on their website at www.aktiivisetseniorit.fi.
Unfortunately, not much information is available in English.
32 At the moment these are the basic, default arrangements that Finnish society seems
to provide (see e.g., Sonkin et al. 1999).
33 Dahlström & Minkkinen (2009) offer (in Finnish) a detailed account of the experience
from the point of view of two active members of the association who are current resi-
dents. The book documents the many processes and challenges that the association
faced, parts of the history of the project, and some of the collaborations they sought.
The book also gives practical advice and a navigational chart intended for others in-
terested in following their steps. Of related interest are the details of the collabora-
tive work developed with the architecture office in charge of the design of the building.
Loppukiri in a nutshell
Currently, the house is home to 70 people living in 58 compact apartments
with an average age of 60 years. The individual flats are smaller than nor-
mal, but the house has large common areas that include a library, a kitchen,
dining room, guestroom, a multipurpose activity room, laundry room, and
two saunas.
“We built at the same time a house and a community” (sm)
In order to keep an active life and continue building a strong community,

the inhabitants of Loppukiri have agreed on a series of principles for their
community: neighbourliness, self-help, community spirit, and open deci-
sion making processes. This is actualized in a series of practises aimed at
coordinating everyday life. They take care of the maintenance tasks of the
house themselves, prepare a shared daily meal that is enjoyed by all those
that registered for it, everyone is encouraged to nurture other social ac-
tivities like reading circles, yoga sessions, trips, and so on, and the house
and their common areas are used as a resource for community life and
interactions with the surrounding locality. At the logistical level, the teams
rotate responsibilities such as cooking, cleaning and maintaining the house,
and shopping. In addition, there are also several working groups to take
care and develop certain specific aspects like: communications, coopera-
tion partners, parties, and information systems. These groups guarantee
the operations of the house and try to ensure everybody’s participation.
Decision-making is organized through an association (created based on the
experiences of the Active Seniors Association but which includes only the
residents of the house).
The project of the Active Seniors to explore an alternative arrangement for

growing old together in Finnish society served as basis for a long-term de-
sign engagement between members of the association and our research
group. The collaboration started in an open manner early on when plans
for the house were being sketched in 2000. The collaboration continued
– in different shapes and funding instruments – throughout the construc-
tion of the house and has been active on and off since the seniors moved
into the house in 2006. Table 5 gives an overview of the materials and data
I rely on and indicates the activities that generated them.
A salient entry point to this case is the design and implementation
of an intranet type of solution for Loppukiri, which the seniors named
activity / method data/materials stakeholders year
Participating in meet- •• Participant obser •• Field notes and ob- ~ Active seniors as- 2000–
ings of the association, vations servations sociation (as) and 2009
visiting the house, taking •• Semi-structured •• Audio recordings Loppukiri inhabitants
part in events organ- interviews •• Miina use logs and •• Designers /devel
ized, following the use feedback opers
of prototypes in context •• Screen-shots
and gathering contextual •• as communication
materials materials (newslet-
ters and presenta-
tions)
•• A book written by two
of the as members
Self-documentation •• Group discussions •• Probe contents (pic- as (~6-10) 2002

probe samples of media •• Design exercises (e.g. tures, texts, photos)
sharing practices, net- building a collage, •• Analysis posters
works and a day in the making a poster) •• Field notes and ob-
life activities (3) •• Affinity diagrams and servations
collages
Workshops on shared •• Group discussion •• Pre task materials, as Volunteers (~6-10) 2002,
resources, spaces, •• Design Exercises summary posters, •• Designers /devel 2004,
coordination practices, (e.g. card sorting) •• Pictures, opers 2005
safe and security, calen- •• Audio/video record-
dar, remembering and ing
reminding (6) •• Field notes and ob-
servations
Various experimental •• Field trials (creating •• Repurposed software as Volunteers (~8) 2003,
trials using prototypes content with protos) protos it as working group 2005
for sharing information, •• Presentation mate
cooking and gardening rials
knowledge (4) •• Use logs and feed-
back
Workshops to look at •• Group discussion •• Pre task material •• it as working group 2006,
concrete prototypes and •• Episodic interviews •• Pictures, (+ other as volun- 2007
uses -paper or function- •• Audio recording teers)
ing demo (3) •• Field notes and ob- •• Designers /devel
servations opers
•• User created content
Following the evolution •• Tracking and analys- •• Issue tracker content •• Designers /devel 2005–
of the artefacts ing design decisions and bug collector opers 2009
•• Documenting evolu- •• Excel documents •• it as working group
tion of artefacts produced by as
•• Concept maps •• Screenshots
•• Episodic interviews •• User created content
Table 5 Data sources for Case A

Miina34, their Everyday Life Management System, and which in our re-
search group we called DailyWorks 35. This prototype concretized – in code
– some of the organizing principles and social practices of the communi-
ty and the envisioned communal endeavours that we explored together.
Over the years, it has been possible to observe instances of how the plat-
form has been hacked, evolved, or served as inspiration and playground
for other developments inside the seniors’ project. In the same vein we
are also witnessing how it has also been partly abandoned as a result of
both its inherent limitations and new circumstances.
Miina in a nutshell
Miina is a collection of web-based tools for the Loppukiri community, which
assists in the negotiation, coordination and sharing of everyday life activi-
ties and information. Using Miina, residents of the house (and others with
special rights) can set up personal and shared calendars to organize com-
munal events and happenings (dinners, theatre trips, etc.), allocate and
manage household maintenance tasks (cooking, cleaning etc.) and reserve
and manage shared resources (sauna, laundry room, sewing machine, etc.).
Furthermore, Miina offers a way to create shared repositories of informa-
tion and ideas that can be designed and maintained by the community itself
(examples of some of the implemented resources include: recipe book, a
general bulletin board, a flea market announcement space, a simple log).
The software is available under an Open Source license under the generic
term of DailyWorks (dw) at http://arki.uiah.fi/adik. However, development
is no longer active.

34 This is in honour of Miina Sillanpää (1866 – 1952) who was one of the first nineteen
female members of the Parliament of Finland and Finland's first female minister.
During her life, she was active in various areas, including journalism and politics.
With their choice, they wanted to point at the fact that the system should do almost
”as much as Miina did” during her lifetime.
35 Our team decided to give the software a different name in order to abstract it from
Miina, the specific implementation and configuration for the seniors. In doing so,
we wanted to keep an eye on use cases relevant to groups of friends and clubs, resi-
dents associations, extended families, food buying circles, day-care circles, and oth-
ers that could potentially benefit from a similar platform as the one we were devel-
oping with the seniors.
Components:
Core: Operates as framework for other products and takes care of common
use cases such as login and navigation. Other products and components are
able to be plugged into it.
Personal Calendar: provides each member with a calendar in which they
can organize private and public events, register for community activities,
follow their reservations, and subscribe to other calendars available.
Group Calendar: a shared calendar for planning, informing and registering
for interesting events.
Dining Calendar: a special kind of calendar for planning and registering for
shared meals. This calendar provides different reporting options that allow
the community to plan shopping and organize billing activities if needed. A
dining calendar can be connected to a shared recipe book to create the
menus and organize the cooking and shopping.
Resource Calendar: another special kind of calendar that can be created
for each shared resource, allowing the community to set rules for their use
and for managing their reservation or availability.
Profile: collects the personal information of each member of the community.
Cardbox: a generic tool that can be used to create, group, and organize in-
formation into meaningful collections with unique structures. Each CardBox
can have its own structure and fields that can be changed and evolve easily
without the need of programming.
Technical Implementation:
dw is built using Zope 2.9. It also takes advantage of code from other exist-
ing Zope products, namely CalCore, CalZope and cpssharedCalendar.
citizens, city officials and urban mediator

Urban Mediator related engagement has its most concrete origin in a Eu-
ropean project we were involved with aimed at exploring solutions rooted
in Information and Communication Technologies (ict) “[to] help raise
productive participation by citizens in how their cities are managed and to
help city administrations provide cost effective, location-aware services to ci-
tizens” (Jung, 2008, p. 2). At that point in time, in Helsinki, as was the case
in many other places and certainly for the other cities participating in the
project, e-government initiatives seemed to carry the inherent assump-
tion that, by providing a sufficiently overarching city system (e.g., a new
issue reporting and tracking platform) or a new user-friendly entry point
(e.g., one-stop government services shop), an increase in “participation”
would automatically follow or “participation” would be fulfilled. In con-

trast, our main goal was to facilitate more experimentation around what
participation might mean in Helsinki through a prototype online platform
for sharing information we called Urban Mediator (um)36.
Our activities thus centred on the study of practices, technologies, and
socio-technical arrangements for creating and sharing location-based in-
formation about the urban environment. Table 6 presents an overview of
the materials, data, and activities involved in this case.
A springboard for some of the concrete interventions was the search
for ways to address a simple observation: conducting any kind of experi-
ments that could connect citizens’ input and knowledge with the knowl-
edge and/or responsibilities of city officials was not very much encour-
aged neither by the systems nor the practices in place on both sides. Our
evolving working hypothesis was that by offering through um interfaces
for the data (in this case locative media) of a variety of actors, we could
create conditions for more experimentation. Experimenting with com-
munal endeavours could also allow participants to understand in more
precise ways the implications of citizen participation (e.g., citizens loca-
tive media creation practices, initiatives, and contributions) and of an
eventual collaboration between city officials and citizens.

Urban Mediator (um) in a nutshell
um is a web-based framework that provides a way to create, obtain, and
share location-based information and tag it. This collected information (um
Points) can be organized according to topics of interest (um Topics), which
can be set up and maintained by any registered user (citizens or city officials).
um uses a map-portrayal service as a means for representing the location-

based information and complements it with a set of tools to help process,
share, and organize the points. um also provides tools for exporting data
from um and for connecting um to other sources of data. These tools include
um Feeds (e.g.: rss, Atom/Georss, kml) and um Widgets, which allow
some of the functionality of UM and the data it contains to be used or embed-
36 The initial concept used in the project proposal for the eu was based on ideas pre-
sented in the ma final degree project of my colleague Joanna Saad-Sulonen, as well
as on the long standing interest of our research group leader Kari-Hans Kommonen
on the idea of an urban ”bug tracker”.
activity/ method data/materials stakeholders year
~ Contextual studies Semi-structured theme •• Field notes and ob- Arabianranta Residents 2006–
and interviews interviews servations gathered Arabianranta Parents 2008
Participant observation in research group Associations
site. 5 Arabianranta e-mod
erators (active citizens
•• Audio recordings that volunteer to mod-
erate digital bulletins
of the buildings in the
neighbourhood)
10 City officials (differ-
ent dept.)
Workshops for mapping •• Group discussion Sketches and maps 3 e-moderators 2007
practices related to •• Collages made (Paper map, 4 residents
location-based infor stickers and tasks). •• Designers /devel
mation (2) Repurposed software opers
protos
Experimental trials for •• Group discussion •• um early seed proto- 3 e-moderators 2007
gathering and sharing •• Collages type + scenarios 10 teenagers (school
location-based infor •• User created content class and one teacher)
mation (3) 1 employee of the local
development agency in
Arabianranta
Workshops charting •• Group discussion um prototypes and 3 local development 2006–

emerging practices •• Affinity diagrams um online service, agency employees 2007
Mixing the use of proto- •• Episodic interviews other related services 2 active residents lob-
types and workshops (e.g., Arabianranta bying for a community
for ideation (4) portal, city depart- house
ment website), and 2 city officials from the
paper prototypes with planning department
scenarios of use and 1 from the city’s
research unit
2 employees at the
local contemporary art
museum
Cases with the city of •• Participant obser •• User created content 1 city official (public 2007–
Helsinki: vation in um online service works department) 2010
•• Episodic interviews (beta) and external 1 city official (city’s
Bunny rabbits in Helsinki online forum research unit)
(5 months), Malminkar 2 city officials (planning
•• Content of websites
tano traffic safety plan- department)
ning (3 months), Skate (inc. Helsinki city 2 city officials (youth
park design and location cms) department)
•• Screen-shots ~ Citizens (in general)
Independent cases and Use logs, screen-shots, ~ Citizens, planners, 2008–

other short experiments feedback feature of um city employees 2010
(alpha and beta)
Following the evolution •• Tracking and analys- •• Issue tracker content •• Designers /devel 2006–
of the artefacts ing design decisions and bug collector opers 2009
•• Concept maps •• Excel documents
produced by officers
•• Screenshots
•• User created content
Table 6 Data sources in Case B

ded in other online places. The user interface is available for pc and mobile
browsers. There was also an experimental mobile application developed.
um is meant to: 1) support the creation of repositories for sharing annotated

locations in the spirit of openness and user-created content; 2) permit the
aggregation of local and external information sources by means of harvest-
ing and/or syndicating existing data, which in turn allow for the reuse and
cross-fertilization of information; 3) provide tools to host both official and
public initiatives or “projects” for location-based information collection; 4)
facilitate the creation of explicit channels to other systems, such as public
authorities back-end systems, in a lightweight manner.
The software is available under an open source license at http://mlab.taik.fi/

urbanmediator/.
Currently there are two active um instances on our university servers: the um
Helsinki (uses map data provided by the City of Helsinki), and the um Helsin-
ki Open (uses a freely available map data from the OpenStreetMap project)
Technical implementation:
um server side is built using web.py 2.4, a python web framework that uses
Mysql database. Additional code for the geodesic calculations and carto-
graphic transformations is based on ElementTree, pil, and PyProject.
3.2. Methods and analysis

A main pursuit for this research has been to connect design-in-use activi-
ties to professional design practices and further link them to collaborative,
open-ended design processes in everyday life contexts. This aim entails
an iterative and exploratory approach that is at the same time construc-
tive and descriptive. I consider the sites, tools, media, and practices that
relate to communal endeavours interesting places to study the dynamics
of collaborative design, not because they will be representative of all de-
sign situations, but because collaboration in these settings can be avoided
neither in design nor in use. Having two differently positioned communal
endeavours allows me to compare and offer generalizations that could be
of use to other collaborative design settings.
As an active participant in both the management of the design projects
and in design and production, I have been able to collect, first hand, a
large body of empirical materials in close collaboration with a variety of

stakeholders. These materials have served as a springboard and setting
for the development of the themes and concerns, as well as for interven-
tions and further data gathering. As presented in Table 5 and Table 6, the
diverse body of empirical and design material which I rely on has been
collected through diverse means.
At the onset of each engagement, participant observation and semi-
structured interviews allowed us to get an initial entry point to the de-
sign cases and thus set the initial framework for the interventions (design
ones). The main aim was to get a picture of current practices and provide
a common handle for broader discussion on future practices as well. As
the projects developed and more concrete interventions and prototypes
emerged, workshops, design sessions, and group discussions also be-
came a primary means of driving the design work, and by the same to-
ken the main sources for material and data collection. Along the process,
I wrote field notes, collecting in them my observations, questions, and
sketches. I have also made use of notes and materials created by other
members of the research group as we had a practice to share our notes
in a common wiki to help us in moving the practical production work
forward. In addition to those notes, I have also stored and consulted the
e-mail exchanges with key collaborators. During workshops where con-
versation and discussion was intermingled with actual making (collages,
story boards, etc.) and construction (paper prototypes, talk out load ses-
sions), it was not feasible to write down notes all the time, so I did it as
part of our team debriefing session, usually conducted immediately after
an event, visit, or trial. Depending on each occasion, the team consisted
of designers, software developers, and social scientists, whose presence
and insights I have used as resources. While workshops and working ses-
sions were sometimes recorded (audio or video recordings), it would have
been unfeasible to include all the hundreds of hours that accumulated af-
ter the years. I have used these recordings to update my field notes37, the
wiki development environment, and the software issue tracker.
As the engagements proceeded, participant observation in the work-
shops has been complemented by episodic interviews and a variety of ac-
37 Done in cases where my own role in the events as participant did not allow me to
take detailed notes. On some occasions, they have also served as back up documen-
tation in cases where we had dissimilar observations among the team.
tivities linked with collaborative prototyping and deployment of the work-

ing prototypes in the actual contexts of each communal endeavour. Thus,
I have also taken advantage of materials generated as by-products of the
use of actual prototypes. Since many of the interventions and the two main
platforms (design devices) are digital, in both cases I had access to the con-
tent created by end users and to the logs of the systems. When looking at
the evolution of these artefacts, I have recorded how the artefacts changed
over time by: 1) documenting the scenarios, the results of the design tasks,
and artefacts made in the workshops; 2) Observing the use of the proto-
type platforms and taking screenshots of them at regular intervals; 3) tak-
ing notes and following the issue tracker and the bug collector of the soft-
ware development environments. Through what has been recorded there,
it is possible to partially reconstruct the evolution of the features in the
code, as well as track many design conversations and the resulting deci-
sions with a good level of detail. In addition to these, I have also collected
examples that illustrate important turning points and illustrative contri-
butions made in the prototypes by taking screenshots of them.
I am (painfully) aware that the amount of materials and data generated
by the closely intertwined design projects and research work can be prob-
lematic. On the one hand, in the midst of advancing practical production,
securing deadlines, and trying to be truthful to commitments done to
the partners, it is possible that I have not been so careful and could have
compromised the rigor of data collection. On the other hand, as I have
been an active participant and interventionist, it might have been diffi-
cult to avoid certain issues like taking explanations at face value without
questioning the underlying assumptions, especially when some analyses
are based not only on “materialized” accounts of what went on, but also
on my personal involvement and judgment of what is important to do
and follow. This might mean that at times I could adapt the materials to
changing theoretical perspectives or interests. I tried to minimise that by
following closely instances in which the evolution and change of the ar-
tefacts were discussed, keeping consistency in my notes and sharing my
observations and insights with my peers and collaborators at different
points in time. I have also followed the process from other perspectives
(looking at the e-mail exchange archive, the issue tracker, and our shared
wiki or by conducting informal interviews about my interpretations).
The general analytical strategy I have followed consists basically of bring-
ing together emergent themes as the engagements proceeded and then
looking at those themes across the materials and data collected in both
cases. Both for purposes of design work and analysis, I (in collaboration
and independently) have found several key themes and critical incidents
or turning points in the interviews, observation notes, and changes in the
artefacts. I have compared systematically the themes and their recurrenc-
es across different materials at different points in time: 1) when planning
for new co-design workshops and field trials; 2) every time we planned a
new release of the prototypes; 3) while writing the articles. This means
that there have been various loops and iterations between the activities,
which have offered further possibilities to reflect on them and check their
persistence and evolution, as well as to evaluate and develop the types of
interventions and “constructions” to realize in close collaboration with
different stakeholders (Stake 1994).
The engagement with the seniors’ growing old together project clearly
precedes and feeds in many ways – conceptually and practically – the loc-
ative media sharing interventions done through um. By the same token,
the experiences and analysis processes of the second case have informed
and challenged the analytical insights produced with the materials from
the seniors’ case, which had already been carried out for the most part
when the second case was at the height of its development. Accordingly, I
have done reflection and analysis both at the level of the cases themselves
and also across them, triangulating the sources and my insights to the
furthest extent possible. This is both a strongpoint of the work and a pos-
sible limitation. It does show the persistence of certain themes and the
relevance of the collective design spaces – as discussed in this work – in
collaborative design from different point of views. However, both cases
are also peculiar instances of communal endeavours made possible by
particular social, cultural, and economical conditions in Finland.
4
Expanding
design space(s)
expanding design space(s) 79
Having located the territory to which my research contributes, introduced

the need for a framework to locate and reflect on co-design interventions
over time, and presented the cases and research approach, I will revisit the
material more thoroughly in this section, in terms of their design spaces
and the supporting co-design strategies implicated. I will start by outlin-
ing some of the different configurations of the design space that emerged
throughout and the foci they have had at different points in time and at
the intersection of other stakeholders’ projects and ours. By highlighting
some points from the articles, I look at both cases together and present
the findings in relation to three aspects: space, time, and things.
Articles I, III, and V introduce the settings, constituency building ac-
tivities, and access design experiments that lay the common ground for
the seniors’ case. I have identified how instead of storming in to perform
a joint large co-design project, we started with a small joint exercise that
could help us all identify the constituency and define targets for design
engagement, a sort of access design. At that point, the seniors’ working
group collaborating with us envisioned that a website for their project
was a subtle way to encourage members to use computers more. We rec-
ommended adding an intranet with different levels of access to build
new communication channels for the community, as they were still dis-
persed and getting to know each other. Trust and knowledge of each oth-
er shaped the initial configuration of the design space by having an open-
ended design agenda focusing on the current and future practices of the
community from the onset.
In the case of um, no particular community existed a priori like it did

in the case of the seniors; rather, um prefigured certain practices. In oth-
er words, its aim was to offer a platform where the practices might come
into being later on through the coming together of new communities and
collectives via initiatives of teams and groups. Similar to the way that the
seniors’ Loppukiri project functions, um can be seen as an attempt to re-
search alternative arrangements for carrying out communal endeavours
in a specific domain by developing an experimental platform and then
cultivating38 micro interventions around it.
Articles II and IV thus offer a parallel account of the um case in which
identifying the emergence of a constituency and defining targets for de-
sign engagement were even more relevant and also were achieved in part
by early “access design” experiments. Article II concentrates on details
of how the process started by building prototypes using repurposed soft-
ware so that we could quickly start workshops with different stakeholders.
With the help of those working prototypes, real location-based informa-
tion and content was created in an experimental, hands-on, and reflective
way with a range of people (through shorter access design experiments
with residents and activists’ projects). Later on, these design seeds were
augmented through conscious interaction design decisions (e.g., giving
predominance to the idea of widgets and feeds that could populate other
services) to slowly emerge an in-between infrastructure where participa-
tory projects could be constructed (um). The first larger trial of um made
in collaboration with a city officer had a similar role of “access design” in
relation to broader processes inside the city administration. In that case,
this particular officer was taking part in a project addressing the response
the administration should take to the increase in numbers of non-indig-
enous rabbits in the city, which among other things were linked to dam-
age to the vegetation. The research was intended to feed a report about
the matter to be used by the city’s policy makers. Officials had some sci-
entific information and data but wanted to get first-hand accounts from
people about the areas where they were encountering rabbits and get a
better grasp of the attitudes and opinions of the citizens regarding what
should be done with the animals, as this was a controversial issue. Via
um we manage to collect in easy and manageable way detailed accounts
38 See (Aanestad 2002) for a discussion on cultivating as a metaphor for infrastruc

turing work.
of the amount of rabbits seen in the city, their eating habits and behav-
iour and location information39. The um board also created a link to the
general discussion forum on the Neighbourhood Association of Helsinki,
which partly contributed to channel and awaken the public discussion
over how the city should deal with the rabbit problem. Thanks to this pos-
itive experience, new opportunities appeared for further collaborative de-
velopment and experimental trials within the administration.
Collaboration strategies in both cases included setting up and carrying
out traditional co-design techniques like joint production of scenarios,
demos, concepts, and probes through shared workshops and events that,
in line with previous research (e.g., Westerlund 2009), provided scaffolds
and created conditions for the initial exploration of a common design
space, in this case, not so much as iterations but as a way to open up the
design space in a deliberative way and keep design moving. This is obvi-
ous in the way that some of the ideas for the communal endeavours that
Miina was built upon have roots in a variety of design seeds emerging from
these early collaborations. Articles III and V discussed the ways we collec-
tively mapped and discussed the kinds of practices that could take place
in Loppukiri and how certain issues gain focus from practical arrange-
ments and rules all the way to new ideas about what to do and how to relate
to others. In aiming for a long term engagement, design seeds were plant-
ed through concrete access design contributions, as well as with more
general ideation activities that later generated new venues for collabora-
tion and helped participants explore and identify relevant design spaces
for them and how those could overlap with design spaces relevant for us
in terms of e.g., project funding.
Another type of design seeds provided for what can be called indige-
nous design 40 spin-offs, meaning ideas that take shape and evolve outside
of the specific design engagement and are usually implemented with re-
sources within reach, often involving workarounds, social arrangements,
and commitments and technology (Article V). In the case of the seniors, ear-
ly propositions for developing an “on duty porter” video system, ended up
evolving into the idea of an “on duty” role for members of the house who
39 um tools provided import possibilities for the City’s own geographical Information
system (gis) format.
40 I take here the term ”indigenous designs” as an extension of the concept presented
in (Björgvinsson & Hillgren 2009) and a related discussion on ready-mades by the
same authors earlier (Hillgren & Björgvinsson 2002).
could both greet visitors (porter) and, more importantly, be available to

any resident in need of help. The seniors implemented this by simply pur-
chasing a dedicated mobile phone line and rotating it among the residents.
In later research, we have also identified similar spin offs for the case of
um and participatory urban planning (see also Saad-Sulonen et al. 2012)
Other types of design seeds also grew as scaffolds and triggers for open
agenda and as concrete design and prototyping activities later on. Both
cases show some of the many interesting and crucial co-design opportu-
nities that emerged in use when a concrete working intervention – Miina
or um – was deployed and how we all took care of it. In both cases, efforts
turned toward a type of in-between infrastructuring work deployed to
help bridge the role of those concrete interventions in the total horizon of
the communal endeavour practices. To that end, Articles III and V detail
some of the challenges in the uptake, appropriation, and design-in-use
of Miina and Articles II and IV details those challenges that arose the case
of um. In design-in-use, new aspects of communal endeavours are made
visible; thus, the design space manifests differently, both in terms of a
more nuanced understanding of the practices involved not only in situ-,
and due to the possibilities and limitations the design interventions cre-
ate. In this case, both practices and Miina or um themselves were trans-
formed through the possibilities people found for reinterpretation, ad-
aptation, and reinvention in the design space of their communal endeav-
ours. These transformations included the image of Miina as a calendar
towards that of an every day life management system (Article III) and then
a sandbox like repository (Article V). At the same time, um continuous-
ly morphed from collections of points or simple requests (Article II) to-
wards more shared and full fledged projects and initiatives (Article IV).
The design-in-use activities included co-optation and hacking of fea-
tures to collectively build proofs of concepts, e.g., a notice board proto-
type out of recipe book functionality in the case of Miina. This was done
in order to explain their idea to us in a more concrete way and at the same
time to try out the solution for themselves. Collaborative design activi-
ties also included artful integration41 and weaving Miina and um togeth-
er with other analogue systems (paper calendars, notice boards, and so
on) or legacy infrastructures (city gis system, neighbourhood association
website, etc.), developing social agreements to handle things that were
41 In the sense of ”artful integrations” used by Suchman (2002)

too cumbersome to change in code (Articles IV and V). In the end, these
produced temporarily workable configurations to make certain practices
possible by keeping commitments open to new developments. Being in
the field, following the deployments of the prototypes in their context of
use, at least once in a while, was certainly needed.
Seen over time, as design collectives, in both cases, we were always
engaged in explorations and interventions at different levels of a design
space, ranging from technical minutia to supporting and facilitating the
extension of practices and even their understanding. For example, Article
IV links some of the interventions made with um to a broader understand-
ing of active forms of citizenship instead of only participation. In that ar-
ticle, three instances of design-in-use design space explorations with um
are recalled. The first was the side project/game initiated by two active
citizens documenting abandoned cars in the city of Helsinki and their
experimentations in documenting graffiti art done in collaboration with
a museum exhibition that presented both interesting and conflicting out-
comes. Although it was important for many people to be assured that the
“city” (or someone) was truly listening and able to act upon feedback from
citizens, the ultimate consequences of these moves were difficult to pre-
dict and not always necessarily positive. The second was an intervention
on the planning of new skateboard parks in Helsinki, which was carried out
in conjunction with the youth department of the city and revealed seeds of
possible communal endeavour approaches with skateboarders but lacked
the support of a larger planning framework that would have made it pos-
sible. The third example made use of a citizen led initiative to document
garbage in the city. The locative media collected with um framed the issue
of garbage in the city as one that requires questioning relationships and
attitudes between citizens and pointing out things that need to be nego-
tiated not only with the responsible city department (that do not pick up
the trash), but also with fellow citizens (who are not reasonable and throw
trash everywhere). A result achieved by the experiences, albeit in modest
terms, was to make visible/accessible new dimensions of the design space
of “citizen participation” by making concrete a variety of aspects (e.g., open
data, interoperability, sustainable participation, etc.) not recognized by
stakeholders in the same way (see also Saad-Sulonen et al. 2012).
Both these communal endeavours and their supporting arrangements
are examples of experimentations and propositions for the emergence and
relevance of collaborative strategies when framing issues, the necessity to
deal with and elaborate more sophisticated ideas about ownership, and
the reusability of data and information systems. They also comment and
participate in the discussion on new divisions of labour and responsibili-
ties between citizens and civil servants, mediated by new technological
arrangements that have implications for broader issues like governance42.
4.1. Design space
As the accounts of the cases testify, over time, the composition, evolution,
and unfolding of design spaces change in multiple dimensions. We can
see this in the instances of the design processes of both Miina and um and
also, more generally, in the settings of the cases themselves. It is change
in the everyday practices that is the targeted outcome of design, and those
practices by their nature intertwine systems that are simultaneously af-
fected by other developments aside from design. By the same token, the
available space for design is not limited to designed objects. It also in-
cludes immaterial designs that affect how social arrangements, norms,
timing, and pacing of everyday routines are carried out.
Following the work done in Article VI, the notion of design space repre-
sents the interplay of possibilities, practices, partly assembled technologies,
developing competencies, and social arrangements that are the basis for on-
going design choices and experimentation at multiple levels of engagement.
To make the claims concrete, I will now introduce the first elements of a
framework for understanding the changing faces of design space(s) and
relate it to the experiences in the cases. I will do this first via an illustra-
tion (Figure 8) that brings forth some of the main concepts of the frame-
work. This diagram has been iterated further, so it slightly differs from
the version introduced in Article VI. However, its main spirit and idea
remain the same.
In Figure 8, the horizontal axis is meant to capture Time, where a de-
sign engagement moves back and forth, not only linearly ahead, but in-
stead in a sort of continuum loop between design, use, and design-in-use.
This axis is meant to underscore also the existence of distributed and mul-
tiple design spaces (potentials for designs to emerge). The vertical axis
presents an account of design activities or, to put it simply, the kinds of
things that people do which make design take place and which have been
identified through the engagements. They are called design activities be-
42 An interest we delve deeper into later (Botero et al. 2012a). See also Pestoff (2010),
Back to Design
(e.g. as new major
release)
Re-integrate
social practices
Make social
agreements
Create Spin offs / Forks

workarounds (other alternative
developments)
Configure / Personalize
Integrate
Assemble
components
Aggregate / remix
design activities (what people do)

Use modules
(libraries, sets,
collections)
Build modules
from scratch time
(spiral, not linear)
V 0.16 Based on (Botero, Kommonen & Marttila 2010)
Figure 8 Scope of design activities and time (timing) affect the shape
and visibility of design space(s) in a communal endeavour
cause – and this is my first claim – these activities, I maintain, have de-
sign-related implications.
In this diagram, I want to illustrate that the location of a collaborative
engagement and the “shape” of a particular design space at a particular
moment (represented loosely by the grey bubbles) change as both prac-
tices and technologies are aged together – Article V. As the conditions that
surround a given practice and its related artefacts change over time, this
also reflects on how a design space transforms. That is, there are contrac-
tion and expansion dynamics at play. The scope and shape can also be af-
fected by the types of infrastructuring, interventions, and things that collab-
orative design activities create, as presented in Articles II, IV, and V. Thus,
my second claim is that design interventions at all levels and at different
points of the continuum can make “slices” of the design space more ex-
plicitly amenable to collaboration – sometimes making that particular
design space more obvious/evident for the people involved. Conversely,
design interventions can also close some other slices and might pose con-
straints in building new relationships. It is at the same time about cut,
continuity, and change.
I will now continue by defining precisely what each of the activities
along the vertical axis refers to:
- Build modules: This refers to design decisions and explorations that affect
technology choices, materials, and production tools, sometimes with im-
portant consequences resonating all the way to the other activities (Büscher
et al. 2009). Here, unprocessed materials or issues such as overall composi-
tion are the main focus of the design activities. In interaction design for new
media, the actual writing of code and the abstraction process required for
this (including understanding of algorithms, data, and information manage-
ment forms) are at the core of the activities. These types of activities result-
ed in the various custom codes that actually make DailyWorks and um what
they are (on top of the existing modules provided by Zope or web.py)43.
- Composing from modules and libraries: Seasoned designers know that

a lot of the practical design work is carried out by carefully choreographing
the interactions of diverse elements from a catalogue of predefined mod-
43 More detailed technical discussions about the related design decisions of the cases
are condensed in other articles that are not part of this compilation (see Suzi et al.
2009 and Botero et al. 2007).
ules and libraries – that is, materials or ideas that have been processed
somehow (e.g., a wood panel instead of just wood). The aim of these types
of design activities are thus to produce a coherent and more or less self-
standing whole, a composition, that performs a function relevant to some
group of people and at the same time makes use of reasonable resources.
In new media, this is where different software elements are composed
into applications, taking advantage of already existing underlying modular
software libraries. Here, the application domain requirements need to be
kept closer and building prototypes and mock-ups are important to test
ideas and to see which libraries are needed and what modules should be
relied on. Having and giving access to open Application Programming Inter-
faces (apis) for resulting designs is an emerging line of concern for these
types of design activities. In the cases analysed in this work, we relied a lot
on protocols, specifications, and ready made components that provided
streamlined data or services for our designs, namely frameworks like Zope
or web.py that form the basis of the platforms prototyped. These modules
are available with open source licenses and have active developer commu-
nities. In building on top of them we wanted to secure some level of inde-
pendence and continuity for our efforts, beyond a specific r&d project, try-
ing to stretch (theoretically at least) the possibilities for design-in-use.
- Assemble components: These types of design activities customize and

expand a design by including components that link it to existing systems, a
product platform, or the environment. In the case of new media, design de-
cisions that include bringing plug-ins to add new capabilities and create lo-
calized manifestations of a design are located in this layer. Recent develop-
ments that relate to new media design include supporting this type of (soft-
ware) design activities without the need of extensive programming experi-
ence (see, e.g., MacLean et. al. 1990, Henderson & Kyng 1991 Nardi 1993,
Scheible 2011). In general, the discussion of providing toolkits so that other
non-experts can design their own tools, systems, and support mechanisms,
or at least customize ready-made systems for more specific purposes, will
belong partly to this level. In the two cases presented here, these activities
became sites of constant negotiation and active co-design both at design
time and, very evidently, during design-in-use. Design choices exemplified
in the last data container component for Miina an evolution from a custom
system (open to design by coding) to an assemblage system (open to de-
sign by assembling components without coding (Article III and V); extensi-
ble libraries in um are examples of this (Article II).
- Aggregate/remix: These activities address decisions and choices involved

in composing from a mix of different “wholes”, each bringing along certain
capabilities, and are not necessarily compatible by default. With regards to
new media, recent developments in Internet applications (and a representa-
tive feature of the so-called Web 2.0 phenomenon) create new service de-
signs by aggregating selected information from other web services or media
content from different sources. This phenomenon is sometimes referred to
as a “mash-up”. Today, there is a lot of interest in developing skills for this
type of activity (Floyd et al. 2007), whose design rationale has been described
as opportunistic (e.g., Hartman et al. 2008) and emergent (Floyd & Twidale
2008). In my cases, it is easy to identify the ways in which these types of
design-in-use activities help collectively prototype ideas; Take for example
how the various possibilities for combining the widgets and feeds of um to
create a distributed strategy became evident to stakeholders – Article II.
Another example of remixing activities are evident in the ways um and Miina
components were used to achieve concept prototyping at use sites, notably
the seniors’ hacking the recipe book to build and experiment with a notice
board that would support their information sharing practices – Article IV.
- Integrate: These activities involve design decisions for selecting, allocating,

interfacing, and, above all, weaving together different platforms and systems
to achieve some overarching goal. Currently, this is a fairly reactive design
practice as the resulting designs are the particular patchworks and quilts
(to use other evocative metaphors) that make everyday practices possible.
Design activities can involve selecting and shopping (Robertson 1998) and
particular ways of linking things (automatically, if one had the know-how and
the access to the adequate tools or if it would be allowed by standards or
policy. In new media, design activities for integration manifest themselves,
on the one hand, in expert patchwork prototyping (Twidale & Floyd 2008)
and on the other hand, in lay practices of copy-pasting and linking informa-
tion by hand from one device or system to another to temporarily tie them
together, an alternative for when one lacks skills like programming or ade-
quate tools. An example from my materials is illustrated by the intertwined
paper interfaces of the digital calendars in Miina used to reserve resources
and register to a dinner event – Article IV. The enabling possibilities that it
offers – if adequately supported – is illustrated more through the availability
of conversion mechanisms for data feeds in um that made possible import-
ing citizen gathered data into the city systems in some of the experiments
realized that combine it with other systems – Article II and Article IV.
- Configure/personalize: Once things are temporally integrated, tweaks

and bricolage strategies (Leví-Strauss 1968, Büscher et al. 2001) emerge to
appropriate and inhabit emerging configurations and make the necessary
adjustments to local settings. In contrast to aggregation and integration,
configuration and personalization are more recurrent; they require the pati-
na of time and awareness of the specific surroundings. In the case of new
media and software-based systems, these activities include configuring set-
tings, tweaking a particular instance so that it deals with information that is
context dependent, often quite personal and whose relevance becomes
clear as time passes. This is a typical area where more and more end-users
and communities engage in unrecognized design-related activities. In here
many of the particular settings and arrangements that differentiate Daily-
Works from Miina and the generic um to the different instances that exist
are obvious places to look at.
- Create workarounds: Workarounds refer to the shortcuts and bypasses

developed to overcome shortcomings of a particular configuration (c.f. Gas-
ser 1986; Pollock 2005). They are design related activities that dynamically
attempt to weave particular artefacts – or collections of them – together
with existing collective and personal ways of doing things, mostly to tran-
scend what for some reason or another is not supported (technical incom-
patibility, policies, regulations, etc.). Thus, important design choices result
from these activities; however, in most cases this is a reactive practice. Un-
fortunately, opportunities for reflecting on the implications of these types
of decisions are not necessarily present by default (Floyd & Twidale 2008),
making this a part of the design space crucial to making it more visible and
amenable to more collaborative strategies. An illustrative case is made by
the appropriation of features like um Tags to pre-classify the location infor-
mation that people could contribute in um – Article II. It is also illustrated in
the many bypasses explored for dealing with access management rights in
both cases – Articles V and IV.
- Make social agreements: A social agreement is a de-facto consensus

around a shared objective that emerges within a certain group or communi-
ty. The nature of such agreements is usually distilled from a small group ini-
tiative that later evolves into a commonly implemented convention. Like
other design related activities, it involves some amount of trial and error ex-
perimentation, recruiting of allies, and, sometimes, skilful negotiation. The
agreement becomes visible in the ways a particular task starts to be accom-
plished and then turns into a de-facto standard among practitioners. These
design activities turn certain material or technological features into design
material themselves, but the full-fledged design is only actionable through
a collective agreement that ties both the “misuse” of a feature and the
bounded workarounds and conventions created44. The examples on citizen
driven documentation of garbage and the collection of abandoned cars cre-
ated by reinterpretation of certain features of um that are documented in
Article IV exemplify some of the implicated design-in-use decisions involved.
- Re-integrate and extend social practices: Social practices are embodied

and materially mediated arrangements of human activities; they describe a
particular way of going about an activity with its associated resources (Reck-
witz 2002). They are said to be shared and persist because a group of peo-
ple continuously reproduces them in creative ways (De Certeau 1984) through
a combination of skills, material resources, and meanings (Shove and Pant-
zar 2005). Over time, it is possible that sets of social agreements eventually
evolved into full-fledged social practices with specific artefacts and conven-
tions45 when people codify their doings (make explicit some rules and share
formats and exemplars) and when they actively experiment through them.
In a fashion similar to the other activities presented above, through active
engagements, a collective can “push forward” the evolution of certain prac-
tices by creating new links with other practices (Shove et al. 2007), reinter-
preting, appropriating, and re-integrating infrastructures and doings for new
purposes, and, therefore, initiating certain collective processes that extend
practices. These, again, are all activities that have design related conse-
quences. In the engagements presented here, they are exemplified in the
new framings for issue sharing in the design space of urban knowledge shar-
ing (Article II and IV) and the practices for planning, preparing, and eating
the meals that the seniors developed together (Articles III and V).
44 A widespread simple social agreement found in new media is the way hashtagging
is used in microblogging services like Twitter. There, the hash symbol (#) is used to
precede a term that adds additional context and metadata to the posts/tweets, mak-
ing the posts easier to follow, organize, and disseminate; the platform as such had
no provision or specific features to address this.
45 For example, on video sharing sites like YouTube, there are very advanced commu-
nity-initiated social practices for inviting and sustaining audiovisual conversations.
These practices include the use of visual genres, annotation workarounds, revealing
of time-coded information, and so forth. These activities certainly expand the de-
sign space of online video sharing to areas not charted initially by the providers and
designers of the platform.
Continuities in these design activities that close the loop are achieved by
identifying opportunities for “new releases” (which brings us back to de-
sign). On the other hand, leaps forward or parallel developments can also
occur when spin offs (indigenous development) and forks appear.
The relationship between these activities in the horizontal axis and the
continuum of design, use, and design-in-use present in the horizontal axis
can be further characterized by further qualifying those design, use, and
design-in-use possibilities in terms of reinterpretation, adaptation, and
reinvention, to borrow a set of categories introduced by Eglash when re-
ferring to technology appropriation (Eglash 2004:xi). This is illustrated
further in Figure 9.
Reinterpretation and mis-use: (r&m) This refers mostly to possibilities

that exist for surpassing the semantic associations proposed in relation to a
given structure. One example provided by Eglash is that of the graffiti artists’
interventions into the urban space, which provide a reinterpretation of the
function of that space as a place for self-expression or political commentary
without changing the structural conditions of the space itself. When talking
about new media, creative reinterpretations of what certain features of the
software are for, coupled with basic shared agreements between groups of
users, can create, and open up a new design space, although a niche one.
From a design process perspective, the design space is made visible mainly
through the possibilities for basic configuration of the product or service46.
When people make use of reinterpretation strategies, there normally is: 1)
No support to share and or extend user practices and agreements – thus,
design-in-use activities remain an informal ad hoc proposal, even though
workarounds and configurations might be easy to spot and share; 2) Re-
stricted possibilities for altering the basic modules, assemblies, and com-
ponents, although there are always hacking strategies to rely on – again,
this is not something that is explicitly encouraged and could be even illegal
to do (e.g., both graffiti and hacking or reverse engineering products are il-
legal in many countries).
46 An example of this relational quality will be the unintended uses of a spreadsheet

program (e.g., excel, which is designed to calculate and manipulate numbers) as a
graphical layout design tool to create interiors and user interfaces, as documented
by Berger (2006).
Adaptation: (A) According to Eglash, implies a certain degree of flexibility

in the underlying structure coupled with a sense of violation of intended
purpose. By violation of intended purpose, he meant not only a breach of
the designers’ intentions, but also, equally, of things like marketing strate-
gies and/or gender assumptions embedded in a product. Eglash’s classic
example includes the “misuses” of early cassette players by Bedouin tribes
that saw beyond the playback functions of the machines that marketing
sold to them, and uncovered the potential to record their own cultural pro-
ductions. Adaptation strategies involve creativity to look beyond assumed
functions and recognition of new possibilities. These strategies are a result
of: 1) limited support to share and or extend user practices and agreements,
and workarounds and configurations can be shared and adapted via reposi-
tories and user forums. Here design-in-use activities might be acknowl-
edged but they are still limited only to some set of activities. 2) Limited pos-
sibilities for altering the basic modules, assemblies, and components via
new developments like apis, toolkits, and linked data that encourage hack-
ing – again, this is not something that could be explicitly supported, and ex-
tensive tampering might continue to be considered illegal.
Reinvention: (R) in the category of reinvention, a manipulation of seman-

tics, use, and structure is usually achieved and new functions are created.
According to Eglash, a true reinvention usually involves being able to pro-
duce changes and alterations to the original structures, like the case in
which Latino mechanics have radically appropriated and reinvented auto-
mobile shock absorbers in order to create shock producers for their low-rid-
er cars (because they acquired the knowledge, had means of production
and tools to their disposal, and could tamper with the mechanics). In new
media, the most common design-in-use strategies for supporting reinven-
tion will be most likely when 1) there is access to the code and/or the per-
mission for altering content (new licensing schemas) is present, visible, and
understandable 2) those efforts are complemented strongly by design in use
strategies to try out, sustain, and disseminate social practices, which are
what ultimately make this type of activities feasible47.
47 Many peer production ventures that rely on Free/Libre and open source software (floss)
have evolved due to the close interconnection of the nature of the software and the way
it interacts with sophisticated community agreements that – when well documented –
serve as benchmarks, inspiration, and learning devices for other people engaged in re-
lated ventures. This is exemplified in, e.g., practices of collective encyclopaedia writing,
producing, and editing that have evolved in projects such as Wikipedia (Slattery 2009).
Back to Design
(e.g. as new major
release)
Re-integrate
social practices
Make social
agreements
Create Spin offs / Forks

workarounds (other alternative
developments)
Configure / Personalize
Integrate
Assemble Reinterpretation
components and misuse (r&m)
Aggregate / remix Reinvention (r)
design activities (what people do)

Use modules
(libraries, sets,
collections)
Build modules
from scratch Adaptation (a)
time
(spiral, not linear)
V 0.16 Based on (Botero, Kommonen & Marttila 2010)
Figure 9 Reinterpretation, adaptation, and

reinvention in design spaces
It should be noted that by arguing for identifying and making the design
spaces more visible and explicit, I do not intend to produce judgements as
to what are the appropriate openness levels nor the valid or right configu-
ration for a particular design landscape. Rather, I am more interested in
the ways that discussing them serves as an avenue for locating interven-
tions and developments and assisting in asking questions, such as: “Where
are we at now? Given what we know now, what should we do next?”48.
I am aware that the depiction of the notion of design space – as it stands
now – is mainly relevant to new media and interaction design types of
work. However, I am fairly confident that similar activities and compo-
nents can be assembled to address other design domains. Obviously, re-
finements and adjustments should be explored with more empirical ex-
amples. To back-up my confidence I rely on insights from two other ac-
counts that explore similar issues from different angles. The first one is
informed by the sts tradition and traces health technology development
and use across several cycles of designing and using. Looking in detail at
the emergence of these technologies from the early technological dreams
to the ways in which they ended up being embedded in practices, as well
as in the subsequent evolution of their impacts, the study proposes a “con-
figurational” view of technology (Hyysalo 2010). The second one is more
general in nature and condenses a series of careful observations on the
ways “buildings learn” after they are built and through use (Brand 1994).
They both elaborate complementary arguments to the one I am present-
ing here by showing the ways in which iterative and design spaces emerge
just as buildings, elderly-care wristwatches, and diabetics databases are
adapted and transformed in use over time. Neither Brand nor Hyysalo use
the term ”design space”; however, their examples and analyses of the sit-
uations are very much in line with the elements I have discussed through-
out. In particular, the role of time and the influence of concrete practices
of use resonate very well with the argument for developing design-in-use
collaborative strategies. In their work, both Brand and Hyysalo imply how
more collective ways of acknowledging this could be achieved and how it
is of relevance to the practices of the professionals involved in their re-
spective areas (architects, the building industry, medical doctors, and pol-
icy makers), as well as of the citizens (dwellers, patients, and other “end”
users in particular).
48 Suchman (2002) has referred to this question as particularly important in guiding

located and accountable design practices.
For the purposes of this work, I do not see a need to elaborate/speculate

on such other applications more thoroughly. I will only point out some
contemporary developments, such as the so-called Maker Culture (vis-
ible in the emergence of supporting physical spaces such as hacklabs49
and fablabs50) and the free culture movement, not to mention specific
manifestations such as Creative Commons51 and, in some ways, Living
Lab approaches to innovation52. All hint to a wider interest in and need
for developing supporting strategies for collaborative work and design
around and beyond the areas of media and digital technology. These would
all benefit from more nuanced conceptualizations of what comprises de-
sign, design-in-use, and design spaces.
In so doing, I also recognize that metaphors, such as the one implied
in this extended notion of design space, are both powerful (Lakoff & John-
son 2003) and potentially harmful. In understanding the design space in
terms of an abstract, all encompassing and Euclidean one (Simon 1996),
it would be very tempting to assume that design can be used to describe –
and approach – every aspect of human existence. I recognize the limits of
such an account and wish to emphasize that design spaces, when under-
stood as “landscape” (Binder et al. 2011, Gaver 2011), should point our at-
49 Defined as community-operated physical places that incorporate elements of machine

shop, workshop, and/or studio where people from a local community come together
to share resources and knowledge and build and make things. Today there are several
international networks of semi-organized hacklabs and related events called hacka-
thons. (See e.g., http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hackerspace for a general overview.)
50 Fablab is a shortcut to denominate a fabrication laboratory: usually a small-scale
and experimental workshop offering (personal) digital fabrication equipment. The
specific label has its roots in the mit Media lab that currently hosts the internation-
al network of Fablabs. Fablab activities are closely tied to an alternative mode of pro-
duction than the current ”mass production” of physical goods and are said to aim at
empowering consumers. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fab_lab for a definition
and Bas van et al. 2011 for an overview of the wider phenomena.
51 Based on the work of an international non-profit organization, the cc movement of-
fers copyright licenses that provide a simple, standardized way for creators to give
permission to further share and use their creative work. In simple terms, the licens-
es switch off the default of “all rights reserved” for productions in favour of the more
nuanced “some rights reserved”. See http://creativecommons.org/about for an over-
view of the aims and activities of the organization.
52 Feuerstein et al. Define Living labs as: ”a systemic innovation approach in which all
stakeholders in a product, service or application participate directly in the develop-
ment process. It refers to a research and development (r&d) methodology in which
innovations are created and validated collaboratively in multi-contextual, empirical
real-world environments.” (Feuerstein et al, 2008)
tention and attune us to the existence of spots and even complete areas that
are just plain uninhabitable or out of reach and thus not amenable to “de-
sign”. The all-encompassing option would not only be design imperialism
or naïveté, but it would in fact be the least useful advice to designers, as it
would burden their explorations of design spaces beyond measure. Design
spaces emerge, interact, and evolve in relationship to other ones that in-
clude (but are not limited to) the regulatory space, the living routines space,
the safety space, and practice space. Those other ones might be best de-
scribed and approached with other mind-sets, tools, and expectations.
However, it is possible that under certain circumstances people that
predominantly describe themselves as designers will be inclined to influ-
ence and act in those other spaces in order to render visible and “design-
able” particular slices in a particular design space53. Thus, it is important
to keep in mind that design space explorations are ultimately just one
among many “…ﬁgures and practices of transformation” with their own
set of limitations (Suchman 2011 p: 1). I take this to mean that modest
but meaningful and artful transformations constitute better targets for
design work that attempts to deal seriously with communal endeavours.
4.2. Design time-space
A commitment to modest transformation that the above outlining of the
contours of design space proposes helps me now to reiterate a point: time
cannot be underestimated because design is not enough. By now it should
be obvious that the extent to which long-term ongoing collaborative de-
sign is accounted for affects the attainable outcomes in important ways:
both the co-housing arrangements for the seniors’ project and the devel-
oping of practices for sharing urban knowledge via locative media in um
exemplify this well. Without hanging around long enough, meaningful ex-
plorations cannot be made sustainable. Keeping co-design going through-
out concept design, implementations, re-designs, and further iterations
calls for well-rehearsed means such as design games, workshops, gener-
ative tools, and observational techniques. On their own, however, these
means of engagement are not sufficient to achieve the required levels of
learning and trust building. Users’ sense of ownership, their coming to
53 Contradictions of this are visible in the figure of the designer-activist and the activ-
ist-designer (Fuad-Luke 2009, Julier 2011).
understand their own needs and desires, as well as designing at multiple

levels of practice and technology, all require sustained interchange. The
designed systems, usages, users, and designers’ practices need to become
more seasoned, that is, they need to “age together”.
To further clarify what this means for reconceptualising design pro-
cesses involved in communal endeavours, Article V introduces a proposi-
tion for portraying extended collaborative design process as slightly mess-
ier than prevalent portrayals of co-design that rest on the assumption that
design takes place mostly within temporally defined r&d project forms. So
far, r&d is a frame easy for funders, producers, design practitioners, and
researchers to recognize (Godin 2006). It also feels comfortable, especial-
ly for design practitioners, as it assumes that it is the temporally defined
design project, which should be the area of concern in organizing collabo-
rative design However, this familiar frame is increasingly at odds in design
contexts where the market launch of an industrially produced design does
not structure sensible frames for operation (Björgvinsson et al. 2012b).
Communal endeavours are clear examples of these types of settings.
The proposal in Article V builds on a simple squiggle metaphor used
as portrayal of co-design processes introduced in a widely quoted article
by Sanders and Stappers (2008 p: 8) that discusses the new landscapes of
design. Their squiggle portrayal maps the growing relevance of co-design
activities mostly to the fuzzy front end and shows collaborative design
diminishing and getting narrower by the time a prototype or a concrete
solution appears. In contrast, by looking closer at some of the elements
observed and introduced throughout the two engagements (e.g., design
seeds, indigenous design, spin-offs, and access design), we identified an
extension of collaborative design activities to stages before and after the
more typical r&d (Figure 10). At least when it comes to communal en-
deavours, collaborative design activities have different trajectories and
are even more active and critical at those stages (see Articles II, IV, and V
for the empirical details documenting these stages).
As the analyses of the cases have shown, design activities fluctuate be-
tween developers and users (Figure 10 vertical axis), and, even though
some designs are closed every now and again, they tend to seed further
evolution, iterations, and design directions later in time (Figure 10 hori-
zontal axis) rather than “close” or diminish collaborative design activities.
This more complex and less pre-decided temporal structure follows from
the fact that, when designing with communal endeavours in mind, design
is only one of the lines of development that affect the attainable outcome.
Figure 11 again makes use of the same squiggle metaphor to highlight

how the developments in the co-design engagement, in the practice, and
in the infrastructure factually affect and pace each other54. Another way to
say this is: the point of centring (practice or design) and the temporal or-
ganization of collaborative design activities are among the key factors to
which situated approaches to design must pay attention and develop (in
addition to methods, norms, tools, power, participant roles, and so on).
There is another important theme related to the design time aspect.
The ecology of information and of artefacts55 and the practices surround-
ing the work on these two cases spread across the home and work, and
often in between. They all, as we should expect, evolve over time. Thus,
the development of the engagements also exemplifies that ultimately the
types of things to attend to when studying, making interventions, and de-
signing in communal endeavour settings depend on the particular entry
points in time that are used as reference and that might turn out to be
only anecdotal (Hyysalo 2010). Framing the design space as one of com-
munal endeavours helps to account – on an ongoing basis – for change
as it unfolds in the everyday practices of those involved. This also means
that both cases offered complementary views to very similar phenomena,
albeit through different starting points and trajectories (Figure 12).
As we moved along, in both cases many of the different dimensions
of communal endeavours were made visible and required design deci-
sions and acknowledgment. For example, in instances where what start-
ed as envisioning and designing particular “groupware” functionality for
the seniors everyday management ideas ended up displaying over time
(through design-in-use) requirements and behaviour of what could be
better understood and supported in terms of “social media” (Article V).
The same was also happening vice versa, in um: initial ideas that displayed
characteristics of fuzzy collective social media features, required at times
a more tight and bounded “groupware” type of support (Article IV) and
at other times even more flexible ideas of what constitutes a group (for
whom and for what something is made? Who belongs and what sort of
“unit” should “own” something?).
54 This argument is also supported by analysing other um related cases and design
processes with another set of considerations (see Saad-Sulonen et al. 2012)
55 Used here in the sense of Nardi and O’Day (1999). See also (Hyysalo 2010)
Traditional R&D
Indigenous design
(spin offs)
Access
design
Design seeds (fork)

(concepts, demos,
Fuzzy front prototypes)
end Design in-use
Constituency building
Figure 10 Portraying design engagement with an “Aging
Together” point of view (Article V, Botero & Hyysalo 2013)-
Adapted and extended from Sanders and Stappers squig-
gle model for co-design (Sanders & Stappers 2008 p:8)
Engagement across projects

(time)
Intervention
Practice
Infra
Possible point
of centering
Figure 11 Extending the squiggle metaphor to underscore
that long-term collaborative design engagement requires
recognizing the trajectories and rhythms of stakeholders’
own projects and devising strategies to work with them
(Article V).
Entry point for

um case
for s
n ing roup
i g g
tied d e sd - h o c
o o selyup a
A l gro
i ve
Time
oll ect are
Ac icw
Civ
or
n g f tive m
i
ign lec ion e te a
des col ac t al s war A
u n o u r ial sof t
m
m v c for
c o d e a So are g n i n gr k
en upw
i
d e se a m w
o
mo
n Gro t
om use e dia
a c ca i al m
nity soc
mu ce
c o m p ra c t i
A of
for y
n ing unit
ig m
des com
of Entry point
se g
s e no n g i n Senior’s case
bel
Figure 12 Spiral time journey of designing

for communal endeavours in the 2 cases
This has certain implications for understanding collaborative design

strategies. An important point to make is that few recipes or stand-alone
techniques will hold up to attempts to foster the design capabilities of
the stakeholders themselves. Longer-term strategies are also required to
ensure that there is a healthy balance in doing it for the people/with the
people and leaving people to grapple with it by themselves (given that the
latter, which increases hardship, also provides potential for learning and
ownership). It also requires finding resources and tools and mobilizing
them, as well as creating conditions to support the collective unfolding
of a truly collaborative design space. Strategies for explicitly supporting
design that “ages together” are thus becoming relevant in many settings
where contribution from professional designers can help in charting, out-
lining, and revealing aspects of the relevant design spaces available and
the possibilities for reinvention, adaptation, and reinterpretation that ex-
ist or that could be created.
In Article V, a collection of the principles for guiding design work and

interventions that aim to foster an open-ended and gradual collective
exploration in communal endeavour settings is introduced. They are re-
ferred to as “Aging Together strategies”, since they seek to gradually un-
cover and make jointly visible the design spaces available and realize an
evolving line of well-suited technologies, media, and practices. I will re-
capitulate them here. Interested readers can find in Article V a more com-
plete account of the empirical insights supporting them, as well as the
position of each strategy in relation to current design research literature.
1 Start with social practices. Design activities do not occur only at the stu-
dio or in exploratory workshops. They are already present in the practices,
infrastructures, and development trajectories of people who come together
to become the “clients”, “users”, and “designers”.
2 Explore the constituency, build new alliances if needed. It is key to ex-

plore stakeholder configurations to be able to achieve the kind of practice
and technology or media change that is being envisioned and to determine
if the agendas of each party can be aligned.
3 Start with the relevant small “access design”. Design engagement is not
guaranteed to work. A well-bounded initial teaser can give a sense of what
the collaboration feels like – should everyone want to get more serious or not!
4 Manage expectations. Set joint goals and do not expect or do not have the
participants expect that resources will be there forever. Clarify and check
these constantly. Apply for funding as the project advances and needs arise.
5 Cultivate an open agenda. The idea is not to focus on realizing a killer ap-
plication, but, instead, fostering contributions, which is likely to lead to
improving the practices in the community.
6 Go there, be there. Collaborators should get a real feel for each other. If
the community is dispersed or only beginning to emerge, people should
meet, workshops should be arranged, and similar experiences studied as a
starting point.
7 Build scaffolds. Provoke imagination and cultivate the sense of possibilities

by getting a sense of what can be done. Bring concepts, materials, solutions,
and practices from elsewhere. Design avenues can be explored in hands on

workshops and with experiments. Tune in by doing it on site if possible.
8 Build and release prototypes iteratively, rapidly and from early on. Fol-
low how things are being used, what ideas for improvement, shortcomings,
contradictions, new design directions etc. may have emerged and respond
to the evolving needs through collective and cumulative design iterations.
9 Alternate close working periods with lighter engagement. Make the most
of the time spent together, people need to find their own ways to use the
technology and try things out on their own and avoid spending designer hours
unduly. Communications channels should be created towards this end.
10 Foster ownership of the process, technology, and media. Advice, solution

help and alternatives are needed to make final decisions. Negotiate and de-
cide jointly which new design directions are pursued further and clarify why.
11 Keep attentive to partial failures and what can be learned from them. An
encompassing and stable design is slow to achieve and may easily embody
things that are not needed or that end up serving other purposes. Failures
can provide serendipity handles.
12 Embed design at different levels. Support multiple access modes and make
sure there are parallels from old to new to weave things together. Make pos-
sible design activities at different scales.
13 Avoid design locking-in with crucial choices (e.g., technology). Open

and/or flexible alternatives for technologies and infrastructures should be
preferred whenever possible. An open discussion about things such as in-
tellectual property rights should not be avoided.
Implementing “Aging together strategies” requires an iterative revision

of plans and patience to allow processes to unfold over time. In this light,
this set of strategies should be seen as both a resource for professional de-
signers interested or called upon to contribute to communal endeavours
and as resources and guidelines for communities, groups, teams, or col-
lectives interested in recruiting the help of professional designers in their
own communal endeavours. For both users and professional designers,
this might mean giving up expectations of total control and predictability
in favour of embracing possibilities for sustained caring and longer term
involvement that emphasizes the importance of setting the context (col-
laboration setting), cultivating and acknowledging new forms of design
work (design seeds, indigenous spin-offs), and identifying potential learn-
ing strategies (partial failures, reflective practices, and contingency). In
both of the cases presented, successful temporary alignments and leaps
forward occurred when all those involved recognized the strategies at play
and built upon them.
4.3. Design things-space
If we are serious about the idea that designing for communal endeavours
means designing with the evolving practices involved, then design activi-
ties along the continuum design/use/design-in-use are by necessity blending
all the time. What are then the design things involved in the cases I have
just presented? On the one hand, there are these communal endeavours,
which can never be fully realized or completely designed as the endeavour
always lives on or keeps moving on. The design space partly conflates with
the practice space, or so it might appear at times. On the other hand, there
are also very concrete things, those partial designs that are temporarily
assembled and frozen in order to achieve those communal endeavours.
In this way of thinking about design, those steps towards situating de-
sign practices that have included form giving concerns over the develop-
ment of an understanding of use and contexts of use, as well as issues of
participation, apply simultaneously, albeit perhaps in a different order
than that of their historical awareness (see: Figure 6 Situating design prac-
tice and knowledge, a few steps p: 40). Thus, in Figure 13, I locate those
modes of necessary engagement, not as historical or even overlapping
layers, but as modes of alignment and articulation: sensible, caring, and
creative ways devised to move, align, and perform design things in time
and space. Where “design things” can very well make up for such totality.
In practical terms, this means that designing always requires at least

three important components. First, caring for and taking the contextual
understanding of practices and context of use so that collective partici-
pating in the joint process of figuring out what ought to be designed and
how it relates to particular practices is possible. This includes what pro-
cesses are involved, which skills are available, and what roles possible,
with prototyping as a key activity in the articulation of knowledge about
using and participating. Second, it is also concretely designing artefacts,
devices, and tools and caring for their forms, material manifestation, cul-
tural relevance, and modes of production. In this level we need a more
updated and sophisticated understanding of what materializing entails
as a form-giving approach. Third, it is also the continuous alignment be-
tween contexts and ongoing paying attention and supporting the ways
in which this is socially and materially achieved, where infrastructuring
becomes a key activity. Thinging here is at the same time accompanying
these things and practices and bridging them to the future horizons of the
communal endeavour.
Accompanying the things
and the practices and bridging
them to future horizons of the
communal endevours
Strategies, tactics, principles
Infrastructuring
[ evolving ]
Artifacts, devices, tool, models
Midwifing
Materializing
[ formgiving ]
Practices, processes, roles, skills
Prototyping
[ using/
participating ]
Figure 13 Design things in communal endeavours

C
Conclusions
conclusions 107
What is the most significant contribution that collaborative design prac-

tices make to the broader project of situating design? Are we talking about
collaborative design’s contribution to re-inventing innovation via the rhet-
oric of user involvement promising streamlining profit, increasing mar-
ket penetration, and more consumption? Or should collaborative design
rather contribute to the creation of new cultures of knowledge that are
supportive of wider, democratic aims, where the design spaces available
emerge in interactions between multiple stakeholders and different socio-
material assemblies? Throughout the thesis I have wanted to probe into
the feasibility and importance of this second option.
I have explored an updated notion of design space as evolving and ex-
panding collective design spaces. I propose that their collective aware-
ness, construction, and caring could work as a framework to understand,
reflect upon, and organize collaborative design activities going beyond
and around the concept design stage or fuzzy front end. My approach has
been to look carefully at two design interventions carried out to support
fledgling communities (seniors aging together) and emergent collectives
(citizens and city officials sharing locative media). I have looked at, taken
care of, and actively influenced the arrangements that evolved at the in-
tersection of their respective communal endeavours. I have used these ex-
periences as experimentation settings and case studies.
My analyses of the cases highlight aspects that are relevant to the devel-
opment of design approaches that deal not only with designers and their
design processes, but that could also deal with how the things that are under-
going design and the design process itself are simultaneously embedded in
everyday life arrangements. In doing this, the work brings forth the impor-
tance of understanding and developing further collaborative “design-in-
use” activities and issues. I believe this is a fruitful road to achieving con-
tinuity and collaboration between design and life-practices more generally.
I have used the term “design activities” for a variety of things that relate
to selection, building, mixing, bricolage, compositions, and other adjust-
ments that extend, challenge, recombine, or affirm things and practices.
Some of these activities emerge due to constrain, contingencies, and pos-
sibilities that can only be understood once meaningful instances of use
are achieved. The term design has perhaps been used rather loosely, not
necessarily to redefine what it is meant to be from now on, but to draw at-
tention to two important and complementary aspects. On the one hand,
there is the need to look closer at what happens outside the traditional
focus of a well-bounded project, which is the usual scope of the profes-
sional designer. These are the types of things that competent everyday
life-practitioners take care of (and must do) in order to achieve appropri-
ate and sustainable solutions in their everyday life: the design-in-use part.
On the other hand, there also seems to be the need to surpass the contin-
gent and opportunistic nature of design-in-use. There are instances in
which there is a need to rework the details in relation to other wholes and
other scales. This includes work that requires resources, caring, and ex-
pertise that competent design practitioners acquire across projects: that
is the design part of the spectrum.
My perspective has been one of making visible useful and realistic ide-
as for how to deploy interventions – with a collaborative design twist – in
different endeavours, particularly in support of everyday life, communal
ones. The goal is both tactical and strategic: conditions need to be creat-
ed and resources mobilized (strategies) so that wider slices of the design
space can become explicitly amenable to scrutiny and change on an on-
going basis (tactics). The fact that design, use, and design-in-use must be
understood as a continuum is worth underscoring.
Design approaches guided by an awareness of the relevant design spac-
es involved can have implications for endogenous production of technol-
ogies and media by communities. Moreover, it can provide loose support
for collectively constituted governance processes that regulate and shape
technology and other design choices at multiple levels (Pestof 2012). This
is important not only to design, but also to the provision of opportunities
to develop forms of “undesign” (Pierce 2012).
conclusions 109
Collaboration in User Centred Design (ucd) and Participatory Design

(pd) movements can be seen as a series of coping strategies which we
have been using to try to fit the realities of design-in-use to the demands
of the typical consultancy mode of work and the strict r&d project mod-
els that, as professional designers, we have been forced to adhere to most
of the time. pd and ucd only attack the symptoms. Out there, many or-
ganizations and collectives are already exercising sustained collaborative
design, they are doing it with the help of professionally trained designers,
and they are doing it without them as well. Parasitic expert presence in
all kinds of initiatives is not what I am interested in. I am well aware that
many communities do not need designers to design for them. On the oth-
er hand, there are also many initiatives, like that of the seniors and count-
less others produced through urban and public activism, interested in
experimenting but finding it difficult to scale or influence. The same goes
for other more top-down experimentations. Those tasks might benefit
from more than a trial and error approach; collaborators trained at look-
ing and working out multiple alternatives might prove handy.
I am not claiming that caring and sustained design engagement is need-
ed for most of our culturally mature artefacts like spoons or chop sticks.
However, I do think that collaborative design approaches of the sort advo-
cated in this work are important for many areas in contemporary society.
It definitively makes sense in settings where technological possibilities
and user practices are evolving and more poignantly needed were soci-
etal problems are being framed. There are two important reasons, among
others, for this.
First, because new media practices and information and communica-
tion technologies are two of the relevant application areas called to ad-
dress many of those so-called societal problems, we need to recast their
design process now more than ever. These processes are usually presented
as either “technology led,” or “user centred”. However, these assumptions
tend to hide the many important ways in which both technology and users
co-constitute themselves (Shove et al 2007, Suchman 2007, Hyysalo 2010).
Nevertheless, the implications of co-constitution are not so easily trans-
lated into pragmatic design work. It is my hope that some of the notions
developed in this work provide us with the vocabulary needed to look at
and navigate design engagements with new lenses and new temporalities.
Secondly, addressing many contemporary societal dilemmas seems to
require new productive configurations able to challenge prevalent cen-
tralized and hierarchical modes of engagement that have prevailed in the
last century. Some of these new configurations have been discussed some-
times in terms such as co-configuration (Engeström 2008), co-production
(Parks et al. 1981, Pestoff 2012), peer-production (Bauwens 2006), and
social production (Benkler 2006, Engeström 2008). Achieving these will de-
pend on appropriate modes of collaborative design of media, technologies,
and services. This is especially true in settings and communities where
lay and expert knowledge, confidentiality, sustainability, and so forth are
easily trampled over when design approaches do not take collective en-
gagement as foundational. I hope my work contributes in these directions.
As it became clear through the course of these engagements, a strategic
position cannot be avoided, particularly one that helps look at the sustain-
ability of the efforts in the long run; simply ad hocking our way through
the muddle of communal and collaborative endeavours might not be an
option today. However, design is at the same time accompanying things
and practices and bridging them to the future horizons of a communal en-
deavour. How can collectives go about doing this? What type of thinging
might be needed? I want to suggest that, in addition to current interest
in facilitation, in collective forms of prototyping, and in infrastructuring
(outlined in Chapter 2), there is also a level of designing and building “in-
between” infrastructures (e.g., Article IV) that requires a type of engage-
ment I will tentatively refer to here as ‘midwifing’. This is not necessarily
aimed at proposing yet another role for designers. It seems that, in his
proposition for second-generation design methods, Rittel already envi-
sioned recasting designers in such a role (see Cross 1981 p: 4).
In proposing midwifing as an analogy that lends itself to this context, I
am most interested in the ways in which the practices of contemporary pro-
fessional midwifery can help us rethink the process through which things
come into being and develop; of course, we should be mindful of the im-
portant differences that exist between bearing a child and participating in
the making of a thing. To this end, I have found that the way in which mid-
wifery is seen today, as a partnership between members of a community
(midwife, mothers, babies, other care givers, families, and other relevant
figures) to optimize the well-being of mothers and their developing babies
(Avery 2005) is a good inspiration. With that in mind, midwifing for design
might relate and draw attention to the caring and accompanying aspects
that exist before, during, and after specific projects and which are neces-
sary to bridge communal endeavours with a variety of possible horizons.
Rather than a discrete simple practice, a model of partnership resem-
bles more highly complex and contingent networks of strategic and pro-
conclusions 111
ductive relations (Surtees 2003) that can be of help when designing. For
communal endeavours, it might not only be “matters of concern” (Latour
& Wiebel 2005), but even “matters of care” (Puig de la Bellacasa 2011),
which could make the difference56. While I have only hinted at it here, I
think this is an important matter to pursue in proposing a more evolu-
tionarily oriented view of the development of media and technology. Such
a view requires relinquishing expectations of total control and predict-
ability while still leaving room for elaborating possibilities for interven-
tion and influence. In that sense, interventions are carried out in order
to better understand what is amenable to design (what is in-between the
design space and the other spaces), and where change might require, in-
stead or in parallel, activating other spaces or conforming to the limits
at their core. I have come to see DailyWorks information containers and
um as interesting instantiations of in-between infrastructures that ought
to be midwifed, especially if they are intended to succeed in their objec-
tives. How can we design with care? I look forward to expanding this line
of thought in future work.
56 Feminist scholarship has been fundamental in raising the importance of the con-
cept of care for contemporary social life. E.G. Mol (2008) used examples from prac-
tices in healthcare services, to describe the main features of an alternative “logic of
care” in contrast to what she terms the “logic of choice” which has been used lately
to restructure healthcare services to be more patient centred. In contrast to choice,
logics of care include elements of watchfulness, attention, vulnerability and distri-
bution of practices within large collectives that might offer more sustainable devel-
opment paths. Assuming a similar stance, Puig de la Bellacasa (2011) has chal-
lenged the notion of “matters of concern” central to recent debates in sts. She ar-
gues for “matters of care” as a way of drawing on the rich strand of feminist theory
thinking that uses “care” as a way to think about ethics and ethos in different ways.
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A
Articles
articles – codesigning visions, uses, and applications 123
Codesigning Visions,
Uses, and Applications
Andrea Botero Cabrera Abstract

Kari-Hans Kommonen An emergent idea in contemporary design discourse
Iina Oilinki is that of users becoming actors in the design pro-
Maria Koskijoki cesses, especially those of ict's and digital applica-
tions. It is clear however that users, or their wishes
or needs, seldom initiate developments, nor are
they in a position to suggest design or development
processes. Our work concentrates on exploring
ways in which the emerging possibilities of digi-
talization could be discussed, informed and envi-
sioned with non-experts, before concrete product
and business plans enter the stage. We will like to
argue that it is possible to envision ways in which
design research can give people tools to become
more proactive rather than just reactive towards
technological development. The paper illustrates
some of our work in progress in order to under-
stand this challenges, the work done with differ-
ent communities, and the lessons learned along
the way, in the context of co-designing visions for
everyday life applications.
First published in Electronic Pro-
ceedings of the 5th International
The position of the “users”
Conference of the European Acad-
Contemporary design discourse has put forward
emy of Design. Techne-Desing Wis-
dom, Barcelona, Spain: Universi the idea of users becoming more recognized ac-
dad de Barcelona. European tors in the design processes, especially of ict's and
Academy of Design. Reprinted digital applications. The emergence of diverse us-
with permission. er-centred design approaches, the increasing use
of ethnographically informed studies of people isolatable. Strategy presupposes a place that can be
and their activities to inform r&d, and the growing circumscribed as one’s own (un propre) and that can
bibliography and dissemination of cases testifies serve as the base from which to direct relations with
for this interest. an exteriority consisting of targets or threads (clients,
From these experiences one can point out the competitors, enemies…)” (Feenberg 1999:112).
diverse assumptions that are involved, different dis From the current “product” driven perspective,
ciplines have different answers, and the approach- to which we refer previously, we can then find 3
es are of various kinds. As a result, the information general strategies from where Designers and Pro-
society becomes one of the frameworks in which ducers act: Brief, Use and Context. These strate-
the position and the role that users play in the de- gies do not exclude each other; they might be com-
sign process are being negotiated. For the diverse bined and presented in the same project at differ-
fields of design the implications are crucial. ent stages, both in rhetorics and in practice.
However, It seems to us that the practice of cer-
tain kind of technological determinism is still at
the centre of the ‘Information Society’ project. The
majority ict developments start from an idea of a
potential technology or a product, which then, in a
design process, finds a form and a set of functions
that appeal (or not) to its future users. The role of
a well-defined product as the ultimate outcome of
a “design process” still dominates the discussions, Brief
even if it is done from a “user centred perspective.
The concept of strategies and tactics, elaborated
by De Certeau has been analysed by Andrew Feen- “product idea”
berg, in his search for alternative ways to concep-
Use
tualize and question technological development
(Feenberg 1999). This analysis might help to shed
some light in to the development of alternatives Context
for our current deterministic situation. As De Cer-
teau frames them, the concepts of tactics and strat-
egies are helpful to understand games as a model Fig 1 different bases from which to direct a
for society. In a Game the range of actions of the ac- strategy from the point of view of designers
tors is defined, but their moves are not determined. and producers.
Feenberg argues, that conversely in technological
development, by understanding the presence of 1. “Brief” oriented approaches – Hold the idea
both strategically and tactical positions, techno- that the brief talks about the product, consti-
logical determinism might be challenged. We can tute its prerequisite and is mostly independ-
see the development insted as negotiation process ent from the design (and even from the de-
that is framed in a Game like situation. signers). With such an approach the success
What the Game really means and what are the of the end result was (is) always measured
components? De Certeau refers to strategies as against the presumable fit with that brief and/
“the calculation (or manipulation) of the balance of or to the apriori requirements. In one hand
forces which becomes possible once a subject of po- Design could be the solely responsibility of
wer (a firm, an army, a city, a scientific institution) is one person or even a team, more depending
on the complexity of the project, its size and and Florez 1987, Weiser 1991), including the
cost. In the other hand, end users are mostly future situation of “use” as a premise for re-
represented by abstractions during the pro- flection and consideration of the interaction
cess and perceived as marketing constraints. possibilities and the user involvement. Users
There is usually poor communication be- do not appear working or doing things in isola-
tween these actors tion, but embedded in practices and commu-
nities, which need to be understood and em-
2. “Use” oriented approaches – become visible braced in order to design successfully [1].
with an increased concern for the human as-
pects of product use (heavily influenced by Borrowing from De Certau’s analysis and making
more traditional ergonomics and later on by a parallel to the design process circumstances we
disciplines such as Human Computer Inter- can say that, depending on the point of view of
action -hci). The very basic level dealt mainly those subjects of power (designers and producers),
with “human factors” or the adaptation of the emphasis on why users are interesting shifts.
technology to general constrains (Shneider- Users might be framed as market constraints, con-
man 1980) The higher level shifts also to in- tent of focus groups, testers, subjects for observa-
clude the situation of use (Norman 1986) and tion, informants in an interview, etc. In some cases
lately the “product” as a constituent of whole they even could be considered as active designers.
experience (Norman 2002). In these cases end For the “Brief oriented approach” the usual strat-
users start to appear as more concrete factors, egy for design is based on introspection. Likewise
that can be then called to validate, test and in- common sense understanding and a high level of
form during certain faces of the project. Fol- quick and dirty heuristics play a big role. The “use”
lowing this strategy it is possible to construct oriented strategy goes one step further: iterative
an idea of what type of user is being construct- design and extensive testing of features are at the
ed for a commodity (Pantzar 1996). Users are core, since good design can only be found in its
called in to the laboratories and designers use. Guidelines and standards complement the
mostly, remain in them. landscape of this strategy. For the “context” ori-
ented approach, design is understood in a more
3. “Context” design approaches refer more or contextual way, conversely it requires the explicit
less to the interests in social structures and participation of a variety of actors. There is more
their interplay with the product design situa- reflection around the user’s involvement and the
tion and the expected context of use. At the ba- qualities expected from the solutions.
sic level it is claimed that “social factors” will In all these approaches users may be regarded
adapt (try) and appropriate computer-created as actors, and may be empowered, but their agen-
environments (or other products) to social- cy is still dependent on how ‘useful’ they are for a
group -needs. However some critical approach- design process of a certain kind of ‘product‘ they
es to technology development recognized that are not necessarily able to initiate themselves. Nor
the survival and shift of agency in the decision they are usually in a position to suggest design or
making process of technology development, development processes. Even the term ‘user’ sug-
is not only contested in the social process, gests that people do not elicit interest unless they
but can also be affected in the design process ‘use’ the ‘products and services’ we want to design
(Sclove 1995, Feenberg 1999). The higher level for them.
then pursues the alteration of both the social However, if designers-producers (the subjects
and the technical (Suchmann 1986, Winograd of power) seem to employ strategies, or let’s say,
act strategically, then people (users) in their every- and tactical positions. We see it as a complemen-
day life seem to act tactically. People remain more or tary starting point for constructing an alternative
less within the framework of the dominant strategy view to technological determinism. In such code-
(designs offered to them), to keep on borrowing sign process the emerging possibilities and limi-
De Certau’s concept. However they will respond tations should become visible to both “users” and
with subtle deviations when implementing, appro- designers-producers in a dialogical way.
priating and reinterpreting what was put forward The ideal stage to influence a new solution, a
for them. In Feenberg's terms this is “the margin new direction, is before it is out there, when things
of manoeuvre“ that exists when implementing a are in the making. As we have learned from stud-
supposedly rigid plan (Feenberg 1999). People will ies of social construction of technology (Bijker et
rely on their own understanding of things, they will al. 1999: 39) this is also the most difficult, because
search for help, improvise solutions and misuse none of us has much experience or opinions on
the technology in all kinds of possible ways. In such that yet. For example some new modes of action,
environment marginal practices give new twist to even quite radical, have been adopted quickly; one
preconceived solutions, generating what comes to being the invasion of the mobile phones into eve-
be known as social innovation. ryday life in some parts of the world, and the new
Social Innovation and the ways people appro- ways of socialising and taking care of things this
priate and reinterpret the possibilities that are giv- has brought about (Mäenpää 2001) for instance:
en to them is still very little understood, and while it is possible that if people had been asked a few
studied extensively in the social sciences, is seldom years ago whether they would like to be always avail-
appreciated as something worth understanding able while moving around, they had answered neg-
and supporting in the pragmatic and focused prod- atively. How does one ask the right questions? And
uct development process. In there ‘strategies’ are how could users of today give answers to questions
the dominant focus and tactics are left to be taken about future situations, when they have not yet ex-
care by people themselves. perienced them?
Can design produce only products? Or can we
The current ecosystem and the understand the outcomes of design differently? Do
need for codesign: designers and producers engage with ‘users’ and
The ecosystem of digital products is more com- ‘products’, or rather could the design process en-
plicated and flexible than that one of traditional gage with ‘people’ and their contexts and practic-
products in the industrial society. It is also a cru- es to understand the different ‘applications’ they
cial issue since it becomes clear that our everyday might want to create?
life – and probably most people’s life all over the
world eventually – will be affected by the digital Taking the user’s reality seriously
“systems” that are being designed at the moment. People have problems with products that user cen-
More than centring a product design process in tered design cannot easily solve. One class of such
the abstract figure of the user, we would like to problems is ecosystemic in nature: some problems
explore the idea of driving it by the capabilities of are the result of existing or missing interactions
appropriation and reinterpretation of real people and/or compatibilities between products. These
in their everyday lives, and trying to make social problems usually, cannot be adequately addressed
innovation a pivotal point. by the design of a single product. Regardless of
From this point of view we claim that this ap- how well a single product is designed, people will
proach requires a more radical codesign process, use the product in a unique context, in interaction
one that could take advantage of both strategical with several other products and services, and will
therefore always end up as the “system integrators” of roles? Technology development comes to
that have to fit the pieces of the puzzle together. us not only as users or clients but also as citi-
Another class of problems result from the fact zens, family members, residents etc. Since the
that the design is usually created with the produc- main objective is to enable people, our start-
er’s interest, not the users’, as first priority. Although ing point tries to be aware of their roles as plan-
business success depends on the producer’s abil- ners, actors, creators, decision makers, re-
ity to satisfy the users’ needs, in most cases the pro- sponsible citizens or prosumers in their own
ducers accommodate the users interest to the ex- circumstances.
tent that their sales figures and their competition
force them to do so. In many cases all the produc- 2. How to make sense about the future? For
ers’ interests are so close to each other that from the purposes of envisioning possible futures,
a customer’s point of view they form a cartel [2] and design concepts, designers and develop-
The fact that certain concerns, such as the eco- ers have traditionally relied in their own intui-
systemic issues and the users interests, are not rep- tion for the situation and the use of diverse
resented enough in the design of new products, is representational objects. More structured ap-
in our opinion a major hurdle for the adoption of proaches like trend analysis and so on have
the new technologies. It is also a major structural also entered in the design toolkit. Recently and
problem in the current r&d system. There are pos- due to the influence of diverse user-centred
sible and feasible uses and applications for those approaches and marketing analysis, this activ-
technologies that would most likely appeal to peo- ity is also backed up with empirical data. Data
ple, but the players who are in the position to de- is gathered through interaction with “test us-
velop them do not have the means to come up with ers”, leading trendsetters, or early adopters (if
the appropriate designs, and do not have the col- using typical segmentations). Another com-
laborative practices or strategies that could facili- mon strategy is that of facilitating a technology
tate the emergence of the necessary ecosystemic immersion experience for a controlled group.
conditions for the success of those applications. With such approaches, it is possible that the
To address this, we propose that the current r&d design team gains a better understanding of
activities should be complemented with design the users. However, the possibilities, limita-
that addresses the ecosystemic concerns and users’ tions and problematic that the technology de-
interests. Our work attempts to develop such development might cause are usually not dis-
sign approaches. We believe that this can be done cussed and communicated in interaction with
by developing sensitivity to everyday life as an or- the ones that will eventually be affected by it –
ganic, individual whole, by focusing on applications A probable exception might be in the ‘classical
rather than products, and by involving the users, Scandinavian’ participatory design approach
the experts of their own lives, as codesigners. which has a more political agenda (Bratteig
1995)
Explorations: understanding
everyday life In our efforts to engage and enable discussion about
Changing the focus from “products” into practices the design needs of non-experts of ict's or rather,
and applications present at least two immediate experts of everyday life and address this challenges,
practical challenges: we have chosen to approach the issue by:
1. How to shift the focus from discussing in - Firstly, we work with several ‘communities
terms of people just as “users” into new kinds of interest’ instead of isolated users or user
groups. The term ‘community’ is used in a very rather engaged in designing new practices,
pragmatic meaning in this paper. We use the while doing them.
term ‘communities of interest’ to refer to these
groups of people that share a common inter- - Thirdly, we try to actively facilitate the discus-
est and are committed to grow as a functional sion of future possibilities by developing ap-
community, even if they do not necessarily propriate tools, concepts and language. We
“share” the same space. The communities with realize that in order for people to design, they
whom we have developed a more sustained must be given materials and tools that inspire
collaboration are: An association of active sen- and communicate new possibilities with their
iors (http://arki.uiah.fi/loppukiri) engaged affordances. These affordances can be both
on designing their future communal home visual and tangible or rather more intellectual,
and in a sense the rules and structure of their at the level of appropriate use of concepts and
future local community. The second one is a understanding of their implications. By pro-
multicultural kindergarten (children, teachers, viding such new tools and materials, for exam-
parents and friends) that is directed by the par- ple in the form of illustrative textual and visual
ent’s association (http://www.micasita.fi). descriptions and narratives of new ways of do-
As more or less structured communities, ing something (scenarios), it is possible to as-
they have developed a clear motivation towards sist these ‘experts of everyday life’ to see also
developing a new way of doing something (se- new personal possibilities for alternative prac-
curing a more nurturing third age, raising chil- tices that rely on new technology, and in the
dren in a multicultural bilingual environment, process, explain new uses and needs for it.
etc). They also have some experience in articu-
lating their interests and needs in order to ne- The approach:
gotiate them with-in the community, which A starting point of our research and design is to
makes them interesting codesigners, fruitful consciously focus on the things people want to do,
design partners in future oriented work- based achieve or change with the technology – the “appli-
on long term engagement and sustainable col- cation” – after that on what kinds of designs and
laboration. ecosystems of designs can help in realizing these
needs. We use the term “application” to refer to
- Secondly, we have tried to come closer to an this focus of interest, because we feel it is under-
approach that would engage both the inform- stood reasonably well by the technology develop-
ants and the research team in a shared project. ment community, which can easily see that “buy-
With this we hope to create a more reflective ing tickets through a web service”, to give a blunt
atmosphere and a shared goal. The communi- example, is an application of specific information
ties join our discussions having already spent technologies. At the same time, we acknowledge
sometime thinking about their own future that the term is obscure for many other communi-
and the kinds of things they need to consider. ties, for example to end users or social scientists.
Which is something not very common. At the Other terms that we have seen used in a fairly simi-
same time their expectations and experience lar sense, and that we have also used instead of ‘ap-
do not involve any particular technology, solu- plication’ are ‘use’, ‘activity’ or ‘practice’. We hope
tion or direction. In a sense one can call them that further work helps us to develop a better term.
lead users. But then again, users of what? They By identifying interesting applications with the
are not particularly using “something” but communities, we would like to understand which
components and aspects they find important. What
other ways of doing the same thing could they use thus higher level, and focus more on the reasons
and how? These aspects are important for us be- and qualities that relate to choosing between al-
cause we would like to find ways to separate the ternative possibilities. Another benefit we hope to
more general "application" from the tactics some- achieve with this is to make space in the discussion
one employs to achieve it. Lets say someone wants for the new features and characteristics of future
to be informed about the latest news, but she also tools that we cannot show or experience yet. As one
wants to hear more opinions about them. In or- of our goals, we hope that this approach can take
der to achieve this, the person can watch the 8 p.m. us beyond tactics and enable and empower the de-
news at home, with her family, or call her friends velopment of new strategies.
who she knows have read the same article as her. An important part of the research is to explore
For performing this tactics she makes use of dif- different methods that could work for this kind of
ferent solutions and tools (watching news from tv codesign activities, which are not centered in prod-
or reading a newspaper, or hearing the radio and uct as an outcome and that try to combine both
then calling or discussing face to face, maybe shar- strategical and tactical conditions. Here we will ex-
ing notes, what ever). plain the main 3 activities we have engaged with
Its important to understand that there are dif- these communities in order to make visible the
ferent solutions and tools available for the same possibilities and explore new ways of doing things.
application.
This distinction might help us to distance the a) Shared dialogue evolves through diverse ex-
discussion from the specific features of the tech- cuses to talk about everyday life with the com-
nology or tools to a slightly more abstracted and munities, in order to contextualize their par-
shared project/
web based environments
exploring starting
“applications” dialogues
- current
- possible
workshops /
reflecting and discussing
visions and uses
Fig 2 interplay of different activities
ticular circumstances, as well as to convey our tial exchange of ideas with the community. Since
interests and focus. The basic level includes they are already familiar with a particular area they
semi-structured interviews with the members want to explore, contrary to other probes approach-
and observation sessions that are videotaped es, the communities actively suggest the context
or at least audio recorded. Clips of them are and practices they want to explore.
produced, and analyzed afterwards, to gain a The tasks to be performed using the action packs
common understanding within the group. The ranged from documenting the use of different me-
material is afterwards shared with the com- dia during a particular day, collecting articles and
munities, and has proven to be an interesting intangible things worth to share, specially with their
communicational resource [3]. close networks of people, etc. We aim to identify
the qualities and nuances that make something
We concentrate generally on finding connections important and worth of noticing for someone and
and identifying relevant applications. One exam- then chart the ecosystemic relation and practices
ple found in the case of the active seniors emerged that need to be supported. The results of the expe-
from the need to know how their community works, rience have been compiled in a catalogue of pos-
but also the planning of how it will interact once in sible applications, descriptions of interesting po-
their new home. They had a keen interests on know- tentials, which are being translated in the form of
ing what kinds of things they were willing to share scenarios for validation and recreation.
with each other (ranging form opinions about the
media, to memories, personal information and ob- b) Since with both of these communities the
jects). Such information will let them understand starting point for the project has been to en-
better the challenges ahead while presenting to us gage in a common short term project (as op-
an interesting opportunity to chart some of their posed the more vision oriented goals of the
current practices. Through this we could then gen- other 2 activities). The project involves the de-
erate new scenarios of how such practices could sign and development of a community website
evolve, if for example they had new tools and ways for them. This activity started parallel to the
to produce more media by them selves. previous one, and both have influenced each
To start interacting with as many members of other in very interesting ways.
the community as possible, and make them feel
part of the process we begun to play with the idea The sites host information they produce and want
of an action pack to hunt for applications. Inspired to provide for the outside world. More importantly
in particular by the cultural probes approach de- they provide a closed (members only) space. This
veloped in the Presence project (Gaver 2001 Hof- member’s only community area contains a set of
meester 1999). In order to test this approach and tools for content creation and exchange. It is also
adapt it to our idea of applications, we developed intended to hold a shared memory of the commu-
a series of action packs and activities that involved nities, works as a communication media, while
the communities more actively in the gathering of aiding up in the process of building community.
data (Botero et al.2002). We gave them a package This concrete design activity has helped to create
with a camera, envelopes, notebooks, maps and rapport and partnership and to test some methods
other “probes” as these purposefully designed ma- through a very concrete project, addressing the
terials are called (Gaver. 2001, Mätelmäkki. 2002). community as a whole.
These packs try to shade light in to the tactics The community web sites are important end
people employ when doing certain things. The top- products for the communities, however we feel they
ics were decided following the interviews and ini- are essential tools for research, as a sort of code-
sign research environments, that bring new vocab- Conclusion: Designing

ulary and understanding for the group. The design influence networks?
of these spaces enables them and us, to elaborate In current conditions it is clear that design work
future directions, since new vocabulary and new portrayed as the crusade of the solo artist gets re-
sets of problematics, relevant for other applications casted as “negotiation” and multidisciplinary ex-
and scenarios started to emerge from them. change. Even with free lancers or powerful teams,
A clear example is represented in issues like ac- contemporary design happens in loosely structured
cessing and joining the community, having differ- networks of actors. However the case, it requires
ent rights to see and change things; privacy, etc. commitment from the part of the initiators to bring
These issues were not seen as crucial concerns for and empower more points of view and influenc-
them before the implementation and design of the es (possibilities for better tactical positions) into
websites. However in exploring the possibilities the process by using more shared resources, un-
they could have of producing more media by them- derstandable by more people. As Suchman points
selves, in defining the porblematics and implica- it out “… persons are just those actants that con-
tions, their previous experience with the sites af- ceive and initiate technological projects and con-
fected their understanding and concerns about figure material semiotic networks, however much
this. It was clear that this issue had relevance for we might be simultaneously interpolated into and
them in the context of future developments (for ex- through them” (Suchmann 2000).
ample: keeping a communal memory with differ- Our purpose is to generate design visions within
ent levels of access, defining priorities for friends collaborative work with communities, codesign,
and family in a flexible way, been able to generate through long-term relationships and mutual com-
content from different devices, etc) mitments. This creates a need for developing meth-
One could make a parallel to a technology im- ods that support and produce mutual understand-
mersion kind of experience, anyway this do have ing and co-discovery of ideas, practices and how
a concrete purpose, a need that was identified be- they can be evolved if new Information and Com-
fore, and involve a spontaneous willingness to ex- munication Technologies will be thought from the
plore and through exploration discovery of new is- communities (and their individual members) point
sues with out inventing a need. of view.
The challenges of digital technology design needs
c) We try to generate spaces for reflection and to be addressed with transdisciplinary competenc-
discussion, which are usually shaped in the es that include that of the practice of everyday life.
form of workshops. In this stage is where we By discussing and generating visions and applica-
come together and find ways of processing tions rather than end products, by designing com-
and discussing together the information we municational tools and experimental prototypes
have, and the scenarios that have been emerg- rather than strict methods, in close collaboration
ing. The idea is to work on both the shared with different communities of interest, we hope
concrete design problem (online email inter- to contribute to the ongoing debate of what can be
actions, training sessions, workshops) and a fruitful design research activities.
more vision and ideation oriented process. We In our position outside the r&d companies pro-
go through the material, present ideas and ducing digital applications as well as outside the
short demos, video clips, and try to start con- government policies we are able to conduct applied
troversial discussions. research and consider an approach that would not
cross the threshold of importance in other circum-
stances. The real challenge will be to try to make
the need for these kinds of dialogues visible in the Construction of Technological Systems. Massa-
society at large, as well as in specific design contexts. chusets: mit Press.
Bratteteig, T., and Bjerneks, G., 1995. User Partic
Footnotes ipation and Democracy. A Discussion of Scan-
1. Represented mostly by work in the areas of dinavian Research on System Development.
Computer Supported Collaborative Work Scandinavian Journal of Information Systems.
(cscw) and Discussions in the “Collaborative University of Oslo. Vol. 7 No 1 April 73–98.
Design” conferences Sclove, R., 1995. Democracy and Technology. New
2. This is the case for example in the area of me- York: The Guilford Press.
dia technology, where recording and playback Suchmann, L., 2000. Located Accountabilities in
equipment is consistently purposefully de- Technological Production [online]. Department
signed and priced to make it artificially hard of Sociology. University of Lancaster. Available
and expensive for users to record, manipulate, from: http;//www.comp.lancaster.ac.uk/soci-
manage and share media compared to the ca- ology/soc0391s.html [Accesed 12 November
pabilities and prices of available technology, 2002]
because the entertainment publishing indus- Suchmann, L., 1987. Plans and Situated Actions:
try wants to keep a tight control on the way the problem of human-machine communication.
how the media they own is used in the market- Cambridge: University Press.
place. Even if this concern is legitimate, this Schuler, D and Namioka, A., eds. 1993. Participa-
way of addressing it does not serve user inter- tory Design, Principles and Practices. Hillsdale,
ests, as it also makes it hard and expensive for nj: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
people to create media of their own and share Feenberg, A., 1999. Questioning technology. New
it – an activity that the big entertainment in- York: Routledge Publications.
dustry should have no control over. Winograd, T. and Florez, F., 1987. Understanding
3. It seems that richer video and audio material Computers and Cognition. A new Foundation for
involved in design research help to keep the Design. Norwood: Addison-Wesley Publishing
voices and ideas of people closer and develops Company.
reflection Norman, D., 2002. Emotion and design: Attractive
things work better. Interactions Magazine, ix
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Hofmeester, K. and De Charon De Saint German, (Domestication of technology. From science
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Amsterdam: Presence at the Netherlands De- sinki: Tammi.
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way of urban life. In: Warde, A. and Gronow, J.,
Ordinary Consumption. London: Routledge.
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tion of Facts and Artifacts: Or How the Sociol-
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and Hughes, T. P. and Pinch, T., eds. The Social
articles – co-designing for new city-citizen interaction possibilities 133
Co-designing for new city-citizen

interaction possibilities:
weaving prototypes and interventions
in the design and development
of Urban Mediator.
Andrea Botero Abstract
Joanna Saad-Sulonen This paper explores issues of participation in ur-
ban life, particularly new partnerships between
city and citizens to co-design new services for their
cities. We will share experiences from working on
the design and development of a software infra-
structure, Urban Mediator, and its related social
First published in Proceedings practices. We conclude by pointing out the neces-
of the10th Participatory Design
sity of considering the software artifacts designed
Conference pdc08 Experiences
as being part of a toolkit for co-design that can en-
and Challenges. (pp. 266–269).
Bloomington, Indiana, usa: hance conversations between cities and citizens,
cpsr/acm. and enable the envisioning of new practices re-
lated to city-citizen interactions.
Permission to make digital or
hard copies of all or part of this Keywords
work for personal or classroom
Co-design, social practices, e-goverment, citizen-
use is granted without fee if
driven innovations, user innovation
copies are not made or distrib
uted for profit or commercial
advantage. Copies must bear Introduction
this notice and full citation The following work is part of the icing project (In-
on the first page. To copy other- novative Cities for the Next Generation) a larger
wise in any way requires prior initiative funded by the European Union, aimed at
permission and must be re- exploring, through a series of ict solutions, what
quested in writing to Indiana
“innovative cities” could mean [5]. Case studies in
Univ. Conferences. Proceedings
Participatory Design Conference, key regeneration districts of Barcelona, Dublin and
cpsr/acm Copyright © 2008 Helsinki, as well as the development of a system
Trustees of Indiana University (Complete icing System) are part of the strategy.
isbn 978-0-9818561-0-0 The particular theme in Helsinki has been citizen-
driven interactions, and our role as design and de- ing their cities, through infrastructures not neces-
sign research partners of the project has been the sarily provided by the city administration, nor con-
development of components to explore this issue; nected to it. Is it useful to consider these examples
our insights and research are condensed in the as forms of potential innovations for new citizen-
concept of Urban Mediator (um) that is the main city interactions? Are they worth following, learn-
theme of this paper. ing from and perhaps supporting in an "innovative"
city? In innovation management literature, there
Citizen-driven interactions as has been much talk recently about the role of user
a starting point driven innovations, most commonly carried out
The emergence of new Information and Communi- by users with “lead users” characteristics [10]. Ac-
cation technologies (icts) is said to be transform- cording to lead users theory, some users develop
ing the ways in which civil society and citizens in- solutions on their own and in collaboration with
teract with each other, and with the official sys- other users, to address needs for which there is no
tems of representation [2,3]. Today there is a vast solution in the market yet, much in the same vein
array of government initiatives that aim to increase, of what those committed citizens are doing in the
often from a top-down approach, public participa- examples discussed previously. Our interest here
tion and electronic government. At the same time, lies in the discussion that ties the role of the lead-
there is increasing interest in understanding the user to the dynamics of a broader process that is
limits encountered by these approaches. Parallel claimed to have implications for the democratiza
to the official administration’s initiatives, there are tion of innovation [10]. This seems to resonate part
also subtler citizen and community-driven initia- ly with some earlier arguments in the participatory
tives emerging from the widespread use of new net- design community regarding the democratic imper
working and user-driven content production prac- ative for early involvement of “skilled workers” [4]
tices in technology-savvy circles. Some examples and their empowerment. While a “leading” citizen,
of this trend are to be found e.g. in popular photo- might be difficult to identify, the trend discussed
sharing sites, where a big proportion of the media previously hints at the need for city administrations
shared shows urban-related themes. [8] Other ex- to consider citizen driven interactions seriously, re-
amples are evident in the increasing popularity of think the role of citizen’s contributions in the devel-
map mashups, made possible with open access to opment of new services and perhaps provide infra-
online maps, and the use of gps-enabled devices structures better suited to this type of interactions.
for attaching location data to media produced. All
this has triggered the emergence of new interest- Exploring software tools and
ing practices of documenting urban environments social practices
in general. Concrete cases of citizens’ initiatives In order to explain the process, it is necessary to
towards their cities, supported by new forms of first give a brief overview of what um is in terms of
media, range from collaborative projects to create software, today. um is a server-based software that
a body of free and publicly accessible map data (e.g. provides a way for communities to mediate local,
http://www.openstreetmap.org), to civic platforms location-based discussions, activities, and infor-
for reporting problems to fix in a neighborhood mation. Its goal is to provide users with the possi-
(e.g. http://www.fixmystreet.com/), and to the use bility to create, obtain, and share location-based
of social networking sites for creating and support- information that is organized according to topics
ing civic action (e.g: Save Sloane Square group at set up and maintained by the users themselves.
http://www.facebook.com). um uses a map-portrayal service as means for rep-
It seems that more people are engaging in new resenting some of the information, and comple-
practices for exploring, discussing and understand- ments this with a set of tools for users to process,
share and organize this information. The service ing meetings with the personnel of the local devel
is accessed through the web, using a normal pc or opment agency, experimenting with ways to link
any browser-enabled mobile device [8]. We envi- the information they produce, through their por-
sion um as a mediator environment between, on tal, into um. Through these interventions we dis-
one hand the official city systems that provides, covered obvious usability problems, – but more
among others, help desk services or gis services, importantly we were able to negotiate concepts
and on the other hand citizens' systems represent- and a common vocabulary (e.g in the interface) and
ed by community websites, discussion forums, or identified concrete practices that could be support-
blogs. Both which can be plugged into um using ed by the tools we presented. This was possible as
several syndication standards (rss, georss, etc). participants needed to appropriate the function-
alities presented by the system and relate them to
Beyond testing their own activities. These interventions also ena-
When the project kicked-off in 2006, we as the um bled us to populate the um database with real lo-
design team, extended the first grounding phase cation-based information, gathered by a diverse
of ethnography planned for the project (mapping set of people.
of the local test bed area through interviews and Taking into account the emergent practices that
meetings with representatives of citizens and city the participants devised with the limited function-
office workers) towards a more participatory and de- alities of the prototypes, we held a more focused
sign oriented research exploration. We started the workshop with a group of active residents lobbying
process by building prototypes using repurposed for a new community activity house in Arabianran-
software so that we could quickly start workshops ta, and envisioned together how um could support
with communities. Some of the envisioned features such citizen action. With the help of paper proto-
and functionalities were then quickly turned into types and quick hacks in the um code, we sketched
new prototypes [6] that helped us further engage with our collaborators tools for helping them or-
with the stakeholders. ganize the materials that they were sharing and
give explicit sense of purpose to the use of um. We
Seeding also discussed the social practices that could be as-
By the end of 2006, a first Urban Mediator seed pro- sociated with the use of um. This gave us materials
totype with basic functionality was available. This and insights that advanced the design and devel-
gave us the opportunity to develop the concept and opment work. Parallel to that effort and with help
the ideas by planning small-scale iterative inter- from our icing partners in the City of Helsinki, we
ventions involving more people. To achieve this, tried to organize interactions with city employees;
rather than finding random users to test the pro- however, this proved more challenging. As we later
totypes, we specifically approached actors having a understood from our partner in the city, this was
clear stake in the development of the Arabianranta partly due to the fact that the concept remained
area (the testbed neighborhood in Helsinki) and too abstract for them, and it was difficult to see
that were engaged in some sort of community ac- how it could fit with their immediate needs.
tivities. We proposed to them to collaborate in the Based on the first co-design experiences, during
Urban Mediator design and development process the year 2007 we produced new iterations of um.
through a series of activities in which they were to The second iteration of the software included more
use prototypes we were developing. tools targeted at organizing collections of infor-
We first involved active citizens, and later a class mation (collecting location points into ‘boards’ or
of 12-13 year-old students and their teacher from ‘topics’). It also made the different standard mech-
the local school, asking them to mark points of anisms for feeding and syndicating the environ-
interest in the neighborhood. We also held work- ment (rss and other feeds) more visible in the user
interface. Moreover, the new version of um includ- tributions (points) and made them accessible to
ed several other conscious user interface strategies anyone online, as well as provided links to further
to encourage and facilitate links from other sys- information and discussions of the topic. We also
tems in the form of um widgets and um tools. In created a generic web info page [1] for the case to
June that year, we launched a publicly available stand for the official City site of the project. Due to
Urban Mediator demo for Helsinki [9]. By the end bureaucratic difficulties, the page resided in one
of that year we also made the first public release of our own servers but was redirected to a domain
of the code [8]. controlled by the City. The official info page fea-
tured an um widget that enabled citizens to direct-
Setting up a project ly send their reports, using the um functionalities,
With the new features and improved interface, we via this officially recognized site. Another widget
were able to communicate better to all our collab- gave a real time list of the newest contributions
orators the way in which we envisioned participa- collected in um .
tory projects to be constructed or to emerge with The project started the 1st of October 2007, with
the help of um. The more refined prototype was short announcements provided by the Public Works
also easier to explain. This helped our colleague Department placed in different media, advertis-
from the City of Helsinki to trigger the interest of ing the bunny rabbit info page (e.g in Helsingin
one of the planners responsible for parks at the City Sanomat, the biggest newspaper in Finland, in the
of Helsinki Public Works Department. At that time, City of Helsinki main information portal, in the
this person was taking part in a research project Arabianranta portal, etc). During this public trial
addressing the increase in numbers of non-indig that lasted until the 4th or March of 2008, 450 rab-
enous bunny rabbits in the city as well as the dam- bits sightings were reported as points on the um
age they are doing to vegetation. The research was map. The information gathered included detailed
intended to feed a report about the matter to be accounts of the amount of rabbits seen, their eating
used by the City’s policy makers. Officials had some habits and behavior, coupled with exact location
scientific information and data, but wanted to get information (easy to be imported to the City’s own
first hand accounts from people about the areas gis systems). The fact that we had provided links to
where they were encountering rabbits. They had a web discussion forum on the Neighborhood As-
also manifested their wish to get a better grasp of sociation of Helsinki, contributed partly to chan-
the attitudes and opinions of the citizens regard- nel and awaken the public discussion regarding
ing what should be done with the animals, as this how the city should deal with the rabbit problem.
was a controversial issue. After some negotiations To follow the impact of the intervention, we mon-
and meetings between the planner from the Pub- itored the content of the contributions and the
lic Works Department, his colleague from their it strategies used to make them, the related conversa-
section, icing partners in the City of Helsinki and tions on the web about the rabbit consultation and
us, the design team, the City team decided to ’take the rabbit issue in general. We collected feedback
the risk’ of using the Helsinki um beta prototype about um through a special feedback section in
to implement an intervention with larger public the service. Furthermore, we also contacted peo-
participation. ple that identified themselves to us. However, as
A participative research was sketched, which contributions could be done anonymously or us-
asked citizens to report sightings of bunny rabbits ing a nickname (registrations or contact informa-
in Helsinki. As a starting point, we created a ‘board’ tion were not mandatory), we did not interview con-
(later called ‘topic’) section in um Helsinki beta for tributors in a systematic way. The explicit feedback
the bunny rabbit case. The board collected all con- received has been varied. Some comments were
related to usability constraints of the tool. Other, as well as those readable by the city's legacy sys-
more general comments, indicated for example tems (e.g csv format for spreadsheets), we want to
appreciation of the fact that the information sub- support portability, compatibility and re-usability
mitted had been made publicly available, unlike of the information gathered. These issues are im-
what is usually the case with polls, questionnaires portant for everybody, cities and citizens alike, if
or other reporting tools set up so far by the city. innovative practices are to be encouraged.
Furthermore, there is a point to be made for prac-
Discussion tices that encourage openness of the interactions,
Up to now the results gathered have not been tradi- where the exchange of the information is not only
tional usability evaluations of an isolated software part of a unidirectional stream of information to-
component, nor validations of the suitability of the wards either the city or the citizens. In this case,
tool. Rather, the experiences in using the proto- the um resides outside the city’s systems and ren-
types and setting up the interventions speak to all ders its content accessible to all viewers; submis-
stakeholders, including ourselves, of the real prac- sions are available and transparent to anyone who
tical socio-technical arrangements at play for the either contributes or visits the site out of curiosity.
viability of systems such as um and its possibilities. This seems to have been particularly appreciated,
Through the work in the early workshops and the for example, in the cases in which the city is the
deployment of the first prototypes we have con- one asking for contributions. This practice needs
firmed that active citizens often encounter prob- to be followed more thoroughly as it could be as-
lems, concerns or interests, which cannot be dealt sociated with people’s motivation to submit or to
with through any of the available channels of the follow up an issue. In addition, we need to explore
city. Our experiences seems to indicate that more better if agendas different than the one set by the
citizens would be willing to be more active in en- administration could also emerge – and inform an
gaging with their city, if they had an assurance that original project – when contributions are left avail-
relevant citizen inputs would be brought forward able to other types of processing.
into the development processes of the city admin- Questions about other important aspects like
istration. Thus, the existence of mediating envi- the ownership and accessibility of the map data,
ronments like um, with openness to both city and concerns about privacy issues, reliability and rel-
citizens initiatives, seems to be a promising direc- evance of the information, as well as sustainability
tion in investigating what kinds of new interaction models for such participatory infrastructures have
channels could be useful. also been raised and need to be better understood.
In demonstrating that um functionalities can
be combined with existing systems – like the City’s Conclusions
own web portal in the case of the rabbit project – There is a clear need for more experimentation
we expected to exemplify the potential of flexible and research on how new practices that enable city-
and modular tools to reduce the threshold of set- citizen interaction can be facilitated. Our participa-
ting up a project (both for city and the citizens) as tory approach of staging and producing concrete
they have a lightweight, non-critical mission role interventions (with the um prototypes, and um de-
and could be deployed fast, without compromis- mo services) involving already active stakeholders
ing security, while keeping visibility and account- has been effective in eliciting ideas regarding how
ability towards the initiators. new types of city-citizen interactions could be con-
By experimenting with different kinds of ex- figured. The types of engagements that prototypes
change formats, both popular ones like georss and interventions afford offer an interesting and
feeds, increasingly used in popular map mashups, viable path to develop not only systems themselves
but the practices that surround them, and ultimate- current members of our research group, especially
ly make them viable. Taina Rajanti Roman Suzi, Tommi Raivio, Eirik
We are currently in the process of planning and Fatland, Mika Myller and Tuomo Tarkiainen who
realizing other ‘living’ interventions around differ- have contributed actively to the development of
ent topics and with a wide range of collaborators, um, and Kari-Hans Kommonen for comments and
Thanks to the visibility of the bunny rabit case; other help. Support for icing was provided by the Euro-
departments who were previously unable to relate pean Commission through fp6-ist-2004-4 26665.
to the system when it was still abstract seem to be
more interested now. Through future activities we References
expect to continue designing um itself in a partici- 1. Bunny rabbits situation case webpage. Ac-
patory design way. Furthermore, we see um as part cessed online 20.11.2007 at http://icing.hel.fi/
of a toolkit that could help stakeholders in the col- villikanitilanne
laborative design and development of various city- 2. Catbree J. Civic Hacking, a new agenda for e-
citizen and/or citizen-citizen interactions. democracy. Open Democracy June (2007). Ac-
From the original practical questions of how cessed online 13.01.2007 at: http://www.open-
to create interfaces and software components for democracy.net/
making different forms of knowledge mutually ac- 3. European Commision. eParticipation work
cessible to all the stakeholders in a city, we attempt program, dg information Society and Media.
to draw attention to bigger questions: what are the (2007).
processes by which multiple actors can imagine 4. Ehn, P. Scandinavian Design: On Participa-
and deploy new interactions with the city? What tion and Skill. In P. S. Adler and T. A. Wino-
are the new types of policies (open innovation, liv- grad (Eds.), Usability: Turning technologies
ing labs, funding of open source and community into tools New York: Oxford University Press.
lead initiatives), roles (lead-citizens, risk-takers in- (1992). pp. 96–132
side the city administration), and engagements 5. icing committee. Annex I – “Description of
that these new interactions will require? Are these Work”. In: Contract for Project icing Intel-
adequate strategies? ligent Cities of the Next Generation, eu Sixth
We are aware that the logics of production of Framework Programme. (2005)
public administration are not (and can not be) the 6. Saad-Sulonen, J., Susi, R. Designing Urban Me-
same as the ones followed by a consumer product diator. In Proceedings of the Cost 298 confer-
company expanding its markets in the most effi- ence: participation in the broadband society.
cient ways possible -though new pressures on the May 2007, Moscow, Russian Federation. (2007)
competitiveness of cities and citizens seem to be al- 7. Saad-Sulonen, J. Everyday Life in the Interac-
tering this balance. However, it remains a fact that tive City: exploring the potentials of interweav-
one of the biggest challenges for both cities and ing digital technologies and urban space. In
citizens is finding ways in which information and Proceedings of Future Urban Research in Eu-
ideas can impact and inform local governments rope, Bratislava February (2006)
and decision makers in more effective ways. 8. Urban Mediator development website. Ac-
cessed online 13.03.2008 at: http://um.uiah.fi
Acknowledgments 9. Urban Mediator Helsinki Demo website. Ac-
We would like to thank all the participants in the co- cessed online 13.03.2008 at: http://um.uiah.fi/
design activities and our icing partners, especial- helsinki
ly Iina Oilinki (City of Helsinki), who facilitated col- 10. Von Hippel, E Democratizing Innovation. mit
laboration with city employees. Thanks to past and Press: Cambridge. (2005)
articles – coordinating everyday life 139
Coordinating everyday life:

the design of practices and tools
in the “life project” of a group
of active seniors

Kari-Hans Kommonen This paper is about a community taking the initia-
tive to design “holistically” their future conditions
and how the process sheds lights in the complex
interrelations of practices and tools that need to
be in place in order for particular technologies to
become viable. Instead of only focusing on the par-
ticular development of appropriate “senior” age
technology, we want to draw attention to the co-
evolution of practices and tools inside a “life pro-
ject” which happens to be carried out by a very ac-
tive group of seniors. Based in Helsinki (Finland)
the Active Seniors Association has embarked on a
collective project of organizing their future every-
day life based on neighbourly help. Their project is
quite substantial, as it includes both the construc-
tion of an apartment building for the community
with the corresponding infrastructure as well as
the continuous development and configuration
of an active community life with shared practices
amongst its inhabitants. Drawing upon their ex-
periences and the authors’ design research col-
First published in Proceedings laboration with the association in the design of
of the 2009 cost 298 Conference:
tools for coordinating everyday life, we argue that
The Good, the Bad and the Chal-
lenging. Vol. 2, (pp. 736–745). is viable and convenient to conceptualize “users”
Slovenia: abs-Center and cost not only as experts of their everyday life but as ex-
298 Action. Reprinted with per- pert designers of their own everyday life practices.
mission.
Keywords neous crisis in state-led senior care. These trends

Everyday life, co-design, senior housing, social prac- have brought up questions about the urgent need
tices, user innovation, design of practices, design- to consider alternative ways of "growing old", some
in-use of which have been the central concern of the “life
project” of the group of seniors presented here. We
1. Introduction refer to it as a “life project” since it is an ongoing
This paper is about a community taking the initia- endeavour, whose main objective is to develop al-
tive to plan and design “holistically” their future ternative ways of growing old, which encompass a
living conditions and how the process sheds lights wide range of issues in a holistic fashion.
in the complex interrelations of practices and tools The project was initiated by a group of retired
that need to be in place in order for particular tech- women citizens in Finland who wanted to have an
nologies to become viable. Thanks to the efforts alternative for Finnish senior housing. Organized
of Science and Technology studies, amongst oth- as the Active Seniors Association1, they started in
ers, it is possible to recognise how technologies do 2000 the design and construction of the Loppukiri
not develop in isolation; but are embedded in and house (in English: last spurt) as a senior housing
co-evolve through complex social interactions [3]. arrangement based on neighbourliness and self-
However, if one is to intentionally support more in- help. Their collective project of organizing and de-
clusiveness and participation, questions of design signing this senior housing solution turned out to
need to be addressed. As everyday tools become be quite substantial, as they also aimed to create
increasingly digital, an important part of the de- a strong community that would be able to for ex-
sign activity takes place also where users and tech- ample cook, eat and clean together, among other
nology meet, as opposed to only in product devel- activities.
opment laboratories [12][8]. Under these circum- At the concrete level the project took off in Janu-
stances it is critical to understand how the world ary 2001 when the association managed to nego-
is changing, what and how to design, and who are tiate with the city of Helsinki the assignment of a
the designers in these new circumstances. price-regulated lot (hitas) that permitted the con-
Drawing on research for work-oriented coop- crete planning. The lot was located in a new housing
erative design, Anthropologist Lucy Suchman and development area of Helsinki called Arabianranta2
her colleagues have already made a point of how where new urban regeneration strategies and tech-
important it is to consider design or ‘system deve- nical solutions were been tried out. In the Spring of
lopment not as the creation of discrete, intrinsically 2006 the construction of the house ended and all
meaningful objects, but the cultural production of those members of the Association that bought a flat
new forms of practice’ [17]. In making the analysis in it, moved to their new home. Loppukiri consists
of this case we want to focus on the interplay of of a community of approximately 70 people that
both specific tools and shared practices as a useful live in 58 compact apartments (between 30-50 sq2).
unit of analysis and of design intervention that is There are large common areas, including library,
as relevant for the everyday life and the senior care kitchen, dining room, a guestroom, activity room,
contexts as it is for the work context.
1.1. The Life Project of a Group

of Senior Citizens 1 See http://www.aktiivisetseniorit.fi for details on
The expected number of active years after retire- the Association (in Finnish)
ment (also referred to as the third age) is steadily in- 2 See http://www.arabianranta.fi for an overview
creasing in the West, whilst there is also a simulta- of the area and its services.
laundry and sauna3. Furthermore the community product, in this paper we want to draw attention to
takes care of the maintenance tasks, eats together the co-evolution of practices and tools inside a “life
once a day, organizes and produces different kind project” that happens to be carried out by a very ac-
of social activities and supports and encourages tive group of seniors. It is evident that in the Active
hobby groups to be enjoyed by the inhabitants. Seniors’ life project, there are direct references to
ways in which technology plays a role in organizing
1.2. Practices and tools: Defining elderly care. However from our point of view, the
Research Problems constellation of new practices that they were envi-
In line with what has been proposed by some au- sioning (cooking together, supporting neighbourly
thors, the Active Seniors’ experience suggests the help, keeping active through community involve-
need to articulate frameworks by which to analyse ment), their organizational strategies (use of me-
design throughout the whole life cycle [6][9]. It also dia, working groups, etc.) and the holistic scope
speaks to the urgency to talk about design that ex- present also an interesting case to challenge as-
tends to other things and not just technology [18]. sumptions about the sources of innovative ideas
In other words with this work we hope to contrib- and ways of organizing collective creative process.
ute to the larger project of reframing social practic- In thinking about these issues we asked: What re-
es as types of designs that are composed by people sources and skills did the Active Seniors need to de-
– formerly known as "users" – as they go through sign their own housing/life? What kinds of design
their everyday life. tactics do these “everyday life practice designers”
In using the term practices we draw attention employ? Is it useful to conceptualize them as such?
to those embodied, materially mediated arrange- Furthermore this bears reflection on role of the
ments of human activities that are continually re- professional designers and the kinds of co-design
produced [16] and that are shared and evolve in so- strategies that could be put in place to facilitate
cial settings [23]. Furthermore practices are organ- such communities and their design endeavours.
ized through practical understanding [17] and con- The paper is structured as follows; we first intro-
stitute a kind of silent and ubiquitous "consumer duce the setting of collaboration and our research
production" [4]. In doing this we explore an entry approach, we then present elements of their collab-
point to understanding interactions between de- orative practices and tactics follow by an account
sign and use, beyond traditional dichotomies [17] of the contexts and outcomes of our design inter-
following similar propositions regarding the recon- ventions. We then conclude with reflections and
figuration of dynamics of consumption and pro- conclusions for further work.
duction [19] and new conceptualizations of the on-
going processes of innovation, that also happens 2. Research setting
in ‘what people do’ [20]. 2.1. Arabianranta – a promised innovation
Due to demographic trends there is an increas- hub and future living lab
ing interest in researching and developing Infor- The Loppukiri house is located in the city district
mation and Communication Technologies (icts) of Arabianranta, a recent development area of Hel-
for seniors and older adults (see e.g. [14]). Instead sinki, which is considered to be an example of im-
of focusing only on the particular development of a portant cultural and technical urban innovations
[10]. An important feature for our discussion here
is that the plans drafted for the area in the mid 90’s,
3 See http://www.loppukiri.fi for general informa- included the building of a fast data communica-
tion about the building and life at Loppukiri tion network right from the beginning. According
(partly in English) to Kangasoja [11] who has done extensive research,
in the evolution of the local ict model, the initial housing arrangements they where designing. Their
network plans where used to market the area as a willingness to create an active network of collabo-
future innovation hub seeking to attract jobs to- rators, to share their experiences and also to learn
wards the locality and improving its competitive- from them, led then to a long-term design research
ness. Arabianranta was going to offer cutting-edge collaboration between our research group and the
ict infrastructure and it was expected that small association.
and medium size companies would be the main
users of the network. 2.2. Methodology
Kangasoja’s research has shown how during the In order to trace the design of tools and practices
past 10 years of Arabianranta construction, those in Active senior’s life project we make use of a di-
earlier innovation hub plans turned slowly towards verse body of research and design material that
developing the network more as something being has been produced either in close collaboration
part of the basic housing infrastructure, as water with the community, or by themselves during the
and electricity are. Today the network of Arabian- past years. The research and design material from
ranta offers very concrete down to earth services which we draw includes: 1) The Association’s own
targeted to serve local residents needs (anti-virus, communication materials as well as a recent book
firewall, local email address, local information por- written by two of the members [5] which allows us
tal and discussions boards for every building among to follow the ways in which they understand their
others). At the same time the broadband technolo- project and their conscious attempts to document
gies have developed fast and become cheaper and and share the experience; 2) Materials gathered
accessible in general, though Arabianranta devel- with members of the community through formal
oped a unique ict model4, other areas of Helsinki and informal interviews as well as self-documenta-
are today similarly well covered by broadband as tion exercises inspired by “cultural probes” [7] who
this one is. In spite of this, there is continuous ex- have been analysed and discussed in collaborative
pectation that, in a Living Lab spirit, new broad- ideation and design workshops at different stag-
band services could be deployed and tested with es of our collaboration; 3) Different situated de-
the local residents5. sign interventions with scenarios and prototypes
We learned about the Active Seniors’ project dealing with broadband applications or services.
while it was still in its forming stage and soon pro- We complement these with the experiences of co-
posed to them collaboration to explore how the ca- designing what the seniors call their Everyday Life
pabilities and challenges of digital media could be Management System. The system is a web-based
brought into their plans [1] [21]. We wanted to take collection of tools for the seniors, which assists in
the opportunity to offer alternative visions of the the coordination and sharing of everyday life ac-
uses of the network from their perspective address- tivities and information in the house. These inter-
ing some of the challenges implied by the type of ventions allowed us to provoke a more general dis-
cussion and ideation process on the feasibility of
certain practices while at the same time engaged
us in a concrete design challenge.
4 Through her research Kangasoja has identified
several of the innovations tried out in the ict
development model that make Arabianranta an
3. Coordinating everyday life
interesting case; for an overview of them see: [11]. 3.1. A House and a Community
5 See e.g. http://www.helsinkilivinglab.fi/node/ The idea of a new kind of senior housing project
169 for an introduction to Arabiantanta as a was born in leisurely meetings among a couple of
“Living Lab”. old friends that discussed and brainstorm around
more friendly, secure and personal places to grow An important component of their vision was the
old. For the three women that initiated this project, idea that to create a strong community in their fu-
neither of the alternatives offered by the Finnish ture house they would cook and eat together and
society for senior housing – the institutionalized take charge of maintaining and cleaning the com-
senior homes nor the usual lonely apartment – felt mon areas themselves. Doing and developing con-
very appealing [5]. What started as the wild idea crete services for themselves and at the same time
of a few, begun to turn into the collective project keeping active was considered a way to create a
of a group of senior citizens that got organized as sense of belongingness and purpose for all. All these
the Active Seniors Association around the summer related practices, rules and expectations were dis
of 2000. This instrument allowed a growing num- cussed, planned and designed within the commu-
ber of active men and women to get involved. As a nity during the construction years, and continue
working strategy they divided into working groups to be reconfigured as the time passes. When asked
that focused on the different areas of the project to about what she sees is the main motivation for their
cover in this way all requirements and tasks such endeavour, Eila, one of the members of the associ-
as fund raising, house and interior design, inter- ation, and inhabitant of Loppukiri explained “this
nal communication, community development, it project is about exploring new ways of growing old
infrastructure, etc. When the lot was secured they in a society that in the current circumstances is not
also negotiated with the construction company going to be able to carry us in the same way as before,
(Sato-Rakennuttajat Oy) and the architect (Siven in here we experiment with the strengths, possibilities
& Takala Architects) how they will be employed in and limits of collaboration”. The residents of the
a new type of collaboration in the project in close building are also organized in working groups of
interaction with the Association's members, as ten persons, who take care of different tasks. Each
they had crafted for themselves a much larger role group has a work shift once in six weeks during
than that of mere customers or consumers. The which they take care of the planning and prepar-
Active Seniors Association continues to play a role ing of a common meal served Monday to Friday at
in the development of Loppukiri. However since five o'clock (except for the three summer months),
not all of its members moved to the house after as well as cleaning the house and managing the
construction ended a new “residents association” shared spaces. The objectives of providing access
was founded to develop the activities of those liv- to a lively social life and opportunities to practice
ing in the house. different hobbies in order to keep active have been
In order to achieve their objectives, the continu- well met so far. By taking advantage of the common
ous development and configuration of an active areas of the house and the diversity of its inhabit-
community life, with shared practices and rules ants, the community counts with reading circles,
amongst its inhabitants, was as big a project as the yoga sessions, cooking club and all sort of other
construction of the building itself. Sirkka, one of the activities, some of which are also open for people
motors of the project, explains it: “We built at the not living in the house.
same time a house and a community”. All those con- Among their key tactics we can consider 1) A
struction years the Association members started life-long learning and holistic approach to their vi-
doing things together from formal events to infor sion; 2) A commitment to an ample circulation of
mal parties, they made trips to get acquainted with information achieved through members newslet-
similar experiences and organized training possi- ter, the website and monthly face-to-face meetings
bilities for themselves. Regular meetings and social and self development activities; 3) The ability to
occasions where held and all those contributed to build a large cooperation network beyond the com-
help on developing further the sense of community. munity that includes authorities, contacts in re-
search centres and institutions that deal with sen- be interesting and meaningful in such a commu-
ior issues, as much as the organizations directly nity? Would there be a need for other visions than
implicated in the building of the house; 4) A flex- broadband for businesses and will such visions
ible organizational practice embedded in the idea have a role in the development and maintenance
of the “association as an instrument and the work- of the community? Since key members were will-
ing groups as the motors”, 4) experimentation with ing to collaborate in answering those questions,
new types of agreements with collaborators where the concrete plans proceeded on two levels.
there was an expanded (but realistic) idea of mo- At first, a quite pragmatic track helped them
tivations and profits gained by all those involved. to develop a web presence and an intranet for the
association. The main objective was to increase
3.2. Co-designing broadband visions: their communication channels. This was also con-
broadband for a senior’s house? sidered by the working group in charge to be a sub-
By the time we started our collaboration with the tle way to encourage members to use the Internet
Association the vision for the future network as an and computers more. Through focused design ses-
innovation hub for businesses in the area was at full sions with some members, we made paper proto-
swing and was greeted with mixed feelings amongst types of the needed structures and created a basic
different stakeholders (including city planners, pro- infrastructure to publish material about the pro-
spective residents, service providers, etc) [11]. Fur- ject (news of the development, forms to join the
thermore it was not clear for everybody if, on the one association, layout plans of the building and so
hand, the ict model under consideration would forth). The main objective was to keep the more
include connections to residential housing and “ict advanced” members informed and at the same
under what conditions, although there were cer- time recruit new candidates or possible collabora-
tainly expectations of it. On the other hand it was tors. The internal area served as a shared reposito-
not evident if a house like Loppukiri would need ry of official documents and resources that ended
such connectivity, and if so, for what purposes6. up being used mainly by the board of directors of
Being a very heterogeneous group of people, not the Association; all of whom had had jobs and ca-
all members of the Association subscribed to the reers that required the use of computers and infor-
idea of computers or networks needed to play a mation systems to some extent. Through the years
role in their future plans. However, the Association it became evident that the possibility of using the
did have a realistic idea of the increasingly impor- network to share files and information was of im-
tant role communication flows had in achieving portance to the community even if not all members
their goals [5] and keen interest in improving their were using it, and that having a web presence was
members “capabilities” towards new media. We a beneficial element for the Association's project.
asked ourselves what kind of applications would The second track had a more blue-sky agenda
and aimed mainly to generate scenarios and illustra-
tive sketches for “new media concepts” that could
serve the future Loppukiri community. In engag-
6 According to network studies made by the local ing the community to consider the more future
development agency Art and Design City Oy (adc)
oriented topics, it was beneficial that the Associa-
based on information given by the local operator,
tion was in its forming stage as well. They felt the
the traffic in Loppukiri has been considerable
and sometimes even bigger than other residen- need to know how their community worked, what
tial units that are more “obvious” candidates for kind of expectations members had about the con-
high broadband consumption, like for example ditions in their future new home. They were partic-
student housing. ularly keen on exploring what kinds of things they
were willing to share with each other. We proposed nation challenges of the future house and activities
to help them to realize a series of self-documenta- were also identified: sharing and managing the com-
tion exercises, where those topics could be explored. mon spaces, creating accountability and visibility
The material provided them with a different view of the common activities and resources and ensur-
about the community and hopefully helped them ing that activities could be organized and kept alive.
understand better their strengths and the challeng- Through various workshops and other exchang-
es ahead. At the same time this gave us an inter- es we developed a number of concept scenarios and
esting opportunity to chart some of their current ideas that illustrated new practices made possible
practices to understand the context better. We pro- by the infrastructure and old practices reinterpret-
duced a set of postcards, asking projective ques- ed with new tools. Most of the concepts included
tions like what is a typical a day in Loppukiri? How the idea of more media being produced by them-
do you describe a perfect neighbour? Etc. A second, selves to be shared. We ideated for example an audi-
and more elaborated exercise was done only with ovisual archive of garden and gardening memories,
a small group of seniors and consisted of a pack a shared library of cooking recipes and tips made
with a camera, envelopes, notebooks, maps and with videos, a voice message system to be used for
other probes for documenting things such as the community news sharing or organizing activities
use of different media during a particular day, col- as well as to produce a private audio diary. We also
lecting news articles or stories and intangible things played with several concepts for management of
they considered worth to share, maps of their move- shared resources that included a virtual library dis-
ments around the city as well as the task of ideating tributed across their home bookshelves, a sophis-
lists of rules for the future house. The material col- ticated reminder system that could be used for the
lected served as a basis to generate scenarios and sauna or laundry turns as well as for other things.
ideas that where discussed in small workshop ses- It was obvious that – given enough resources –
sions with volunteer members of the community. there was no shortage of ideas for possible appli-
From those first exercises a series of issues start- cations that could be appealing and could make
ed to emerge: Most of the seniors were interested sense for this particular community, and that Lop-
and actively engaged in all kinds of knowledge shar- pukiri could indeed benefit from good broadband
ing activities. They had very advanced practices for connectivity; one that will consider the community
documenting extensively things such as travelling both as a content source and as a service “provider”.
recommendations, gardening and cooking tips, Despite the ambitious agenda of the exercises,
book recommendations, etc. There were clear ex- traces of those ideas live today in some of their ar-
pectations that those knowledge-sharing activities rangements or have been implemented with more
would be expanded and enriched by their new condi- at hand resources. For example in one of the latest
tions at Loppukiri. Another important concern was workshops, one of our colleagues, Kirsti Lehtimä-
the importance of attending and keeping up with ki proposed a solution to assign a resident of Lop-
mental and physical fragility (specifically memo- pukiri a porter duty to greet visitors to the house.
ries, personal recollections, reminders). Sugges- When a common doorbell rings, they could get vid-
tions to address the issues through shared routines eo access to a door camera and greet the visitor.
and care commitments emerged, and we discussed Alternatively, if the porter was downstairs, she or
how making it possible to document those commit- he can greet the visitor in person. The suggestion
ments and perhaps made accessible to all, while included the role of "on-duty" help, where an as-
respecting privacy, could be a way forward. This was signed person could get redirected to her phone all
felt to be an important aspect to overcome some calls from members requiring help. The idea de-
of the obstacles of living at home. Practical coordi- veloped a life of it’s own in their imagination and
was finally implemented by purchasing a mobile the common meal, and organizing and following
phone and a sim card, which is then rotated among up activities and offering neighbourly help. A de-
the members of the community. Everyone has the sign specification started to take shape through
number and it is also shown next to the doorbells noting down all the requirements and ideas and
for visitors who do not have a specific host in Lop- concluded in a very complete document produced
pukiri. Carrying the phone also includes the on-call by the Active Seniors it working group (December
duty so that any member of the community can call 2005). The “specification” formulated a list of fea-
in case of need. tures, an outline of what they considered an ideal
interface, and a prioritized list with the minimal
3.3. Co-desgining an “Everyday Life functions required from the Loppukiri calendar.
Management” system The community calendar concept was then named
A second stage of our collaboration with the asso- by the seniors as "Miina" in honour of Miina Sillan-
ciation continued later through a research project pää8, a famous Finnish historical character -former
that gave the possibility of concretizing some of maid turned in to one of the first women member
the earlier visions into implementable prototypes. of the parliament- because “the system should ac-
By then it was clearer that the local network infra- complish as many things as Miina did". The calendar
structure would provide every flat (including Lop- turned slowly in to an Everyday Life Management
pukiri) with a ready installed broadband connec- System, a collection of web-based tools for the sen-
tion7. With the imminence of moving to the new iors, which assists in the coordination and sharing
house, after an ideation workshop in 2005 on care of everyday life activities and information [2].
and safety practices, a concrete goal was jointly For design and production purposes the “sys-
defined and framed as the design and implemen- tem” was divided in several components: 1) a site –
tation of a digital "community calendar" [14]. The that will operate as a framework for other compo-
idea of developing this concrete prototype was born nents and that takes care of common use cases
as a way to explore solutions to 1) organize and co- (such as login and navigation); 2) Member’s info –
ordinate shared tasks of the community and 2) give or Profile component to take care of the informa-
a sense of security, belonging and independence. tion of the members of the community; 3) A Dining
Armed with their previous experiences, and the Calendar – specialized in announcing and register-
wide variety of expertise in the community, they ing for joint dinners; 4) A Shared Resources Cal-
brainstormed through their own working groups endar – with special features to reserve common
and in workshops with us, what a Loppukiri calen- shared resources and spaces such as laundry and
dar would mean for them. The challenges, oppor- sauna; 5) A General Group Event Calendar – to share
tunities, limitations and requirements of the pro- information with the community about general
ject become clearer as we advanced. The system events; and 6) A Personal Calendar – where each
was meant to support some of the practices that member could access all the information, register
the community would engage in once living under
the same roof and priority was given to: Sharing,
booking and using communal spaces; planning
8 Miina Sillanpää (1866 – 1952) was one of the first

nineteen female members of the Parliament of
7 Today actual and new residents do not need to Finland and Finland’s first female minister. Dur-
subscribe or pay for the connection separately ing her life she operated on various areas of life
as it is included in the maintenance fees of the like journalism and politics, and was considered
buildings at a very competitive price. a competent, sensible and reliable person.
to different events, as well as being a starting point sumptions contained in it did not scale to actu-
to organizing other personal events9. al practices that where already emerging in the
Starting from the first stable version of Miina house. This was evident with some features made
installed in their new home, roughly at the same to support the daily meal at Loppukiri. At the con-
time they moved in (May 2006), the Active Seniors ceptual level the “common dinning tool” empha-
tested the system vigorously and started to take it sis seemed to be more on announcing dinners and
into use slowly. They also planned strategies on registering for them. However the planning aspect
how to start teaching and helping the rest of the was also crucial but not so well supported. For ex-
residents to use Miina. A team of volunteers start- ample, one of the community working groups had
ed using the calendars for reservations and events, compiled a Loppukiri recipe book appropriate for
while a couple of the working groups used it to or- the community. This was being used in its paper
ganize the common dinners. The rest of the com- version for the cooking as well as for planning the
munity was using a parallel paper solution arrange- weekly menu and shopping activities. It was also
ment they also designed. The it working group available for those wishing to join the dinner so
organized usability, or should we say “usefulness”, that all could be aware of the ingredients of a meal
testing and ideation meetings where they tried and (in case of allergies or other concerns).
analysed how Miina connected to their practical The initial specification and some concept de-
arrangements. The meetings produced detailed scription did include a sketch for the Recipe Book
walkthroughs of suggestions and changes to the but it was left out from the first iteration so as soon
rules and the behaviours available in the calendars as there was a chance, a Recipe Book component
and developed appropriate concepts to be used was implemented quickly, in a sketchy way, using
in the interface. Considerable amount of energy the code from the Members Profile component.
were spent on trying out alternatives for texts and Thus a new version of Miina with the “Recipe Book”
sending requests for changes. At this stage we were component was rolled out, improving the situa-
mostly following the deployment from outside (fol- tion. A second aspect is exemplified by the fact that
lowing the use as we had access to the system) and though much effort was spent in setting the cal-
were available by email and participated in their endars for managing the shared spaces, their use
meetings whenever we were invited. presented some challenges when not everybody
was using them since it was difficult to keep up-
Announcing or planning? dated both the paper and digital versions of them.
While the calendar metaphor used during the con- We soon realized that their uptake could be post-
cept design stage was an inspiring one, certain as- poned and it was better to focus on the paper in-
terfaces and develop more the practice of delegat-
ing certain maintenance of individual features, to
9 Inside our design team the software was called some “neighbour” willing to help. Future versions
DailyWorks, to separate it from Miina, the specif- of Miina need to address the need of planning and
ic implementation and configuration for the sen- taking decisions (e.g. what to cook, and whether
iors [2]. We tried to keep an eye on use cases rel- to eat or not) with more flexibility and expand the
evant to groups of friends and clubs, residents as-
connections to the paper interfaces that many resi-
sociations, extended families, food buying circles,
dents feel more comfortable using.
day-care circles, and others that could potentially
benefit from a similar infrastructure as the one
we were developing with the seniors. The soft-
ware has been released under an Open Source Li-
cense. It is available at http//:arki.uiah.fi/adik
Practice design informing the Miina has close to 18 different types of “contain-
evolution of tools ers” for announcing things, documenting, etc).
While living together in the house it became more We noticed how the collective negotiation of the
evident to the Active seniors that they will have naming of concepts and the meaning of the words
many uses for a component inside Miina for stor- used to talk about their practices was significant
ing various notes and documents. After the Recipe in the community. Since words establish shared
Book became available, the Active Seniors asked if understanding about their goals and responsibili-
it was possible to use a "copy" of the Recipe Book ties, they were considered very important. There-
component as a bulletin board; in that case we did fore they appreciated the relative easiness, with
not have time to implement one. On their own, and which new things, with appropriate names, could
to make their point clear to us, the seniors tried a be dynamically "tried out" with the new tool. There
couple of work-a-rounds to make the Recipe Book is still much work to be done in finding the right
behave like a community "note board". They played interfaces for these types of tools but we believe
with the titles of the recipes to get them to appear that efforts should be concentrated precisely in
in different order (e.g. by adding numbers or other finding the right type of abstraction level that will
symbols before titles to manipulate their sorting, allow everyday practitioners to continue fine-tun-
etc.) and “misused” it to fit their purposes. This ing (designing) their tools in use.
request did not originally seem to be of high prior- Co-design strategies followed in here include
ity, as they had plans to use other infrastructures the earlier scenario work, the construction of an
like the Arabianranta community portal discus- iterative specification document with clear own-
sion boards. Nonetheless, it become evident that ership as well as paper and functional prototypes
their use would have required them to maintain made and socialized early enough. Last, we can
and follow more systems, more passwords and say that open systems that are flexible and can be
user names to take care of, etc. Hence their Miina extended open the ways for trying things out and
seemed to them the right location for such sharing weight it against actual practices and existing tools
of files and information. (e.g. their own paper interfaces).
To address that concern and experiment with
ideas of more generic infrastructures, we decided 4. Conclusions
to concentrate the remaining efforts in turning the Mainstream user centred design methods and tools
Recipe Book into a component that could allow (and to some extent certain readings from the so-
building of dynamic containers for information. cial sciences), have recognized the larger number
The result was a tool called Card Box for compos- of actors and dimensions involved in design pro-
ing “information boards” that could hold items cess, however those approaches still assume that
(or cards) whose structure could be defined by the the processes of “doing (designing)” and “appro-
creator and refined. The appearance of a container priating (using)” are of a fundamental different na-
could be changed directly by someone in the com- ture. We challenge this assumption, and propose
munity if it did not work out (nobody understood that, given appropriate circumstances, we can con-
what to do or it became messy after a while to man- ceptualize "users" as not only experts in their own
age) and new arrangements and concepts could be everyday life, but as expert designers of their own
tried out at little cost by filling or editing a form. To everyday life practices.
help jumpstart the process we created the Recipe On a general level this group is a prime exam-
Book and two other examples of new information ple of an everyday life design community, people
structures like notice boards and document stor- who take an active stance towards designing the
age places. The rest they did on their own (today conditions, circumstances, facilities, tools and so-
cial practices of their own life, and organize them- configurations according to different purposes and
selves appropriately to achieve their goals effective- circumstances.
ly. Their case sheds light on the dynamics of new The paper illustrated some of our research around
forms of social collectivity, which challenge our developing co-design approaches thinking on the
established modes of politics and tradition [22] interplay between digital technology and the prac-
and the possibilities of organizing collaborative tices of everyday life. We asked is it possible to envi-
creative activities (see e.g [13]). The Active Seniors sion ways in which design research can give people
are already existing active "co-designers", partici- tools to become more proactive rather than just
pating in the discussion of what could be alterna- reactive towards technological development? We
tive ways for growing old by initiating their own ex- believe that this is an important goal to keep pur-
periment and sharing their experiences. They have suing; as the task of the professional designer be-
used the tools and means available to them – such comes increasingly to provide the appropriate "de-
as information, ideas, city services, construction sign" interfaces (or tools) for the users to continue
companies, architects and various forms of social developing their practices and systems through
activity and organization – according to their best design-in-use. We hope to continue research to un-
abilities, and in line with their purposefully devel- derstand the challenges involved in providing open-
oped design vision. This is of course not something ended components, platforms, and toolkits that
that can be generalized. It indeed takes time, effort increase and support the design capabilities of the
and appropriate conditions for such endeavours to stakeholders themselves.
flourish and become viable.
On a more specific level our collaboration with 5. Acknowledgements
the Active Seniors life project has offered an oppor- We would like to thank the Active Seniors Asso-
tunity to explore how diverse design activities, at ciation for their invaluable collaboration. We are
the practice level, can be conceptualized and real- also in debt to many past and current members of
ized. Throughout our collaboration, they acquired our research group for contributions to the devel-
new design tools and envisioning capabilities and opment of these thoughts. Without Mika Myller
some implementation resources, and were able to and Roman Suzi, it would have been impossible to
include more digital ideas and solutions in their produce the prototypes. Teemu Leinonen, Sanna
life project. Compared to a traditional client/service Marttila and Paola Cabrera gave us timely feedback
situation, we did not propose a "product" for them, on the paper. This work has been partly funded by
but instead an experiment in expanding their ca- tekes (Finnish Agency for Technology Develop-
pacity to act as designers with new tools and visions. ment and Innovation); we greatly appreciate that
However, eventually we did realize some of the re- support.
sulting designs as a validation of their meaningful-
ness. We can say that the capacity of this communi- 6. References
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articles – enhancing citizenship 151
Enhancing citizenship:
the role of in-between
infrastructures

Joanna Saad-Sulonen In this paper, we draw on material from a partici-
patory design project that focused on the practices,
infrastructures, and technologies used for creat-
ing and sharing information about the urban en-
vironment. The research strategy that we followed
includes the collaborative design of a prototype
environment and service called Urban Mediator
First published in Proceedings
(um), as well as its subsequent deployment and
of the 11th Participatory Design
Conference pdc10 Participation
appropriation in use through several cases. We ex-
the Challenge. (pp. 81–90). Syd- amine some of the challenges and opportunities
ney, Australia: acm. doi:10.1145/ that exist in designing in-between infrastructures
1900441.1900453 that can both address a more fluid and active no-
tion of citizenship and understand it as practiced,
Permission to make digital or rather than as a given role. Our research demon-
hard copies of all or part of this
strates that in-between infrastructures can have
work for personal or classroom
a role in encouraging a variety of stakeholders, in-
use is granted without fee pro-
vided that copies are not made cluding city officials and citizens, to experiment
or distributed for profit or com- with and understand some of the complex aspects
mercial advantage and that cop- of participation. Following this argument, we also
ies bear this notice and the full suggest some ways in which Participatory Design
citation on the first page. To contributes to supporting continuous and itera-
copy otherwise, or republish, to tive design-in-use.
post on servers or to redistribute
to lists, requires prior specific
permission and/or a fee. pdc’10, Author Keywords
29-nov-2010, Sydney, Australia. Citizen participation, citizenship, design-in-use,
Copyright © 2010 acm isbn: innovation, e-governance, in-between infrastruc-
978-0-9818561-0-0 tures
acm Classification Keywords Practices as Locus of Innovation: Steps

H5.m. Information interfaces and presentation Toward More Active Notions of Citizenship
(e.g., hci): Miscellaneous. Situated and participatory perspectives on design
have proposed that there are important design chal
Introduction lenges beyond those associated with artefacts. In
In recent years, governments worldwide have been this view, design should be approached “…not as
very interested in electronic government initiatives the creation of discrete, intrinsically meaningful
(e-government), with many related projects and de- objects, but the cultural production of new forms
sign activities addressing the potential uses of new of practice” (Suchman et al., 1999, p. 404). In so far
technologies for enhancing democratic practices. as design engages with shared forms of practice
There is, however, a growing recognition that an and, consequently, understanding, it “deals with
overreliance on technology, an insufficient collab- the contradiction between tradition and transcend-
oration of all stakeholders, and a lack of emphasis ence” in people’s practices (Ehn, 1998, p. 161).
on building human capacity tend to limit the po- In contrast to these views, most of the current
tential positive impacts of these initiatives (Rosel e-government design plans offer a simplified view
and Finger 2007). As a result, the focus of some of the complex dynamics at stake. There seems to
developments has shifted from developing tech- be an inherent assumption that, by providing a suf-
nology-enabled improvements in e-government ficiently overarching city system (e.g., a new issue
operations to developing broader interactions be- reporting and tracking infrastructure) or a new us-
tween government, non-government, and civil soci- er-friendly entry point (e.g., one-stop government
ety stakeholders (e-governance) (Leadbeater, 2004; services shop), an increase in participation will au-
Rosel and Finger, 2007), with a focus on what is tomatically follow or “participation” will simply be
needed to better support the dynamics of collec- fulfilled (Ekelin, 2007). At the same time, most of
tive action and collaboration. the projects and literature related to citizen partici-
Nevertheless, it is debatable what exactly e-gov- pation refer loosely to “citizenship” as the act of a
ernance entails, particularly from the perspective of person taking part in public affairs. These projects
broadening citizen participation. This is especially mostly leave open for interpretation what is really
true in times when Internet developments, such as at stake and how citizenship can be understood
so-called Web 2.0 platforms, social networking ser- anew in contemporary contexts that are also char-
vices, and a myriad of other new media tools and in- acterized by new types of infrastructures and com-
formation systems, have also been embraced by civ- munication possibilities.
ic initiatives and third-sector projects (see Crabtree, To open up this issue, we will now make a brief
2007; Punie et al., 2007; Novek, 2008). Although detour across different understandings of the no-
these initiatives are promising, many challenges tion of citizenship. In their review on citizenship
remain regarding how (1) these developments can thought, Jones and Gaventa (2002) clearly summa-
more effectively influence decision-making pro- rize three classical strands in the literature. The
cesses, (2) public administrations can respond to first strand belongs to what can be considered libe-
these changes in constructive ways with their cur- ral thought, where citizenship is presented as being
rent practices, and (3) opportunities for collabo- a status granted by a state to an individual, which is
ration can be created. Participatory Design expe- exercised mostly by representative strategies, such
riences and practices have much to offer in terms as voting. A second strand, characteristic of much
of addressing alternative approaches to e-govern- of communitarian thought, identifies citizenship
ance (see Dittrich et al., 2003; Ekelin, 2007; Sefyrin, as a relationship that can be conceived in the sense
2009). A purpose of this study is to build on these of identity. This identity is asserted only in our be-
experiences and complement them. longing to a community and in relationship to it.
The third classical strand is represented by civic re- Urban Mediator (um)) aimed at facilitating the cre-
publican thinking, which understands citizenship ation of spaces for sharing the different kinds of
as a more or less a careful balance between tole- knowledge of the city. Drawing inspiration from
rance and the obligation to pursue common good, Ehn’s (2008) invitation to consider participatory
which is exercised primarily through process of de- projects as forms of “Thing” Design, we will inspect
liberation. These variations across these short defi- our research material with the purpose of illustrat-
nitions exemplify how citizenship is by no means ing some of the conditions by which multiple ac-
a straightforward concept. tors have or have not imagined new relationships
Much of the work in developing contemporary through the infrastructures and engagements that
ideas about citizenship attempts to productive- the um interventions created and made visible.
ly link the insights made by these three separate Based on our experiences with these participa-
strands (Jones and Gaventa, 2002). Although it is tory design interventions, we argue that in-between
possible to track some of the ideas all the way back infrastructures, such as um, which include interfac-
to Plato’s Republic, more contemporary understand- es to many actors, can offer different stakeholders
ings of citizenship bring together the emphasis on an opportunity to understand the many challeng-
individual rights and equality and the recognition es that are associated with participatory process-
of our relationships of belonging through their fo- es. Through these socio-technical arrangements,
cus on deliberation and the construction of com- the capacity of both citizens and city officials to
mon responsibility. These new approaches invite construct new forms of citizenship and, therefore,
us to reconceptualise citizenship as practiced, rath- initiate innovations in the way that digital partici-
er than as given. That is, what we should be talking pation processes and services are being planned
about is not only a status or a defacto relationship, and delivered, can be supported in use as well. Our
but also something that we practice. experience also suggests that designing in-between
Building upon these ideas, we argue that there infrastructures is neither a straightforward nor un-
is a need to explore design challenges and opportu- problematic endeavour.
nities that arise from a more fluid and active notion In the following sections, we will expand upon
of citizenship that goes beyond a status or isolat- the context of our study, the characteristics of the
ed acts of involvement, such as the ones reported experimental platform designed and share some
by Holzer and Kim (2008) in the case of e-govern- of the interventions and experiments made, to il-
ment, toward concrete, cumulative contributions lustrate the link between our design project and
and engagements in everyday life (see Borchorst et these broader concerns.
al., 2009; Ekelin, 2007). The following serve as re-
search questions in this paper: What is the role of Research context, activities, inter
new infrastructures and socio-technical arrange- ventions and collaboration
ments in opening up new possibilities for the prac- From 2006 to 2008, we carried out a participatory
tice of citizenship? Where and how can the required design study of the practices, technologies, and so-
“innovations” take place? cio-technical arrangements for creating and shar-
We draw on material from a participatory de- ing location-based information about the urban
sign project that explored the role of digital tech- environment. The context was the eu-funded In-
nologies, specifically location-based services, in novative Cities for the Next Generation project (ic-
facilitating citizen participation in issues related ing), which was aimed at exploring Information
to the urban environment and in building new re- and Communication Technologies (ict) solutions
lationships to the city administration. We exam- to “help raise productive participation by citizens
ine some of the design challenges that arose in ex- in how their cities are managed and to help city ad-
perimenting with an in-between infrastructure (the ministrations provide cost effective, location-aware
services to citizens” (Jung, 2008, p. 2). As a research (Carroll, 1995) used in the interventions so that a
strategy, we initiated the collaborative design of reflexive and productive conversation for co-design
um to help us re-examine these objectives. could be achieved. Further, we supported a design-
Because the city was an official partner in the in-use approach (Henderson and Kyng, 1991) to ad-
icing project, city employees participated at dif- dresses the co-evolution of practices and technolo-
ferent stages of the process in both a structured gies and attended to issues of seeding and emer-
and an ad-hoc manner. On the other hand, citizens’ gence (Hagen and Robertson, 2009). In doing so,
collaboration and engagement varied from the re- we focused on developing features for um that were
search group’s close engagement with active citi- supportive of meta-design strategies (Ehn, 2008;
zens (living mostly in the Arabianranta neighbour- Fischer and Giaccardi, 2004) (see our discussion
hood, which was considered to be the “test bed” of on that topic in Botero and Saad-Sulonen, 2008;
the whole project) to following citizens’ and city of- Saad-Sulonen and Suzi, 2007; Saad-Sulonen and
ficials’ actual use of and appropriations and contri- Botero, 2010; Suzi, Saad-Sulonen and Botero, 2009).
butions to the online service itself. Other relevant Data were collected in the form of field notes
stakeholders involved in the process included the that were shared with the entire design team. A wiki
local development agency in the neighbourhood as and the software development issue tracker were
well as one of the city’s cultural institutions. Both used for this purpose. We also maintained audio
organizations had an interest in understanding recordings and pictures of artefacts that were cre-
citizen participation from different angles. ated in the sessions, took screenshots, and have
Table 1 provides an overview of the variety of since followed logs of the system when possible.
design research activities carried out during the
project. Some of the activities occurred simultane- Understanding the feasibility of
ously or are grouped for consistency; nevertheless, an in-between infrastructure
the table primarily follows the project’s evolution. In this section, we examine some of the ways in
We conducted interviews with citizens, members which practices are maintained and evolve in the
of local organizations, and city officials and organ- settings that we explored. We will first introduce
ized collaborative design workshops using scenar- some of the insights gained from the empirical
ios, paper prototypes, and, ultimately, functional data collected during the initial co-design activi-
demos. These activities helped the participants to ties. We do this from the point of view of two of
explore the issues and guided the design process. the main stakeholders: citizens and city officials.
Based on those initial collaborative design activi-
ties with the different stakeholders, we released City officials: Time and spaces to
demo and beta versions of the online service in share are limited
order to engage partners in different experiments When this study was conducted, the Helsinki city
to further refine the ideas. In addition, the actu administration was structured around 36 differ-
al working service was used, iterated, and evalu- ent departments. From an official point of view,
ated through actual projects that were carried out each department had its own practices to address
through various cases established in collaboration citizen interaction and participation possibilities.
with city officials. By 2006, Helsinki had a wide range of high-qual-
We followed classical participatory design ap- ity online services available in terms of e-govern-
proaches (Greenbaum and Kyng, 1991; Schuler and ment according to international standards (Holz-
Namioka, 1993) in planning the design research ac- er and Kim, 2008). However, it was clear that the
tivities and organizing the materials. We embedded city lacked an overall strategy to guide the devel-
the prototypes (Ehn and Kyng, 1991) and scenarios opment and acquisition of new information and
activity/design participants/ resources/
intervention collaborators artefacts
[A1] Contextual studies and Arabianranta Residents and Parents Participant observation
interviews Associations
Semi-structured interviews
Arabianranta e-moderators (active
citizens that volunteer to moderate
digital bulletins of the buildings in
the neighbourhood)
City officials (public works de

partment, planning department,
research unit)
[A2] 2 workshops for mapping 3 e-moderators Paper map, stickers and tasks,
practices related to location- benchmark examples, a prototype
based information 4 residents based on repurposed software
[A3] 3 experimental trials for gath 3 e-moderators um early seed prototype (desktop
ering and sharing location-based and/or mobile), scenarios
information (mixing the use of pro- 10 teenagers (school class and
totypes and workshops for ideation) one teacher)
1 employee of the local develop-

ment agency in Arabianranta
[A4] 4 workshops for charting 3 local development agency um prototypes and um online
current and emerging practices employees service, other related services (e.g.,
Arabianranta portal, city depart-
2 active residents lobbying for a ment website), and paper proto-
community house types with scenarios of use
2 city officials from the planning

department and 1 from the city’s
research unit
2 employees at the local contem

porary art museum working on
“street art”
[A5] 3 cases with the city of Hel- 1 city official (public works depart- Paper prototypes, um online service
sinki: Bunny rabbits in Helsinki (5 ment) (beta), cases’ websites, um widg-
months), Malminkartano traffic ets, external online forum, Helsinki
safety planning (3 months), skate 1 city official (city’s research unit) city cms
park design and location
2 city officials (planning depart-
ment)
2 city officials (youth department)

+ Citizens (in general)
[A6] Following the use of the service (Citizens, planners, city employees) Use logs, screen-shots, feedback
(cases, independent initiatives, and feature of um
other short experiments)
Table 1. Overview of design research activities.

communication solutions to support these aspects A common denominator stance for consulta-
[A1]. In an insightful review of the situation, the tions and city involvement projects that we got to
City of Helsinki Urban Facts unit identified the lack know was that, citizens’ contributions, reports, feed-
of a systematic approach and the absence of guide- back and results were available only to the city offi-
lines to react to citizen feedback within the city cials involved; and were not openly accessible. This
to be problematic factors (Bäcklund et al., 2006). did not seem to be of concern for the city official
It was common that each department decided as they had no clear ideas to how else material like
on its individual technical implementation, which this could be useful [A1, A5, A6]. In general, they
resulted in incompatibility among some systems. did not consider how to recycle or reuse data more
Moreover, the systems were primarily enterprise efficiently internally, nor was it evident to them
solutions that were bought for this purpose from that someone else (e.g. citizens) could use the data.
a third party and considered to be impossible to When we talked about dissemination of informa-
customize or adapt in-house. There were certain- tion about these activities, issues of accuracy and
ly multiple and often overlapping or competing the need to give only thoroughly valid information
channels and strategies available for citizens to to control credibility were considered important,
report issues, raise concerns, and document their and an issue that might hinder the wider availabil-
experience of the city [A1, A2]. In any case, the city ity of the data [A3, A4, A5]. These aspects were cou-
had already identified some interesting initiatives pled with concerns about the limits of their own
within several departments around the issue of cit- work resources and their capacity to react.
izen participation in general. There was also inter-
est in exploring further potential solutions related Citizens: How to share and when to report
to the use of ict and new media for supporting in- Parallel to the diverse official initiatives, different
teractions between city officials and citizens. organizations, communities, and individual citi-
Despite the existence of infrastructures, such zens in Helsinki have experimented with a variety
as the customer feedback service in certain city de- of grassroots initiatives for documenting the city,
partments that makes it possible for citizens to re- collecting public issues, shaping concerns, and
port issues, most of the officials with whom we en- discussing plans. As in many other parts of the
gaged expressed an interest in other ways of seek- world, the use of social networks and social media
ing the opinion of residents regarding the plans or services were explored from an urban everyday life
projects they were working on and gathering facts. perspective. In addition, some citizen grassroots
Starting an initiative that would involve interac- civic projects utilized new media to express their
tion with citizens through online tools was not an opinions regarding urban issues (Saad-Sulonen,
easy task. Both in the workshops and during the pi- 2008). However, few, if any, of these initiatives were
lots, we found that complicated bureaucracy, a lack truly connected to either each other or an official
of knowledge of available technology, and the fear channel, which increased the risk of their being
that the need to react to citizens’ queries would diluted or having little impact.
require too much time, resources, and effort were Through our engagements with citizens in Hel-
some of the factors involved. In other cases where sinki, we learned that information about the ur-
citizen involvement was a more established prac- ban environment and city issues had a strong so-
tice, it was understood only in terms of opening the cial component. This is not to say that information
discussion after plans had been made [A6]. In most comes only from people (word of mouth); however,
cases, the officials’ involvement was focused on information was considered to be reliable if it was
concerns regarding how they would use the results, socially valid or recommended. When discussing
for example, in reports they needed to produce. the ways in which residents of Arabianranta were
searching for information or creating information er infrastructures and it was almost impossible to
about the immediate locality, there was a strong get flexible or open access to them. On the side of
willingness to look at the information in terms of citizens’ initiatives, community websites, forums,
how it could be shared or “moved forward”. Citi- blogs, and other Web 2.0 services where rich and
zens shared a lot among themselves and expressed densely populated with very particular contribu-
their interest in sharing more [A1, A2, A4]. In com- tions; however, they formed scattered discussion
municating with the municipality, however, find- that where not been necessarily linked together or
ing the right channel was not always an easy en- brought up to the city systems.
deavour. Further, citizens often encountered prob- In its current version, um is a server-based soft-
lems, concerns, or interests, which could not be ware that provides users (i.e., citizens, city officials,
dealt with through any of the available mechanisms; or other interested parties) with the ability to create,
consequently, they forgot about them or gave up. obtain, and share location-based information (um
It could be the case that more citizens would be Points). This collected information is organized ac-
willing to be more proactive in engaging with the cording to topics of interests (um Topics), which
issues if they had an assurance that the inputs were can be set up and maintained by any registered
considered in the development processes of the user. um uses a map-portrayal service as means for
city administration. The following question was representing the location-based information and
a recurrent concern: Is somebody really going to complements it with a set of Tools to help process,
listen and react to this idea or feedback? [A1, A3]. share and organize the points. The tools include
also um Feeds and um Widgets, which allow some
Encounters in the urban mediator of the functionality of the service and the data it
Having outlined the background conditions and contains to spread out in other online services and
context of the case, we will now introduce a few places. A um service is accessible and usable on-
issues raised by the design interventions in some line through the web using a normal personal com-
concrete cases, where the prototypes and the ser- puter (pc) or any browser-enabled mobile device.
vice were used. We will also discuss how they can The software is available under an open source li-
contribute to our understanding of the dynamics cense (http://um.uiah.fi) that allows new instances
involved. First, we introduce in general terms the to be set up, customized, and developed by other
design decisions that are condensed in um fea- interested people.
tures and its current set-up. Second, we will follow Figure 1 illustrates the main concepts used in
its use through several encounters. um, as well as some of the current relationships
As previously stated, um was designed and of the um service to other components. In gener-
evolved to be an in-between infrastructure aimed at al terms, um is meant to: 1) support the creation
facilitating the creation of spaces for sharing the of repositories for sharing annotated locations in
different kinds of knowledge about the city. The the spirit of openness and user-created content,
proposal for an experimental in-between infrastruc- 2) permit the aggregation of local and external in-
ture meant that there would be no one single ac- formation sources by means of harvesting and/or
tor in control of it, so that it became possible to syndicating existing data to allow for the reuse and
simultaneously offer interfaces for a variety of ac- cross-fertilization of information, 3) provide tools
tors. This is based on the observation that on the to host both official and public initiatives or “pro-
side of the city authorities, the systems that projects” for location-based information collection,
vided, among other things, help desk services for and 4) facilitate the creation of explicit channels to
customer feedback and geographical information other systems, such as public authorities back-end
system (gis) data where difficult to connect to oth- systems, in a lightweight manner. The focus is on
Figure 1. um’s main

elements and relationships
(um v2.0).
lightweight project management and simple ways izens started to use the prototypes to document
to identify who is behind the initiative or project. seemingly abandoned cars that they spotted dur-
In the following section, we present a few exam ing their walks [A3]. One of them first came up with
ples from the actual use of the um prototypes that the idea as a fun way to try out the functionality of
have unfolded during the iterative design process the prototype we provided. Shortly after another
to identify the strengths and limitations of the ide- participant in the trial noticed these types of points
as explored. We will focus more on the “design-in- appearing, and started also contributing these types
use” decisions made by participants regarding their of points. This turned into a joint project and some-
appropriation and use of um tools and features, what of a game that later sparked vivid conversa-
rather than the ways in which these experiences tions during the debriefing meetings with the par-
shaped the more “formal” iterative process and ticipants. Despite the short duration of the experi-
co-design of um. ment, they were able to imagine different scenarios
in which this information could be made available
The possibilities of making things visible to the city administrations. They were interested
and the limits of revealing in understanding the consequences it could have if
Figure 2 shows an early um web interface featuring the city would actually follow such documentation
a um Point documenting a seemingly abandoned over time. They even envisaged the future possibil-
car in Helsinki. The point forms part of a um Topic ity of betting on how long it would take for the city
we set for a couple of active citizens in Arabian- to notice the cars that had not been moved from a
raanta called: Active Citizens’ Test Topic. The point spot in a long time and how some actions to pick
is openly accessible and includes the exact loca- them up could unfold.
tion where the car was seen, a set of freely asso- Related issues were also raised repeatedly from
ciated keywords (tags), and a picture attachment. other perspectives. For example, in the workshop
The um Topic was used during one of the early with museum curators who were interested in using
pilot studies with volunteers, when two active cit- um to spark conversations about “street art” with
Figure 2. A um Point
documents a poten-
tially “abandoned” car
on Tarkk’ampujankatu
Street in Helsinki (um
alpha).
the general public, the problematic consequences keskus: skeitti). Citizens, in these case mostly young
of unintentionally “revealing” graffiti art to the city skaters, contributed by creating um Points via the
authorities were discussed. One individual asked, web interface or mobile interface. There are two
“What if citizens’ spontaneous documenting is turned um custom made buttons that allow for the crea-
against them?” [A4]. Because graffiti is an illegal action of different types of points. The buttons indi-
tivity in Helsinki, it is unclear whether their identi- cate the nature of the contribution that is being
fication on um will threaten the existence of street sought: “Where do you currently skate?” and “Sug-
art, even though the goal of the participants is to gest a new location for skating!” When people used
appreciate graffiti. each button to create a new location, the points
These examples present both interesting and where tagged with a different set of predefined
conflicting outcomes. Although it was important keywords created by the um Topic initiator (the
for many people to be ensured that the “city” (or webmaster of the Youth Department). These key-
someone) was truly listening and able to act upon words where then added to the free tags that con-
feedback from citizens, the ultimate consequenc- tributors provided. Underneath these buttons, the
es of these moves were difficult to predict and not ui provides a tag cloud, giving an overview of all of
always necessarily positive. Hinting at the need for the tags used in the points so far. The buttons also
these interactions to be negotiated further. Due to worked as um widgets when embedded in other
the fact that all this content is still available in the websites dealing with this consultation. For exam-
service, it is possible to discuss in concrete terms ple people could add directly their contributions
with many different stakeholders related scenarios. to um from the website of the youth department.
The um Topic contains a brief description of the
Laying down foundations for collaboration objectives of the initiative and features a link to the
Figure 3 features the desktop ui of the um Topic youth department website, which contains infor-
called “Youth Department: Skate” (Nuorisoasian- mation on the current skating parks of the city. At
Figure 3. A um Topic
gathering contributions
for new skating park
locations. The UI features
a map view populated by
um Points (um v 1.0)
the end of the consultation project, the webmaster purpose, as they had seen some of the material that
added a note informing future visitors that the con- it contained [A5]. In contrast to previous occasions
sultation time had ended. The um Points can be during which a member of our team had to facili-
browsed spatially through a map view or thematical tate and drive most of the planning of the trial and
ly through a list view. All of the information collect- the setting up of um, this time we gave the youth de-
ed was openly available for casual visitors of the ser- partment’s webmaster an overview of the um and
vice, contributors, and of course to the officials in its tools and features, including how to create a um
the youth department. When the um Points appear topic and um widgets to spread the project in other
in the interface overlaid on the map of Helsinki the websites, and then mostly followed the develop-
map data is fed to um from the city’s official web ment of the project [A6]. The idea of the Youth De-
map service server (by this time, um could also use partment for this project involved mostly surveying
other map sources, such as openstreetmaps.org). opinions regarding the location of a new skating
After two earlier relatively successful trials con- park and soliciting skaters to share their current
ducted in cooperation with different city officials skating locations with them, as it turn evident in
(Botero and Saad-Sulonen, 2008; Saad-Sulonen and the way the um Topic was set-up.
Botero, 2010), the City of Helsinki Youth Depart- um tools allowed a small team in< the youth de-
ment was encouraged to contact us. They wanted to partment to quickly put a consultation project in
map possible locations for new skateboard parks place using existing resources and make it visible
in the city using input from young skateboarders. to their target audience in a short time. There was
They thought that um could be a valid tool for that no complicated bureaucratic procedure and no se-
curity risks to ponder associated with this experi- difficult for them to imagine sidetrack um Topics
ment. In this case, we were also able to show that that could make use the gathered information with
projects do not need to be large and that citizen other purposes or in a completely different agen-
contributions are valuable and will indeed materi- da. That possibility had so far been inexistent and
alize. The um Topic allowed the youth department therefore broader implications and possibilities
to successfully gather an interesting and varied set were not yet visible for them. They were more con-
of materials. The contributors’ proposals were de- cerned with the fact that it must be made clear in
tailed in terms of explaining not only why a certain any other initiative that would make use of the in-
location would be suitable, but even suggest mate- formation, that it was no longer an official project
rials and new configurations for the skate ramps. set up by the city [A5]. In most of the trials however,
Unfortunately, some of these important dimen- both citizens and city officials appreciated the fact
sions of the contributions were lost in the process. that more people were able to see parts of “the big-
For example, one of the um Points contributed in- ger picture” by browsing fellow citizens’ contribu-
cluded a link to a video, posted on YouTube, show- tions. Even though citizens have not realized con-
ing a skating pool, as well as a link to a u.s.-based cretely the possibilities of re-using either; it will be
company specializing in these types of skateboard- important to follow what happens if such re-appro-
ing equipment. In the contributor’s opinion, these priations of that seed points materialize.
were good examples of a concrete “pool” for a skate- Experiences like these definitively help city of-
board park, which s/he considered to be suitable ficials to gain insight into what factors they need
for a park in the Alppipuisto area of Helsinki. Be- to consider and devise steps to create the condi-
cause um was conceived as a sort of in-between tions for increased collaboration. They also help to
space, we wanted to facilitate the transfer of data move forward some of the early design ideas and
to the systems normally used by the city officials in hypothesis into concrete instances that link them
their work. For this purpose, we made it possible to to everyday events and use. Unfortunately, as such
export the um data in different formats. When ana- the experiments alone are insufficient to develop
lyzing further the material, the youth department the broader agendas of e-governance if they are not
only made use of the file in coma-separated values framed inside a larger and comprehensive partici-
(csv) format to import the collected data into their patory agenda (Saad-Sulonen and Botero, 2010).
spreadsheet program and, eventually, into the city’s
gis system. In this process, these types of links and Sharing issues of concern?
attachments were lost and in the end forgotten. An- Figure 4 provides details about the current mobile
other problematic issue, at least from our perspec- user interface. This ui is geared toward use cases
tive, was the fact that little feedback on the future such as browsing or finding “nearby things”.
of the plans was shared afterwards with the contrib Another main purpose of the mobile user inter-
utors, given that the project’s agenda was limited. face is to allow more straightforward creation of
In a more speculative fashion, we also wanted to um Points at a particular location when the device
highlight the fact that, by using um, the gathered contains gps functionality supported by um.
points (data and information) could be potential- In this case, the mobile device owner is standing
ly reusable or recycled into other um Topics deal- very close (4 meters) to a um Point contributed by
ing with different or related issues. Any um Point another citizen. The um Point contains an picture
can be imported or linked to many different um documenting the street, full of trash, in front of an
Topics. When asked their thoughts about this pos- automatic bank machine. The creator gives it the
sibility, some of the city officials that participat- following title: “Thoughtless Decisions”. In her de-
ed in the cases saw no problem with it but it was scription of the um Point, the citizen asks, “Don’t
is an example of the need to collectively change a

shared situation and discovery of productive ways
to deal with it. This is evident from the way the con-
tributor framed the problem in the um Point title,
which demonstrates that there are also citizens that
do not think enough when they use the automatic
bank machines. It is also evident in her challenging
question to fellow citizens in the description. Fur-
ther, the initiative also shows that by sharing these
instances, through the creation of a Clean City! top-
ic and making some “facts” or “evidence” availa-
ble to all individuals, the situation could stand a
chance to be dealt collectively.
Challenges of openness
The platform was designed in such a way that it
does not need to stand in isolation from other ex-
isting sources of location-based information.
For example Figure 5 shows a um Topic populat-
ed by pictures of Helsinki taken by users of Flickr.
Figure 4. A um Point documents This was achieved through supporting standard
questionable decisions of some fellow formats (e.g., rss, Atom/georss, and kml) and
citizens (um v1.0 – mobile ui). conversion mechanisms (e.g., cvs), making it pos-
sible to create um feeds and um data to link to infor-
mation produced in other services such as locations
those machines allow users to choose whether or not in map services (e.g., Google maps) or geotagged
they want to print a receipt?”. images from photosharing services (e.g.: Flickr, Pic-
The context of these experimentations was a nik, etc). The strategy is to encourage the syndica-
personal citizen initiative to document garbage in tion of location-based information to um from oth-
the city [A6]. With our assistance, the citizen cre- er services, as well as from um to other services.
ated a um Topic called “Clean City!” (Siisti kaupun- Although these features have not been explored
ki!) to document and share places where there was fully in the spontaneous uses of the service, we be-
trash in the city, as well as to collect ideas on how lieve that there are many potential ideas to experi-
to make the city cleaner. She also involved friends ment with, when offering these interfaces. In theo-
and family in the initiative. ry, it is possible to utilize some of the um Points in
This example raises a point regarding how citi- other topics, as well as in other services that offer
zens have issues that not only refer to an “authori- better functionalities than um for specific types
ty” (or an institution). For example, they might con- of contributions.
sider that it is not only the city that is not taking We made it technically possible to connect the
care of cleaning the streets well enough. They in- official city gis platform to um without compro-
deed might propose that it is also the behaviour of mising the official system’s integrity, for example,
other citizens who make questionable decisions, by relying on csv exports of um data. However, it
which reduces the enjoyment level of the experi- was difficult at the time to obtain a concrete com-
ence of the city for all because of more trash. This mitment from city officials to provide data feeds
Figure 5. A feed of
geotagged photos
of Helsinki imported
from Flickr populates
a um Topic (um v2.0).
from their side. Making the necessary plug-ins for In-between infrastructures for
the geographical conversion with the city system participation: from reporting to
took more time and negotiations than expected. In sharing practices
the end, the copyright of the information, licens- The proposition that citizenship is practiced, exer-
ing schemas, and standards-related issues compli- cised, and asserted socially in mundane and less
cated those attempts to give access to official da- mundane activities has implications for how pro-
tabases through um (except for the limited use of cesses and infrastructures of participation like the
the map data and access to a street name database ones we studied are arranged and initiated. This
our other attempts where ultimately unsuccessful). comprises, for example, the ways citizens are or are
While user-created content is important and val- not able to access and create particular information
uable, it would have been equally important to be about the city or the ways in which city officials are
able to populate the service with pre-existing data or are not able to make certain information avail-
in the city systems that could have bootstrapped it able. We propose that participatory practices are
more efficiently. However, the opposite happened linked to exercising citizenship, and they are not
much easier, as the city was able to test and use um about issues of mere citizen involvement. However,
feeds within their systems in all of the trials and ex- as some of our cases suggest, constructing more
periments. These opened up many new ideas and active notions of citizenship requires reformulat-
developments and demonstrate the value of looking and making visible certain practices as a shared
ing at this issue closer. project in which more stakeholders take collective
action and become aware of an existing shared sit-
uation and negotiate further what it means to all.
One possible way to examine these encounters is not merely part of a unidirectional stream
is to focus on two generally distinguishable atti- of information toward either the city or the citi-
tudes that are present in the cases. We refer to them zens, need to be exercised more by all parties.
as reporting practices and sharing practices. How- These require negotiation, scaffolding and
ever, it is important to keep in mind that they are seeding strategies in the Participatory Design
general entry points to a variety of other practices approach that need to continue after the con-
in which the people with whom we engaged were cept design stage ends.
involved.
By viewing their doings as related to reporting 2. The conditions for the success of these prac-
or sharing, both citizens and city officials imagine tices also depend on the institutional and or-
some scenarios for participation and close others. ganizational arrangements in place. These
In the cases discussed above reporting practices include (a) how to understand better new sus-
can be identified as those primarily concerned with tainability models for such participatory infra-
“I tell you about something” (informing citizens structures. Given that in-between infrastruc-
that there is a new plan) or “I make a complaint tures are not under “control” of a particular ac-
or denounce” (telling the city that there is trash tor, it might mean also that it is nobody’s busi-
here). Generally, this is done from a unidirection- ness to keep them alive. It also (b) includes the
al perspective. In contrast, sharing practices refer larger participatory frameworks and objectives
more to aspects in which having a share or part in of the participant stakeholders.
issues is a core component or using or enjoying
something is done jointly or at least in turns. Us- 3. Concerns about privacy issues, reliability,
ing the previous example, we are all responsible for and relevance of the information play a key
the trash. From a sharing perspective, there seems role. Therefore portability, compatibility, and
to be more possibilities for multidirectional per- reusability of the contributions are issues of
spectives. Further, from a sharing perspective the concern in which case the ownership and ac-
promise to construct more active notions of citi- cessibility of the data need to be addressed ear-
zenship can be available, if there are spaces to ne- ly with appropriate supporting strategies.
gotiate those notions (Ekelin, 2007). That is, the
“Things” that Ehn (2008) talks about can material- All the issues listed above belong to the wider de-
ize more concretely -for all of those involved- in the sign space that is collectively charted. Focusing on
deployment of in-between infrastructures. exploring some of the gaps and bridges between
Through the encounters with um, it is possible the official city systems and citizen initiatives to
to lay the groundwork for collaborative construc- offer a space, in which experiments could be con-
tion of more active forms of citizenship. However, ducted, proved to be a valuable strategy. In-between
our experiences underscore the many challenges, infrastructures might aid in understanding what is
both technical and social, for actually making such required to shift the focus from practices and tech-
complex in-between arrangements possible. Cre- nologies dealing with reporting issues toward prac-
ating the supportive conditions for sharing and ne- tices and technologies that are more supportive
gotiating issues is not a straightforward endeavour. of sharing and negotiating these issues between
Some of the challenges can be summarized as both city officials and citizens. Our findings sug-
follow: gest that this shift has implications for the capa-
bilities of the actors involved to initiate innova-
1. Practices that encourage openness of inter tions and understand the broader design spaces
actions, where the exchange of the information that are available to them. A Participatory design
approach contributed to create conditions to ex- social, political, institutional, and technological
plore this type of “Thing” design where there is “a prototyping.
public thing open for controversies” (Ehn, 2008 p. New processes by which multiple actors can im
96) not only during the concept design stage, but agine and deploy new forms of citizenship can cre-
also during actual use. ate new agendas and possibilities for new collabo-
Strategies for building such in-between infra- rations. In this sense, the challenge for and contri-
structures are compatible with recent developments bution of Participatory Design approaches lay not
in Internet technologies, such as the so-called Web only in facilitating the collaborative design of new
2.0, the emergent Open Data movement, and the technologies and socio-technical arrangements,
Fee/Libre and Open Source movement’s insistence but also in supporting appropriate conditions of
in securing users’ freedom to continue developing continually redefining what participation might
their own tools. All of these have been said to gen- mean for those who are and should be involved,
erate conditions to empower more actors to create through the technologies themselves (design-in-
ad-hoc designs (see Bizer et al., in press; Stallman use). Despite the limitations, the findings of our
and Lessig, 2006; ted2010, 2010; Tuomi, 2003). research demonstrate that in-between spaces can
have a role in encouraging city officials and citi-
Conclusions zens to experiment, understand, and manage these
Commentators have suggested that a more active complex aspects of participation.
attitude toward experimentation is a viable path
to fulfil more of the positive promises of e-govern- Acknowledgments
ance. Some argue that citizens need to be empow- We thank all of our icing partners, the city offi-
ered to experiment and create new channels and cials, and all insightful citizens who took part in
technologies (e.g.: Crabtree, 2007), whereas others the activities of the project and collaborated with
contend that it is the responsibility of the govern- us in the design. Roman Suzi and Eirik Fatland
ment to initiate novel partnerships (e.g.: Novek, deserve special thanks for their many contribu-
2008). Consistent with what was already discussed tions to the development of these ideas and their
by Dittrich et al. (2003), our experience with um collaboration.
suggests that “making it happen” requires engage-
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Aging together:
steps towards evolutionary
co-design in everyday practices

Sampsa Hyysalo In this paper we outline a temporally extended co-
design process of media technologies developed in
collaboration with elderly people. In the course of
doing so, we identify a set of design strategies that
helped sustain the collaboration. Based on our ex-
periences we recognize the need for developing
design strategies for extended and evolutionary
design collaborations with ordinary communities
that have special needs, and do not possess sig-
nificant resourcing, design experience or skills in
the technology in question. Such communities of
practice pose challenges to shorter term project
centered forms of codesign and also require up-
dates to the existing extended design approach-
es, which rest on relatively high user skill and re-
sourcing. The “Aging together“ design strategies
outlined in this paper hence take needed steps in
adjusting codesigners’ repertoires of engagement
in this type of everyday contexts.
Key words
Co-design, design for communities, design-in-use,
First published in CoDesign, Vol
elderly, long term engagement, participatory de-
9, Issue 1, 2013 (pp 37–54) doi:10.
1080/15710882.2012.760608 sign,
Reprinted with permission of the
publisher (Taylor & Francis Ltd,
http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals).
articles – aging together 169
Introduction derson and Kyng, 1991). Often a long process of

Back in the old days the Designer created an ele- mutual adaptation of technology and organization
gant solution and left the public to admire the fruit happens (Leonard, 1995). Today, after the spread
of his genius. Since then several hundred meth- of social media services, peer-to-peer co-creation,
ods and techniques have been created to help de- user innovation platforms and open source develop
signers, as well as their publics, to place design on ment, the evolutionary nature and longer temporal
a more collaborative grounding (for overviews of reach entailed in many co-design initiatives is evi-
co-design techniques see Muller and Kuhn, 1993; dent. Given these developments, the project view
Bødker, et al 2004). Some argue that this has dra- of co-design that Sanders and Stappers articulate
matically increased designers’ ability to reach the seems to take for granted the production process
right definition of the design task, and the uptake of industrial physical goods, where design is organ-
of co-design approaches has marked a shift in how ized into a project that ends at a product launch, al-
design profession and its engagement with its pub- beit this no longer matches the realities of many
lics takes place. co-design engagements. There is an urgent need
Yet, the part where the public is left to enjoy and to elaborate approaches that help to navigate co-
admire the fruits of design has remained curious- design engagements that may extend after the mar-
ly intact. Co-design activities take place predomi- ket launch as this means entering a terrain less fa-
nantly during the concept design, and even when miliar than the traditional project structure typical
spread throughout the design cycle (as in many of r&d. (Figure 2).
venerable participatory design approaches) most This concern is timely also because the extend-
design activities end when the product is taken into ed timeframe of co-design remains only halfway
use (for a review and critique, see Hartswood et al, realized. Most extended co-design takes place with
2002; Voss et al 2009). This state of affairs is well and social media services, lead-users, geek communi-
honestly depicted in Sanders and Stappers (2008) ties and other technically savvy and design-disposed
model for co-designing (Figure 1). peoples. Such peoples are quite happy taking over
In light of research on how designs shape so- work that professional designers used to do, which
ciety, however, this view appears “so 80s”. Since may indeed call for serious reflection on what the
mid 1990s consumption, workplace, technology future of the design profession and its core skills
and design studies alike have consistently found may be (Sanders and Stappers, 2008). But many
that ordinary citizens, consumers and workers are other publics are not, and will not be, so design
not just docile adopters but active in reinterpret- savvy. It is those publics that truly need the design-
ing, adding-onto, and repurposing technologies er, and often it is exactly them who suffer the most
(Silverstone, 1992; McLaughlin et al, 1999; Hen- from technology that is ill-fitting to their practices
ria
i te
cr
n
sig
e
s
ep
yp
De
ea
t
uc
nc
ot
Id
od
ot
Co
Pr
Pr
Fuzzy front
end Figure 1 Sanders and Stappers (2008 p:6)
model for codesigning
and poorly adaptable to changes and new possi- the work as it is now, but will only be graspable
bilities that may emerge after the initial appropria- during the system’s subsequent use. Co-realization
tion of the design. thus explores a more radical and shared practice
We are not alone in noticing this. Evolutionary between users and it professionals, grounded in
approaches for co-designing in settings where col- the lived experience of users in-situ, and beyond
laboration with designers is needed are being de- the deployment of working product. Designers con-
veloped in multiple forms (see next section). In this tinue to be present at the workplace for extended
paper we contribute to this emerging area of design periods of time, allowing both the workers as well
research by elaborating on “Aging together” strat- as designers to jointly realize where the system and
egies for designing media, with and for ordinary work practice could be taken and then iteratively re-
people in their everyday life practices. The strate- alize these development directions as they emerge
gies have emerged and been iterated in a long-term (Hartswood et al 2002), opening possibilities for
collaboration with a co-housing project by elderly further development (Voss, 2009). Co-realization
people. We use this project here to illuminate their has been successfully deployed in research projects
rationale and challenges as they appear to us after in various medical it applications and in manu-
the experience, in light of several iterations of the facturing information systems.
same approach in different settings (Botero and Along parallel lines, Metadesign has been pro-
Saad-Sulonen, 2010). posed as an alternative system design practice that
bridges participatory activities towards those of
2. Continuing co-design in use evolving working life contexts (Fischer and Giac-
2.1. Designing for the evolving workplace cardi 2004). A central tenet of the approach is to
The turn of the millennium saw the birth of several develop during ‘design time’ under-designed, yet
approaches for extending co-design activities to complete, systems. These are then made available
include concerns for what has often been referred to “owners of problems” in concrete domains. The
to as design-in-use (Henderson and Kyng 1991). In approach includes developing sufficient flexible
what follows we recount four of these approaches functionality to allow users to make re-designs dur-
as they articulate well some of our starting points. ing ‘use time’ without or with minimum develop-
The co-realization approach was developed as a ers’ involvement.
principled synthesis of ethnomethodology and par- A similar trend towards continuous co-design
ticipatory design (Hartswood et al 2002), to address has been proposed in co-configuration, an approach
what Dourish and Button (1998) called the “para- informed by Activity Theory, where the product con-
dox of ethnomethodologically informed design”. tinues to be adapted after its initial customization to
Meaning that the implications of a new system for the changing needs of the user organization (Enge-
work practices do not become evident by studying ström 2007). Co-configuration rests on a tailorable
ria
i te
cr
n
sig
? ?
t
e
s
ep
yp
De
ea
t
uc
nc
ot
Id
od
ot
Co
Pr
Pr
Fuzzy front
end Figure 2 Co-design before and after
a design project?
product or service offering as well as on a contin- design, and that those practices by their nature in-
ued relationship between the producer organiza- tertwine systems that are simultaneously affected
tion and users. Examples of such extended collab- by other developments aside design. In the same to-
orations range from the design of paper machines, ken, the available space for design is not limited to
to private banking and medical practices. designed objects, but includes immaterial designs
Many of the principles from these extended co- that affect how social arrangements, norms, timing
design approaches hold beyond the workplace and and the pacing of everyday routines are carried out1.
apply beyond technology development. However, We shall now proceed to recount a nine-year de-
these approaches to extended ict design have been sign engagement with the Active Seniors associa-
used exclusively at the workplace, mostly in tech- tion in Helsinki Finland, where we explored new
nology intensive settings, with well educated prac- media technologies to support their growing old to-
titioners, producing outcomes that have high soci- gether goals. We describe our engagement in chron-
etal or economic value (e.g. medical cancer screen- ological order, and after each phase reflect on the
ing or optimizing a paper machine). Such settings key design strategies, how they become visible dur-
make it plausible for designers to be paid to work ing the project period discussed, where they origi-
full time in the setting for long periods of time, do nated and what re-iterations we have deemed im-
ethnographic work to initiate the project, use so- portant. We then draw these strategies together
phisticated and extensive software tools should and discuss what this might mean for developing
the need arise and rely heavily on users’ redesign co-design approaches more attuned to longer time
competences. These are conditions that are not frames of engagement in everyday life.
necessarily present in many everyday settings, let
alone in communities that may have special design 3. Beginning to age together: From
needs, and less privileged resource bases. In short, settings to access design and consti
these approaches to ict design have not been appli- tuency building
cable to working with everyday communities with- As in co-realization and co-configuration, Aging
out significant reworking – and nobody we know together strategies build on the premise that de-
of has pretended them being so. This reworking is sign engagements should not begin at the studio
a mission we seek to advance in the present paper. or in concept design workshops but in the practic-
es, infrastructures and development trajectories of
2.2. Extended media co-design with people who come together to become the “clients”,
everyday communities “users” and “designers”. The setups that surround
Our aim in this article is to elaborate on some de- all those that engage in a project largely govern
sign strategies suited for extended collaborative de- what is sensible to design and how to do it. There-
sign with communities of ordinary people. We refer
to them as “Aging together strategies” as they seek
to gradually uncover and make jointly visible the
design space available for a community of practice 1 Similar concerns are discussed in urban renew-
(Wenger 1998) and realize an evolving line of well- al collaborations such as in Amplify! (Penin et
al 2012), Feeding Milan (Cantù et al 2012) and
suited technologies, media and practices within a
Malmö living lab (Hillgren et al 2011). However,
community. In doing this, we draw from and con-
these settings and correspondingly the strate-
tribute to the ideas for “designing for practices” gies used differ somewhat from settings where
(e.g. Shove et. al. 2007, Björgvinsson 2008), which technological possibilities and/or user practic-
depart from the observation that it is change in the es are evolving rapidly such as in current infor-
everyday practices that is the targeted outcome of mation technologies.
fore, we now briefly outline the key settings that ties, like reading circles and yoga sessions. Despite
laid the ground for and lead to the mobilization of numerous challenges, the objectives of providing
the design research engagement we report here. access to an active, social, safe and familiar envi-
ronment seem to have been well met. The commu-
3.1. Active Seniors: setting a communal nity is visited and consulted continuously by oth-
alternative for growing old er groups in Finland and the association itself is
The expected number of active years after retire- involved in the design of a second similar project.
ment is steadily increasing in the West. A large
number of initiatives have aimed to assist seniors’ 3.2. Organizational and techno-
independent living and increase the efficiency of logical setting: Arabianranta “fore-
senior care with innovative technologies. To date, runner” district
their uptake and impact has remained modest (e.g. The Loppukiri house is located in Arabianranta;
Östlund, 1995; Hypönen, 2004; Hyysalo, 2010) and a regeneration district of Helsinki built with high
greater advances have followed from new housing broadband connectivity seeking to attract jobs and
initiatives even as these have provided mostly in- it companies. After such networks became more
cremental changes to senior care (see e.g: Sonkin commonplace, plans turned towards developing
et al 1999). broadband access more as part of the basic hous-
Inspired by the Scandinavian co-housing move- ing infrastructure, akin to water and electricity
ment (see e.g McCammant et al 1994), the Active (Kangasoja, 2007). Today the area is still marketed
Seniors Association (www.aktiivisetseniorit.fi) was as a Living Lab environment for innovation where
founded in 2000 to further alternative arrangements local actors cooperate.3 For the case at hand, novel
for growing old in Finland. It also sought to develop icts provide a setting that is conductive to gradual
a shared housing arrangement, Loppukiri house (in and deepening collaboration.
English: last spurt), that is based on four basic prin
ciples: neighbourliness, self-help, community spir- 3.3. Researchers: new media in
it and open decision-making process (Dahlström mundane everyday life
and Minkkinen 2009). Members actively participat- The Active Seniors association contacted the re-
ed in the six year planning and construction of the searchers in the design school at an early stage
building.2 They organized events, parties, courses of their project in 2000. Researchers were looking
as well as developed and tried out associated future for communities to collaborate with in an open-
practices, rules and infrastructures to make their ended participatory project to study how ideas for
arrangement viable and sustainable (Figure 3). using digital technology might emerge if a com-
Today, Loppukiri consists of a community of munities’ capacity of envisioning digital tools and
approximately 70 people that live in 58 compact practices was nurtured (Botero and Kommonen
apartments in a building that has large common 2009). There was also a hidden agenda to offer some
areas. Residents take care of the maintenance and “common sense” scenarios for the Arabianranta
shared regular meals. They have six week “work network. The Active Seniors were a well-suited col-
shifts” among them and they nurture social activi- laborator; they were growing as a community, had
a design agenda of their own, and were ready to
invest effort even if not all members were keen on
2 They negotiated a price-regulated lot from the
city of Helsinki and special working agree-
ments with the construction company and the 3 See http://www.openlivinglabs.eu/helsinki.html
architects’ studio. for how the area is presented as a Living Lab.
Figure 3 Active Seniors in front

of the construction site
Figure 4 Early paper prototype

for the intranet.
computers or networks. For seniors, interacting their project was a subtle way to encourage mem-
with researchers stimulated new interesting con- bers to use computers more.
cepts for their project. The collaboration also of- We recommended adding in an intranet with
fered both parties the possibility to influence the different levels of access to build new communica-
visions for Arabianranta. tion channels for the community, as they were still
dispersed and getting to know each other (Figure 4).
3.4. Access design to explore collabo- The outcome was immediately useful for sharing
ration, targets and settings the newsletters and printed materials, announcing
Instead of storming in to perform a joint large co- and documenting social events, face-to-face meet-
design project, we started with a small joint exer- ings, lectures and so on as well as in for recruiting
cise that could help us all in constituency build- new members and collaborators for the association.
ing and defining targets for design engagement; a The intranet allowed us to initiate some prelimi-
sort of “access design”. This was possible to fund nary knowledge sharing experiments, even though
through an ongoing open project exploring uses it was used mainly by the board of directors of the
for 4G networks.4 The seniors’ working group col- Association.
laborating with us envisioned that a website for
3.5. Design strategies to initiate
long term engagements
4 From the onset it was clear that collaboration Let us now shift from the specifics of Active Seniors
would need to happen creatively across differ- collaboration to the more general design strate-
ent projects and funding instruments. gies for long-term collaborative design with ordi-
nary communities we have identified. Our first de- which is managing expectations by anchoring. Hav-
sign strategy (ds1) is start with social practices. The ing something concrete to talk about helps setting
possibilities of design are already present in the joint goals and clarifying the resources and uncer-
practices, infrastructures and development trajec- tainties involved in more extensive collaboration.8
tories of those involved, which entails that design
activities do not begin or occur only at the studio 4. Developing an open agenda:
or in exploratory workshops. Even as this begins to envisioning, design seeds and targets
be acceptable common sense, it is hard to remem- 4.1. Developing an open agenda with
ber that it is not only the practices of users that active seniors
are important to recognize5. The second design After the initiation phase, Aging together strate-
strategy (ds2) we want to highlight is the key role gies turn towards the development of an open agen-
that exploring the constituency has. For both users da (ds 5). In these engagements, concept gener-
and designers it is crucial not to take for granted ation activities were organized around practices
which kind of stakeholder configurations are able related to remembering, coordinating, sharing,
to achieve the kind of practices, technologies, me- care and security, as well as shopping and cook-
dia or change the parties envision6. At the same ing (Botero and Kommonen 2009). These ideation
time, generating sufficient awareness of starting activities, facilitated by participatory workshops
points and sensible collaboration possibilities also (Bødker et al. 2004) and co-design techniques like
requires careful attention. Our suggested strategy probes (Mattelmäki 2006) and experience proto-
for gaining this (ds 3) is to begin with small but re- typing (Buchenau and Fulton Suri 2000), provided
levant “access design”. A well bounded initial teas- a variety of “design seeds”.
er can initiate trust and give a sense of how the A first type of design seeds were those that spur-
collaboration feels like, which is important in dered “indigenous design” evolution (Björgvinsson
ciding whether everybody want to get more seri- and Hillgren 2009), where ideas take shape and
ous or not.7 The access design also helps to start evolve inside the community and were implement-
early with our fourth key design strategy (ds 4), ed with resources at hand. A good example is that of
a video-access concept developed in an early work-
shop, linked to an “on-duty porter” to greet visi-
tors to the house when they rang the doorbell. The
5 As such this is not a novel premise, it is shared “on-duty porter” role grew to include also receiving
with the most radical co-design approaches. calls from residents requiring help. Later the idea
Earlier roots can be traced to Scandinavian par-
of video connection was found cumbersome, but
ticipatory design (pd) in 1970s (for a review see
the “on-duty help” was realized by simply purchas-
Voss et al, 2009).
6 Confronting from the onset of a project the ing and rotating a mobile phone amongst the resi
stakes, interests and limitations of stakehold- dents. For several years the number was shown next
ers has been a feature of pd approaches (Bød to the doorbell.
ker, 2004). It was a starting point also for us
and its importance was underscored in the
course of our design engagements.
7 We are not aware of systematic uses of access 8 Managing expectations is a pervasive part of
design elsewhere, however various kinds of successful long-term design collaboration. Its
preliminary studies in co-design approaches importance was clear to us from the outset, but
tend to function as ice breakers, which sug- anchoring it as concretely as possible as an
gest there is a need to further work on possible important strategy in its own right became evi-
strategies for this stage. dent only as we went along.
Figure 5 An ideation workshop with seniors
The second type of design seeds are those that 4.2. Aging together design strate-
grew jointly. For example we worked on knowledge- gies regarding the development of
sharing activities since the Seniors had advanced an open agenda
practices for documenting travel stories, garden- Cultivating an open agenda (ds 5) means efforts
ing tips, recipes, book recommendations to men- to explore what would be sensible development
tion a few. This realization prompted ideas for an directions in the design collaboration.9 Possible
audiovisual archive/library for creating and shar- design avenues can be explored in by building scaf-
ing memories and recipes, which we report below folds (ds 6) that help cultivate the sense of possibil-
in more detail. ities by bringing materials, solutions and practices
Thirdly, joint envisioning was key in helping eve- used elsewhere, developing joint vocabulary and
rybody to map and discuss together the kinds of experiments10 An essential part however, is doing
practices that could take place in Loppukiri (Fig- as much of this on-site as possible, physically going
ure 5). The materials developed made important
issues visible to everybody, from practical arrange-
ments and rules all the way to new ideas about what 9 In the course of our work we have come to un-
to do and how to relate to others (see ds1). This derstand that the function of collaborative de-
required looking beyond technology choices and sign techniques for “Aging Together” is to get
design moving, not just iterating ideas for the
infrastructures into the social arrangements and
realization of a design object as in many ucd
commitments that were related to them (see ds2).
and co-design methods.
The material was also immediately useful in fund- 10 On the importance of Scaffolding for realiz-
ing applications. ing ones needs and competences see Vygotsky,
1979. For related co-design techniques see e.g.
Bødker et al. 2004; Binder and Brandt 2008.
there and being there (ds 7) to gain sensitivity to the unteers tested and used the calendars for making
context and to follow how initial ideas begin to reservations and creating events and some work-
evolve. If the community is dispersed or only being groups used the system to organize the com-
ginning to emerge, people can be met, workshops mon dinners. The Senior’s it working group or-
can be arranged and similar practices and experi- ganized what they called “usefulness testing”, and
ences can be studied as a starting point.11 ideation meetings where they analyzed how the dif-
ferent functionalities connected to their practical
5. Co-designing through prototypes activities and produced detailed suggestions for
5.1. Iterative prototyping with changes to the rules and the behaviours of the sys-
Active Seniors tem. A considerable amount of energy was spent
An open agenda is no good if nothing ever comes on trying out alternatives for the labels and con-
out of it. With Active Seniors, both parties agreed cepts to use in the interface.
on focusing the information sharing issues on de- This stage was a period of fluid collaboration.
signing a digital “community calendar” (Lehtimä- Concrete artifacts produced in workshops and out-
ki and Rajanti 2007), which was elaborated in the side of them (written document, scenarios, paper
Seniors’ own working groups and in workshops prototypes, lists for interface labels, beta testing
with us. After several rounds of paper prototypes, session reports) helped the seniors in articulating
the calendar idea morphed into something the their visions and ideas at different levels to the de-
Seniors called their Everyday Life Management Sys- signers and amongst themselves. Intense periods
tem. The software developers started to work on a of working together for a software release (spurts)
more general-purpose framework that could be were followed by periods of distance and separa-
useful in the future for other communities, avail- tion. This alternation offered space for reflection
able as open source. The system was divided into and appropriation and saved designer hours. The
basic components: 1) The site – a framework for seniors it groups felt ownership of and responsi-
other components and common use cases (such as bility for the platform.
login and navigation); 2) The profile component to
take care of the information of the members of the 5.2. Aging together with prototypes
community; 3) The Dining Calendar for announc- We encourage choosing one or several development
ing joint dinners and registering for them; 4) The efforts to concretize the visions. The design strat-
Shared Resources Calendar to reserve common egies that became visible at this stage intertwine
shared resources and spaces such as the laundry closely with organizing software development, such
and sauna; 5) The General Group Event Calendar; as building and releasing prototypes iteratively, ra-
and 6) A Personal Calendar (Figure 6). pidly and from early on (ds 8) 12. This allows com-
The first working prototype was released when munity participants to engage with the designs,
seniors moved to their new house in May 2006. Vol- and for all to follow how these are being used, ide-
as for improvement, shortcomings, contradictions
and new design directions etc. that may emerge.
11 Systematic and sustained presence at user sites

has been stressed in the ethnographic tradi-
tion to systems design and taken to extreme in 12 Design strategies 8 and 9 draw on extreme
the co-realization approach (Hartswood et al, programming and Agile Software (Beck et al.
2002; Voss et al, 2009). We discuss in the next 2001) principles; however, their application in
section why shorter exposures may work better pure development contexts might be slightly
with ordinary communities. different.
Figure 6 Screen shot show-

ing the personal calendar
view (demo version)
It further allows responding to the evolving needs for offering advice, showing alternatives and docu-
through design iterations13. A characteristic de- menting the processes.
sign strategy to Aging together is to alternate close
working periods with lighter engagement (ds 9). This 6. The age of evolutionary re-designs
makes the most of the time spent together, but 6.1. Redesigns with active seniors
also allows people to find their own ways to use The difference between working prototypes and
the technology and to try things out on their own evolving ready products has become increasingly
(which avoids spending designer hours unduly). blurred in many corners of technology and me-
This links to a further key principle seeking to fos- dia design. An open design agenda and iterative
ter ownership of the process, technology and media development allow taking advantage of and sys-
(ds 10)14. This requires not only giving time, but tematically working with evolutionary re-designs.
keeping multiple communication channels open However, designing for practices means that we do
not endorse only evolution in design objects but in
other elements and levels of practice as well. We
13 For seeding design processes with prototypes assert that the full space and time for co-design,
see e.g.: Ehn and Kyng (1991), Fischer and Ost the design opportunities and limitations, emerges
wald (2002); Voss et al (2009); Hagen and Rob- only through this evolution (Botero, Kommonen,
ertson (2010). On collective experimentation
Marttila 2010).
and prototyping see Björgvinsson (2008).
Let us illustrate this with a four-stage design evo-
14 This principle is core to all pd approaches (see
e.g. Schuler and Namioka 1993). In “Aging to- lution. Upon release, the system had a dining tool
gether” strategies it is also linked to concrete for announcing and registering for meals. Once in
design decisions to be made in terms of intel- daily use, it became evident that knowing the ingre-
lectual property rights (See ds 13) dients of a meal was important due to allergies and
Figure 7 The Recipe Book co-

opted as a bulletin board
other concerns. To coordinate that, the communi- of workarounds to make the new Recipe Book be-
ty had their own recipe book. When adapting the have like a community “notice board”. Someone
book to the actual conditions in Loppukiri, typical played with the titles of the recipes to get them to
problems in tailoring (Henderson & Kyng, 1991) appear in a different order (e.g. by adding numbers
appeared such as an increasing amount of annota- or other symbols before titles to manipulate their
tions and alterations, and problems to keep track sorting) and others “misused” the recipe fields to
of the versions and their location. To remedy the create document categories or different kinds of
two “failures”, designers built a recipe book inside content. Designers received a request with a link
the system using the code from another compo- to the “example”, asking if it was possible to make
nent. Today the subsequently evolved recipe book a “copy” of the Recipe Book so that they could use
is one of the key reasons to use the system, while it as a bulletin board in case there might be no re-
registrations to dinner are also partly handled us- sources to implement one. This set the scene for
ing the parallel paper version. a joint workshop where we sketched what could
This recipe book then prompted a further line be implemented (figure 7). The Recipe Book thus
of design. Living together in the house revealed to seeded evolutionary design evolution (cf. Fischer
the seniors that they had many needs to store notes and Ostwald 2002).
and documents. They had plans to use the neigh- The next step was taken by designers, who de-
borhood community portal discussion boards, but cided to experiment with ideas of more generic in-
this required learning and maintaining additional frastructures, and built a new component to create
systems and passwords. Their community calen- different information “containers” in a dynamic
dar seemed a preferable location for such informa- way by filling up simple forms. To illustrate the
tion sharing. At the time the Recipe Book became functioning of this new component, a new Reci-
available, some of the active seniors tried a couple pe Book, a notice board and a place for document
storage were created. This jumpstarted the crea- 7. Evolutionary Aging together
tion of new “containers” and since then, seniors The rationale of the Aging together approach lies
have built containers for announcing things, docu- in that interesting and crucial co-design opportu-
menting activities in the house, swapping things nities emerge only in design-in-use, when activi-
and so forth. The new component also creates dy- ties are made concrete and relevant to all. Being
namic connections among the containers to gener- there once in a while (see ds 9) makes it possible to
ate more advanced structures. Unfortunately, the closely explore the meaning of certain design deci-
resources at hand did not allow for the develop- sions and help the collective prototyping process
ment of an appropriate user interface, thus this (see ds 10). Our final trio of design strategies be-
possibility remains obscure for most seniors. De- gins with keep attentive to partial failures and what
spite its limitations, this is the most used compo- can be learned from them (ds 11). An encompassing
nent in the system, and one that would deserve fur- and stable design is slow to achieve and may easily
ther iterations and development in the future. embody things that are not needed or that end up
Finally, we wish to illustrate how successful de- serving other purposes. Failures can provide seren-
sign evolution is not just about improving or adapt- dipity handles15. Further, it is hard to predict what
ing technology. Calendars for sharing spaces and re- will work and be most worthy of investing develop-
sources were carefully co-designed; however, their ment effort onto. To this end we stress embedding
management presented challenges. Not everybody design at different levels (ds 12). Support multiple
had access to the system, and as Seniors’ arrange- access modes and make sure there are parallels
ments were fluctuating and our development re- from old to new in order to weave things together
sources were scarce, it remained difficult to keep and support design activities at different scales16.
both the paper and digital versions of the calendars In committing ourselves beyond short-term goals
updated. At some point the paper was opted over we recognized the need for more flexible planning.
digital, even though it meant that the only way to The challenges to sustain and ensure continuity of
reserve or know if a resource is free is to walk to the efforts at many levels in turn demands infra-
where the calendar is physically located. structural strategies for co-designing (Hillgren et.
Similarly, when it came to the general mainte- al. 2011), such as avoiding design locking-in with cru-
nance of the system (members’ accounts, use of per- cial choices (e.g. technology) (ds 13). Open and/or
sonal calendars, etc) it made more sense to develop flexible alternatives for technologies and infrastruc-
practices and social agreements, rather than try- tures should be preferred, whenever possible 17.
ing to make actual changes in the code, that would
for example allow neighbours to (automatically) 8. Aging together design strategies
help and take actions on behalf of each other. Many The Aging together strategies we have elaborated
workarounds have been devised by sharing pass- in the course of describing our work with Active
words and accounts or by settling down on a com- Seniors outline the initial contours of an approach
mon known standard to select a password so that suited for realizing an extended and evolving de-
the right person easily guesses it. Unfortunately,
software infrastructures still embody very simple
ideas of access management strategies, ownership,
15 Henderson and Kyng (1991) provide a nice ear-
groups and so forth that do not address the com-
ly elaboration of this.
plex realities and practices of multifaceted commu- 16 Suchman (2002) argues similarly for the need
nities. This calls for strategies to expand co-design for artful integrations
to the software architecture (Bücher et al 2009). 17 Similar implications are discussed in Büscher
et al. (2009).
sign engagement with ordinary communities in and similar experiences studied as a starting
their everyday life practices. Above we recounted point.
the key strategies, as they became relevant in the
design engagement with Active Seniors. It should 7. Build scaffolds. Provoke imagination and
be noted, however, that initiation strategies aside, cultivate the sense of possibilities by offering
they are pervasive rather than chronologically rel- the community a sense of what could be done.
evant guidelines. Let us now view them together: Bring concepts, materials, solutions and prac-
tices from elsewhere. Design avenues can be ex-
1. Start with social practices. Design activities plored in hands on workshops and with experi-
do not occur only at the studio or in explora- ments. Tune in by doing it on site if possible.
tory workshops. They are already present in the
practices, infrastructures and development 8. Build and release prototypes iteratively, ra-
trajectories of people who come together to be- pidly and from early on. Follow how things
come the “clients” “users” and “designers”. are being used, what ideas for improvement,
shortcomings, contradictions, new design di-
2. Explore the constituency, build new alliances rections etc. may have emerged and respond
if needed. It is key to explore stakeholder con- to the evolving needs through collective and
figurations to be able to achieve the kind of cumulative design iterations.
practice and technology or media change that
is being envisioned and determine if the agen- 9. Alternate close working periods with lighter
das of each party can be aligned. engagement. Make the most of the time spent
together, but also allow people to find their
3. Start with the relevant small “access design”. own ways to use the technology and try things
Design engagement is not guaranteed to work. out on their own and avoid spending design-
A well bounded initial teaser can give a sense of er hours unduly. Communications channels
how the collaboration feels like – should every- should be created towards this end.
body want to get more serious or not!
10. Foster ownership of the process, technology
4. Manage expectations. Set joint goals and do and media. Offer advice, solution help and al-
not expect or do not have the participants ex- ternatives so that the community can make
pect that you or resources will be there forever. final decisions. Negotiate and decide jointly
Clarify and check these constantly. Apply for which new design directions are pursued fur-
funding as the project advances and needs ther and clarify why.
arise.
11. Keep attentive to partial failures and what
5. Cultivate an open agenda. The idea is not to can be learned from them. An encompassing
focus on realizing a killer application but in- and stable design is slow to achieve and may
stead, fostering contributions that lead to im- easily embody things that are not needed or
proving the practices in the community. that end up serving other purposes. Failures
can provide serendipity handles.
6. Go there, be there. Collaborators should get a
real feeling of each other. If the community is 12. Embed design at different levels. Support
dispersed or only beginning to emerge, people multiple access modes and make sure there
should meet, workshops should be arranged are parallels from old to new to weave things
together. Make possible design activities at dif- assumption that extended collaboration would, by
ferent scales. and large, mean repeating the “start wide and fo-
cus to product” project form over and that it is the
13. Avoid design locking-in with crucial choices design process which should be the area of con-
(e.g. technology). Open and/or flexible alter- cern in organizing collaborative design. (Figure 8).
natives for technologies and infrastructures Alas this familiar frame is increasingly ill-fitting
should be preferred whenever possible. An for design contexts where the market launch of an
open discussion about things such as intellec- industrially produced design does not structure
tual property rights should not be avoided. the sensible frame of operation. Sustaining co-de-
sign throughout concept design, implementations,
9. Conclusions: It’s about time re-designs and further iterations calls for well-re-
The Aging together experience with elders shows hearsed means such as design games, workshops,
that the kind of co-design exercised here can suc- generative tools, and observational techniques. On
ceed in introducing helpful technology into the lives their own, however, these means of engagement
of the elderly – a mission where much money has are not sufficient to achieve the required levels of
been invested with mostly meagre successes with learning and trust building. Users’ sense of owner-
more designer and technology driven approaches ship, their coming to understand their own needs
(Östlund, 1995; Hyppönen, 2004; Hyysalo, 2010). and desires as well as designing at multiple levels
The design strategies we suggest outline the be- of practice and technology all require more sus-
ginnings of a new extended and evolutionary ap- tained and open design strategies. The designed
proach to organizing co-design activities with com- systems, usages, users practices and designers need
munities of ordinary people, and that this set of to become more seasoned, that is, to “age togeth-
strategies make such engagement feasible beyond er”. Ensuring a healthy balance in doing it for the
“high value” work contexts. people, with the people and leaving people grapple
To clarify what these strategies entail for design with it by themselves is paired with efforts at find-
processes, let us contrast them with the still preva- ing resources and tools, and mobilizing them, as
lent portrayals of co-design that rest on assumption well as creating conditions to support the unfold-
that design takes place within r&d project forms. ing of a truly collaborative space for design.
Such a frame is easy for design practitioners and The ensuing portrayal of an extended co-design
researchers to recognize. Sanders and Stappers di- process is messier than that departing from an r&d
agram (figure 1) does not need to explain the verti- project. Design activities fluctuate between devel-
cal axis or what their squiggles stand for as read- opers and users (figure 9 vertical axis), and even as
ers are so thoroughly familiar with the frame they some designs are closed every now and again, they
operate in. This familiar frame carries the implicit tend to seed further evolution, iterations and de-
t3
t2
t1
uc
uc
uc
od
od
od
Pr
Pr
Pr
project 1 project 2 project 3
Figure 8 r&d frame assumes co-design long-term

engagement is about repeating the same process a
number of times
sign directions later in time (horizontal axis) rather bution to these movements. Application to a range
than “close” or diminish co-design activities. of projects in communities and foundations may
Increased complexity and less pre-decided tem- also help counter one of the key time-related prob-
poral structure follow from the fact that when de- lems in aging together: platform development and
signing for communities with their practitioners, commitment. Guessing what flexibility users may
design is only one line of development that affects need, availability and pricing of proprietary solu-
the attainable outcomes. Figure 10 uses the same tions, longevity of open design efforts and so on
squiggle metaphor to highlight how the develop- is not straightforward. In good working relations
ments in the co-design engagement, in the com- such thorny questions may well turn into possibili-
munity of practice and in the infrastructure fac- ties for furthering development work, as indicated
tually affect and pace each other. Another way to by a message we received from the Active Seniors
say this is that the point of centering (practice or during the writing of the present article, indicat-
design) and the temporal organization of co-de- ing that our engagement with Seniors may become
sign activities are among key factors that co-design still further extented:
must pay attention (in addition to methods, norms,
tools, power, participant roles and so on). “Hi Andrea how is life with two children? …I do
This leads us to the question of where Aging not wish to burden you, but one active seniors
together strategies are applicable more general- thing keeps running in my head. Do you think
ly. Sustained design engagement is certainly not Miina [the system] would work in the new web?
needed for most of our “culturally mature” arte- I use many iGoogle applications and have lots
facts. It makes sense in settings where technological of photos in Picasa. These days Twitter is avail-
possibilities and/or user practices are evolving, in- able for quick communications. You Andrea
formation technologies being one but not the only have an understanding of web, our house and
area presently18. We also wish to emphasize that by all the different actors. Do not use too much
now, many communities do not need designers to time to this question now, just tell what do you
design for them. Parasitic professional presence think of it.
in such communities is not what we have in mind. With Sunny spring morning wishes!”
Reflecting back on the engagement with Active
Seniors, dedicated research or development fund- Acknowledgements
ing does not appear to be a necessary requisite ei- We thank the Active Seniors for invaluable collabo-
ther; we believe that many communities of practice ration, colleagues at Arki research group and Kari-
might well afford this type of design engagement, Hans Kommonen for contributions to the devel-
and so do cities and municipalities. Various coop- opment of the work. Thanks to the anonymous
erative and commons movements are on the rise reviewers for insightful suggestions. Without Mika
and sustained collaborative and open design with Myller, Kirsti Lehtimäki and Roman Suzi, there
professional practitioners appears a timely contri- would be no prototypes.
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Expanding Design Space:

Design-In-Use Activities
and Strategies

Kari-Hans Kommonen This paper introduces an analytical framework for
Sanna Marttila understanding the collaborative nature and dis-
tributed structure of what is often referred to as
design space. We propose that the design space
should be conceptualized as the space of possibili-
ties for realizing a design, which extends beyond
the concept design stage into the design-in-use
activities of people. By locating different activities
and mapping participants' possibilities in a con-
tinuum from consumption to active creation, we
develop a framework for understanding and locat-
ing design research interventions and a tool for
mapping design activities. We argue that:1) a de-
sign space is always actively co-constructed and
explored by multiple actors through their social
interactions with and through technologies and 2)
the participating actors, resources, conditions and
supporting strategies frame the design space avail-
able. In doing this, we bring forth relationships be-
tween an expanded view of the design space, con-
temporary discussions on the nature of innovation
and the imperative to support explicit collabora-
First published in Proceedings tive and participatory design activities.
of 2010 Design & Complexity:
Design Research Society Interna-
tional Conference (p. 18). Mon-
treal, Canada: drs. Reprinted
with permission.
articles – expanding design space 187
Keywords and constructed by a network of users alone (von

Design-in-use, design space, collaborative design, Hippel 2007). Furthermore there is a range of re-
participatory design, practices, social practices, use, search contributions that argument for expanding
user innovation the scope of what counts as innovation, suggest-
ing a richer and varied view of what counts as the
The term design space seems to be fairly common design space that is been explored when innova-
concept in design research literature (see e.g. Wes- tions emerge (Tuomi 2002, Shove & Pantzar 2005,
terlund 2009). While many make use of the evoca- Hyysalo 2007). These accounts, for example, point
tive dimensions of the word-pair to convey a place out how individual user customizations and more
that can be explored, few define it explicitly. In gen- importantly, the social practices of users, form a
eral terms we can say that the concept of design part of the design space that is being collectively
space is used to highlight the freedom to choose charted and created.
from many options and to explore alternatives (e.g: There are two important and most immediate
Fischer & Giaccardi 2004, McKerlie & MacLean 1994, implications of this view: firstly, more people are
Sanders 2001, Westerlund 2005). Sometimes it also exploring the design space (not only producers or
seems to refer to all design relevant information designers, or designers inviting users into some
that is available in a design process (e.g: Hassen- user centred process) and secondly, what counts as
zahl & Wessler 2000). Another common use is to design space should also be expanded to include
describe it as a territory that expands and contracts other things like social practices and agreements
as the brief or challenge for the project changes and not only physical artefacts. In so far as the de-
during the process (e.g: Gero & Kumal 1993). How- sign space available to stakeholders frames large-
ever, two common threads emerge from the litera- ly the evolution of the artefacts involved and the
ture. First, the fact that the discussion of the idea practices that carry them (e.g Hyysalo 2007, Shove
of a "design space" is taken up from the point of & Pantzar 2004), a clearer account of what could be
view of a typical ”design actor” – a designer or an considered as design space and what are its com-
organization involved in the creation of a product. ponents is needed.
It is usually the professional who defines and ex- In the rest of the paper we will follow Redström’s
plores the design space, or if it is done in collabo- invitation to develop accounts that explore “what
ration, he or she will be the one typically initiating it is that we do rather than who we are” (2008:410p)
the explorations. Second, the design space seems with respect to a design process in order to avoid
to be considered as a space that is mostly present unproductive user-designer dichotomies. The pa-
at the concept design stage or rather a feature of it. per is structured as follows: first we will introduce
This is in contrast to other strands of research lo- our definition of the concept and its relationship
cated in-between innovation and science and tech- to design-in-use discussions. The next section con-
nology studies, which could contribute to the de- centrates in locating different activities in a con-
sign field new dimensions for understanding the tinuum from consumption to creation in order to
nature of a design space. For instance, the capacity develop a framework for understanding and locat-
of so-called lead users (von Hippel 2005) to actu- ing design research interventions and a tool for
ally envision and construct the design space them- mapping design activities that make those design
selves leads them to create new product genres, as spaces explicitly visible. In addition we introduce
e.g. described by Baldwin et al. (2006). Building on some design research cases and related support
those insights, distributed accounts of innovation strategies for designers that we have experimented
that focus on the role of users suggest how a design with. The paper closes with some remarks and di-
space could be effectively and collectively explored rections for future research.
Expanding design space Building on this expanded view of the design

Westerlund’s elaboration of the concept of design space, we believe that it is increasingly important
space, in terms of a conceptual tool to design and to recognize the role of the former "users" as de-
understand design processes (2009), is a good start- signers, more so because of changes in our tech-
ing point to elaborate more on the potential of this nology landscape and new opportunities for col-
concept. In his work Westerlund describes how laboration. In an earlier era, where the capability
workshops are ideal locations to explore jointly to manufacture products was tied to an industrial
the design space of future product functionality mass production process, considering the idea that
with a variety of actors in a user centred design so-called end-users have always been designers in
processes (ucd). He found out that the explora- their everyday life, at home as well as at work, was
tion of the design space is not only done from the philosophically interesting but had very little sig-
point of view of problems, but rather from the van- nificance for design practice. However, in the digi-
tage point of view of possible solutions. Those so- tal, globally networked circumstances, a dramati-
lutions, he claims, are what actually constitute the cally wider diversity of roles and potentials beyond
design space. From this perspective, the design consumption and production become relevant.
space is turned into a useful concept to reframe
and develop more up-to-date design process by Design-in-use
focusing in “possibilities” rather than dwelling in From an earlier exclusive focus on the role of the
the problems alone. While his conceptualization “object” and “the design brief” as the focal points
identifies the co-operative nature of this explora- of the design process, we have seen a gradual open-
tion and moves the focus from problems to possi- ing up towards more situated perspectives on de-
bilities, it leaves a lot of explanatory weight on the sign activity. It is more common today that design-
shoulders of complete “solutions” or at least ideas ers and researchers situate design activities in a
that are considered as meaningful solutions. In wider complex socio-technological context, where
this conceptualization other surrounding factors, it also matters how a project is approached, and
like for example the resources available to partici- not only its results (Findeli & Bobaci 2005, Krippen-
pants to actually imagine those solutions are not dorff 2006). As asserted by several commentators,
thoroughly explored. the relationship between "design" and "use" has
In this paper we will refer to the design space as become central concern in developing design ap-
the space of potentials that the available circum- proaches and theory (Jones 1984, Redström 2006,
stances afford for the emergence of new designs. Ehn 2008). The opening up of new concerns is per-
This space though, is not constituted in a vacuum haps more evident today in the growing popularity
or somehow “pre-existent”. It is rather made pos- of techniques for user orientation and user experi-
sible through the presence of different stakehold- ence and a general embracing of so called user-cen-
ers, tools, technologies, materials as well as social tred design approaches. As a matter of fact, stud-
processes and agreements. Within that space all of ying people and use situations to inform design
those who are designing make choices and even- process has become a recommended design prac-
tually a design comes to being in an ongoing pro- tice in many areas, especially in relation to com-
cess that extends beyond the concept design. The puter artefacts and digital systems and services
design space in this case is actively co-constructed (see Bekker & Long 2000 and Iivari & Iivari 2006 for
and co-designed by multiple actors in their social reviews). These approaches, especially the prag-
interactions with and through technologies and matic orientations, are today no longer an obscure
processes, which are brought to the design space research endeavour of a few, they are rather rela-
and mobilized by the participating actors. tively well recognized lines of practice, or at least
featuring high in the list of differentiation factors um of designed systems (Alexander 1964). More re-
of design “expertise”. cently Brandes (2008) and Wakkary & Maestri (2008)
There is no doubt that concerns regarding user have provided concrete illustrations of some of the
orientation and involvement have brought a wave resourceful, adaptable and emergent qualities of
of fresh air and new insights for professional design everyday designs in contemporary mundane and
practice. However it has been questioned wheth- domestic contexts. To support these types of per-
er these stances truly recognize the complexities vasive design-like activities, several propositions
of what it is at stake (Iivari & Iivari 2006, Stewart & have been made. An important earlier conceptual-
Williams 2005); or whether they are able to recog- ization made by Henderson and Kyng (1991) iden-
nize that so called “user needs” and “experiences” tified continuing design-in-use and tailorability
are not phenomena that exist a priori or in isola- as key things to consider for truly collaborative de-
tion (Shove and Pantzar, Shove, Watson, Hand & sign. Extending these arguments, Fischer & Scharf
Ingram, 2007). In line with insights made through (2000) and Fischer and Giaccardi (2004) amongst
decades of research in areas like Science and Tech- others have advocated for strategies to support me-
nology Studies, there is a need to recognize that ta-design. Despite these advances on our under-
a variety of people, through their everyday activi- standing of design-in-use activities, the fundamen-
ties, are already engaged in a continuous and dy- tal ways in which these activities are articulated in
namic process of learning, creative appropriation, our everyday life practices and vice-versa have not
domestication and shaping of technology (Shove been fully understood and analysed (Shove et. al.
et al. 2007, Haddon et.al. 2006), and furthermore, 2007).
that these appropriations take place even under When new practices and contemporary forms of
adverse circumstance (see e.g Eglash et.al. 2004). innovation have flourished in parallel to the grow-
Some commentators even remind us that people ing access to network technology, collective endeav-
are not necessarily waiting to be taken into consid- ours and sometimes bottom up creation projects
eration by a user centred process (Spinuzza 2003), have been made visible. There is no doubt that com-
and that there is an unproductive stance that needs puter users and developers are probably one of the
to be challenged, specifically when some of the user most recognized and discussed user-designers and
oriented perspectives in design tend to portray de- innovators in the literature (see e.g. Tuomi 2003,
signers as the “heroes” that fix the situations while Floyd et. al. 2007). The case for blurring up the divi-
users are considered sort of “victims” in need of sion between design and use (production and con-
salvation (Spinuzza 2003, Stewart & Williams 2005). sumption) has been made several times using ex-
In contrast, the idea that indeed a variety of use amples from Free and Open Source projects. These
situations can display design-like characteristics communities have a long history where software
invites us to consider that it is in supporting those developers and advanced users engage in a collab-
instances (of design-in-use) that more work needs orative design and development process with es-
to be carried out from professional designers’ side. tablished tools, methods and work practices.
Already in the early 60’s design theorist and archi- Unfortunately, everyday people without particu-
tect Christopher Alexander described processes of lar technological expertise (i.e. knowledge of specif-
“unselfconscious design”, in an attempt to account ic programming languages) have had very limited
partly for the pervasive enactment of design activi- possibilities to explore some areas of the design
ties over time well beyond the professionals’ inter- space of these technologies. However, recent emer-
vention. These activities, he claimed, were usually gence of collaborative digital tools, technologies
taken for granted but nonetheless exercised by all and their associated practices (e.g. linked to blogs,
kinds of people; in order to maintain the equilibri- wikis and rss-feeds) have also made other types of
active and concerted participation more visible. It aspects of consumption (understood in its more
has also opened the possibility for more diverse passive side), and others are aspects more linked
contributions that are not limited to programming. to engagement and creation. To elaborate the dis-
This effectively expands the design space that is cussion further, we illustrate the framework by po-
visible and available for the people. These develop- sitioning three contemporary examples along the
ments locate current discussions of design-in-use continuum. In this case, their particular position
in a very different setting than the one that existed depends on the conditions and possibilities that
when user centred design approaches emerged. surround the activity carried out, which, effectively
These issues outlined above effectively invite makes “slices” of the design space more explicitly
us to reconsider: What does design-in-use mean available for people. We will now elaborate further
for professional designers interested in creating on the components and meaning of each element.
partnerships and collaborative alliances, and what
should we do about it? In doing this we propose What people do:
that a better understanding of the scope and struc- The bottom part of these design activities deal with
ture of the design space is needed. We proceed now issues of composition, material selection and defi-
to introduce the main components of the frame- nitions of structures. These are easy to recognize as
work and its relationship. activities pertaining to design or development pro-
fessionals. In identifying them we draw on contem-
Structure and components of porary practices around human computer inter-
the design space action, interaction design and software program-
In this section we present an analytical framework ming, all which deal with the design of digital me-
that aims to understand the structure of the design dia and technology. Every time a layer is added,
space we see emerging and to locate and identify the upper element represents more of an organi-
different strategies. The following key questions zational or social type of activities. Some of these
are discussed in particular: What kinds of activi- top layer activities would not necessarily be con-
ties are people engaged in? What kinds of possibil- sidered as design activities from a pure product
ities for appropriation are available? To construct design point of view. However, these activities in-
the framework we have made use of several strands creasingly account for what can be considered as
of research that have discussed similar issues in the design (Shove et al. 2007, Hyysalo 2007). To define
past, and complemented it with empirical obser- and synthesize these “soft” design activities, we
vations of current digital practices, when deemed used concepts and ideas from literature in Science
necessary. and Technology studies (sts) and issues explored
Figure 1 presents the basic dimensions of the in e.g., Participatory Design (pd).
framework. The vertical dimension presents an ac-
count of "What people do" as a layered view on dif- - Program / write modules: On the basic level,
ferent design activities in the digital realm. The ac- digital system design operates with compiled
tivities are located in a continuum from “structural” software programming languages, such as C,
to “soft” types as a way to convey the different points C++, Java, and on a slightly higher level with
of view that need to be reconciled and that effective- interpreted languages such as JavaScript and
ly complement each other. The horizontal dimen- Python. These activities require understand-
sion is meant to qualify those previous activities, ing of algorithms, data and information man-
by proposing that they might relate differently to agement, and include design decisions and
the continuum between “Use and Creation”. Some exploration that affect the technology choices
of these activities might be more linked to basic and production tools. Moreover it deals with
the actual writing of code and the abstrac- rience, and many toolkits have been designed
tion process required. The resulting designs with the intention that non-experts could de-
are usually organized into modular reusable sign their own systems or at least customize
components that provide streamlined services ready-made systems for some more specific
for other designs through an Application Pro- purpose. Usually some, but most often quite a
gramming Interface (api). lot of programming expertise is still required.
(MacLean et. al. 1990, Henderson & Kyng 1991).
- Use modules and libraries: On the next level of These types of design activities customize and
software design, software is composed into expand a system by attaching new compo-
applications that perform some functions nents, such as plugins, that bring new capabili-
relevant to users. These integrated software ties to the system and create localized manifes-
packages take advantage of underlying modu- tations of it.
lar software libraries. This usually takes place
within one computer. - Aggregate / remix: A complex ecosystem of
loosely connected services is evolving (Hart-
- Assemble components: Some software design mann et al 2008, Nestler 2008), where mash-
can take place without extensive software expe- ups (a recent evolution of Internet applica-
what supporting
people do strategies
Facilitate social
Soft
Evolve social Happens despite practices and their

practices of no support evolution
Make social Make visible social

agreements agreements
Happens despite
Excel as layout design
Game engines as Machinima
of no support
Create Sensitivity to work-
designers/producers
work-arounds arounds
Supported by the
MediaWiki platform for collaborative

Supported by the
designers/producers
Supported by the
designers/
producers
Configure / Make
production tools
platform
Personalize configurations that

are sharable and
projects (e.g. wikipedia...)
Integrate adoptable by others
Aggregate / Support Mash-ups

remix
Make Toolkits and
components
Assemble
components
Provide an open
api
Use Modules
Structure
and libraries
Give access to the
source code
Program / write Reinterpretation Adaptation (and misuse) Reinvention
modules
use (consume) (produce) create
Figure 1 Framework for a structure of the design space

tions and representative feature of the Web in which users can act when facing an inflex-
2.0 phenomenon) can be considered as new ible technology (Pollock 2005).
service designs created by aggregating selected
information from other web services, to some - Make social agreements: A social agreement is
extent relying on services that offer an open a shared understanding or consensus around
web api.. A lot of contemporary design activity a particular task or objective within a certain
is concentrated in developing skills to aggre- group or community. The nature of the agree-
gate and remix in inspiring ways. (Several web ment is usually a small group initiative that
services, such as Google Maps, YouTube and later evolves into a commonly implemented
Flickr, have quickly embraced the opportunity convention. One example of a social agree-
to become the platform of choice to be a stand- ment with growing creative and practical con-
ard component in mash-ups by offering e.g. sequences is hashtagging, the use of the hash
map, video or image related services). symbol (#) to precede a term when micro-
blogging in services like Twitter. The hashtag
- Integrate: Most of the software that we use dai- (e.g. “#opendata”) adds additional context
ly in our personal devices is in some ways con- and metadata to the posts/tweets that makes
nected to other software, those particular con- it also easier to follow, organize and dissemi-
figurations are only known in use. Since the di- nate later.
versity of circumstances of use calls for a diver-
sity of tools this represents a formidable and - Evolve social practices: Social practices are em-
growing system integration and design-in-use bodied and materially mediated arrangements
challenge that faces us in our everyday lives. of human activities; they describe a particular
way of going about an activity with its associ-
- Configure / personalize: This is a typical area ated resources (Reckwitz 2002). Social practic-
where more and more end-users need to en- es, as an analytical unit, are shared and persist,
gage in design activities when it comes to digi- because a group of people continuously repro-
tal products. Software based systems usually duces them (De Certeau 1984). Eventually a set
include many kinds of settings, and as they of social agreements (like the ones described
often also mediate communications and inter- above) or patterns of behaviours can evolve
actions, they often contain also a lot of various into a social practice that makes use of specific
types of information that is very much context artefacts and conventions. For example, in
dependent and often quite personal. video sharing sites like YouTube there are very
advanced community initiated social practices
- Create workarounds: Workaround is a type of for inviting and sustaining audiovisual conver-
activity used to describe the ways in which us- sations, via specific uses of visual genres, an-
ers of some product or system develop creative notation workarounds, making visible of time-
ways to overcome a shortcoming of the prod- coded information and so forth.
uct or service they have encountered. Creating
workarounds is not only creative but also dy- Use-create:
namic way of weaving artefacts to own work- The Use – Creation continuum is structured around
ing and ways of doing thins. It is an especially three intermediate positions: reinterpretation, ad-
familiar term for software developers, but has aptation and reinvention. These analytical catego-
also been used widely within the sociology of ries are borrowed and further adapted from the
technology community, to highlight the ways ones introduced by Eglash when referring to tech-
nology appropriation (2004:xi), which we found and / or gender assumptions embedded in a

insightful and relevant to this endeavour. product. An adaptation involves creativity to
look beyond assumed functions and recognize
- Reinterpretation: This stage refers mostly to new possibilities, while the underlying struc-
possibilities that exist for surpassing the se- tures are not necessarily changed. Eglash’s
mantical associations that are proposed to classical example includes the “misuses” of
people in relationship to a given structure. early cassette players by Beduine tribes that
An example provided by Eglash was that of the saw beyond the playback machines (as they
graffiti artists’ interventions into the urban where marketed and sold to them) and used
space, which provide a reinterpretation of them as recording equipment for their own
the function of that space as a place for self- cultural productions. An example from digi-
expression or political commentary without tal realm can be found in the use of real-time
changing the structural conditions of the three-dimensional game engines to pro-
space itself. In digital environments, reinter- duce computer animations. These anima-
pretation is obviously a possibility that is al- tions where originally made to record playing
ways available and relays strongly in the activi- episodes and performances, and they soon
ties occurring at the soft layers of our “what evolved to include the creation of new story
people” do categories. An interesting case of lines and different creative appropriations
reinterpretation can be found in the unintend- for game-based movie making (Lowood 2008).
ed uses of spreadsheet programs designed to This practice generated a new genre termed
calculate and manipulate numbers, as graphi- "Machinima". In Figure 1 we illustrate the lay-
cal layout design programs to create interi- ers that are covered by this example. Besides
ors and user interfaces (Berger 2006). This is of being a very clever reinterpretation of what
done by reinterpretations of certain features computer game software is meant to be for,
of the software and basic shared agreements the further development of the practice in-
between a group of users. As seen in Figure cludes activities such as custom made adap-
1, from a design process point of view the ex- tations and hacks of the software engines, in
plicitly available design space is made visible some cases supported directly by the game
mainly through the possibilities for basic con- engine producers. Machinima practitioners
figuration of the product, but there is little gather in online forums to develop and discuss
support to share and or extend user practices the genre as well as present their work in festi-
as this are mostly developed informally or in vals, which effectively support the consolida-
closed circles. In this case the possibilities of tion of a community with a shared practice.
changing or adapting the lower layers are also
more restricted; although there is always hack- - Reinvention: In the category of reinvention, a
ing strategies, this is not something that is en- manipulation of semantics, use and structure
couraged. is usually achieved and new functions are cre-
ated. A true reinvention usually involves being
- Adaptation: this second stage according to able to produce changes and alterations to the
Eglash, implies a certain degree of flexibility original structures, like the case reported by
in the underlying technology coupled with a Eglash in which Latino mechanics appropriate
sense of violation of intended purpose. These automobile shock absorbers to create shock
means not only of the designers’ intentions, producers for their low-rider cars. The multi-
but also equally of the marketing strategies ple adaptations and recreations of the Medi-
aWiki engine that runs Wikipedia to endeav- are engaged on audiovisual creative activities,
ours different than and encyclopaedia writing while some have not yet been able to take ad-
can be considered as an example of reinven- vantage of the many possibilities that audiovis-
tion on the digital realm (see an overview in: ual media could bring to their activities. How
MediaWiki 2010). As Figure 1 shows the plat- to make it easy for anyone to create, reuse and
form is offered with open access to the code, so share audio and video productions over the In-
it includes explicitly the possibility of altering ternet legally, without costly servers and com-
the lower levels. However reinvention is complicated system management? As part of our
plemented strongly by the soft layers as well. research strategy we designed and implement-
The Wikipedia project exemplifies how it also ed the Fusion platform (http://p2p-fusion.
involves adapting and evolving the social prac- org/). The platform binds together a peer-to-
tices that made these type of collaborative pro- peer network, a distributed metadata layer, so-
duction possible through many sophisticated cial processing and enrichment features, sup-
and well-documented community agreements port for embedded licenses and a component-
(Slattery 2009). based toolkit called Social Media Application
ToolKit (smak). A Specific, practical goal for
Making the design space explicit: the system was to support social activities that
some supporting strategies include the creative use and reuse of audiovis-
In previous sections we introduced a layered view ual content, and to provide a software toolkit
on design activities in the digital design domain with re-usable components. The aim was to
by giving examples of what people do in the design enable people to build their own applications
space; with the focus on revealing design-in-use with smak to share and distribute videos, edit
activities. In the digital realm shifting and mov- and socially enrich them collaboratively. The
ing between stages is –in theory– easy to perform, work was carried it in collaboration with differ-
but in practice it is hampered by such things as the ent Finnish communities (possible end-users)
type of programming knowledge required to make ranging from a music makers’ community, to
the changes, standards conflicts between products an extended family as well as enthusiast prac-
and services, providers’ and producer’s use and li- titioners of acrobatics and parkour (For a more
censing policies (open or closed), lack of support complete account of the case see: Marttila et.
and shared practices, to mention just a few. For al. Forthcoming).
these reasons, the project of making the design
space more explicitly available also in design-in- Facilitating practices for active citizenship:
use, requires changes and support in mostly all This case deals with the role of digital technol-
the layers of the design activities. ogies, specifically location based services, in
In this section we will briefly introduce three the emergence of new forms of citizen partici-
design research cases we have conducted that have pation in the urban environment. As a research
helped us to reflect on the possibilities of the sug- strategy we initiated the collaborative design
gested analytical framework. Based on these cases of a prototype environment and service called
we have identified resources, conditions and sup- Urban Mediator (um). um is a server-based
porting strategies needed; these characteristics software that provides users with the possibil-
will be elaborated and discussed further. ity to create, obtain, and share location-based
information (http://um.uiah.fi). The service
Facilitating practices of creative production contains a set of tools for both city administra-
and reuse of media: Today more communities tion officers aimed at increasing their capacity
to construct more active forms of citizenship up the discussion by proposing four key factors we
and thus initiate innovations in the way digital have identified based on our projects:
participation services are being planned and
delivered, by offering an in-between-space that * Support open-ended design process and flexible
is not in control of any actor. Collaborations agency: Design space, as traditionally per-
were initiated with both active citizens and city ceived by designers, has been available for eve-
officials in Helsinki (For a more complete ac- ryday people only by invitation or engagement
count of the case see: Botero & Saad-Sulonen through a professional designer or a predeter-
2008, Saad-Sulonen & Botero 2008) mined process with objectives and outcomes
that are identified a priori. This setting im-
Facilitating the coordinating of everyday life plies also preset roles and agencies available
in a project of growing old together: This case for people, which might prevent the richness
intertwines with a collective project to devel of design-in-use activities that would trigger
op and experiment alternative social arrange- and uncover the social patterns, agreements
ments for growing old initiated by a seniors and practices that people might possess in the
association in Helsinki. Together we asked design space. Moreover, these "soft" social de-
ourselves what kind of applications and digi- signs should be carefully turned into design
tal media would be interesting and meaning- descriptions, structures and functions without
ful in such a community? Besides of other ex- losing the essence of the design knowledge
periments, the biggest intervention made was (e.g. practices, agreements and workarounds).
centered around the collaborative design and
development of what the community called * Provide meaningful access to the resources avai-
their Everyday Life Management System (Dai- lable: In order to facilitate the creative design-
lyWorks) and it’s articulates to their project in-use activities and expansion of the design
of ongoing design of the communal living ar- space, professional designers should provide
rangements. In concrete terms this is a collec- access to infrastructures a pool of resources
tion of web-based tools for the seniors, which that are reusable. By granting open and mean-
assists in the coordination and sharing of eve- ingful access (e.g. contextualization of data,
ryday life activities and information (http:// digital tools and guidance for various levels of
arki.uiah.fi/adik/dailyworks). (For a more com- engagement) we might enhance the different
plete account of the case see: Botero & Kom- agencies in the space. Also access to knowl-
monen 2009) edge can be critical when people are experi-
menting and being creative.
Based on the experiences gained in the cases, we
want to discuss how e.g. professional designers or * Create means for sharing designs: another key
other stakeholders who are in a position of power factor is to create means for sharing “designs”
regarding the design structures in question, could that have been created in design-in-use. Indi-
support and facilitate these multiple activities that viduals, groups and communities share their
vary from "soft" creations into "structured" and design knowledge and experiences with peers,
more rigid designs. In other words: How to expand social networks and other stakeholders in the
the design space, in Eglash (2004) terms, to accom- design space e.g. in discussion boards, wikis
modate more explicitly "reinterpretation", "adap- and social media platforms. In these environ-
tation" and moreover, the "reinvention" activities ments for sharing, professional designers
(the results of design-in-use activities)? We open should acknowledge existing procedures and
collaboratively design and develop mecha- and relate them to already familiar design process-
nisms for giving recognition and attribution es and patterns. The framework highlights how
to contributors, aim for nurturing trust and the design-in-use activities of a very diverse set of
building motivation, and when applicable, actors can become realistic sources of innovation
create means for compensation. and material for other designs. By mapping specif-
ic activities on the graph, and through considering
* Design for openness and designability: The their potential design interactions with new actors
fourth and final aspect of supporting strate- or the adoption of new strategies, new collabora-
gies of design-in-use is the design for open- tive design spaces can be envisioned and possi-
ness and further designability of other designs. bly explored. Since, these different activities have
Fischer (2000, 2003) refers to a similar stance not been discussed with in a single framework it
with the concept of Meta-Design. This strategy is possible that further refinement of the catego-
should acknowledge people as potential de- ries would be needed in the future. In any case, we
signers of future applications and platforms, believe that the novel combination and holistic
and should provide an open access to differ- understanding of the activities we are proposing
ent levels of software from source code to api's has interesting implications and presents a useful
and css, through appropriate licensing and view of the design space. Our future work includes
publishing of the designs – for instance: Free, testing the validity of the model with other empiri-
Libre and Open Source and Creative Com- cal cases with a view to iterate the concepts and the
mons, and so on. structure of the framework.
As design is usually a pragmatic activity, the ac-
Formulating insights and sharing these design- tors engaged are concerned with finding a worka-
in-use strategies are focal to the extended design ble solution, and are likely to draw the boundaries
space and its vitality. The means of exchange of de- of the design space so that they exclude unrealistic
sign knowledge, e.g. solutions, workarounds, prac- options. This of course also means that things like
tices and innovations, varies from diverse things ideas, ideals, imagination and inspiration belong
such as ad-hoc crowd-sourcing to the formation of all to the category of conditions that influence the
communities (see e.g. Botero et.al. 2009). It is also dynamic composition of the design space. Along
important to notice that sharing design knowledge the same lines, all design operates with tools and
and experiences in a design space does not only on the basis of earlier designs and design exper-
happen between peers; but also with other stake- tise or experience that is available to stakeholders.
holders who have access to the information (e.g. These aspects can become available through per-
what companies like Google can infer based on sonal experience, knowledge sharing, external ser-
their user data). vices or collaborative team effort. In this sense, the
design space of a stakeholder that has the neces-
Conclusion sary economical means, access to tools, a good de-
The emergence of the digital environment and its sign network around and working experience of
ecosystems has created a new set of circumstanc- collaboration within it, has most likely a persistent-
es for design. These new circumstances provide ly wider design space for a variety of projects than
many new opportunities for all types of stakehold- an actor with few means or bad and un-motivating
ers to benefit from new design interventions and earlier experiences. Thus for supporting success-
engage in design activities. The framework pre- ful design-in-use, it would be important to make
sented here has been of great value for our work, as available useful and realistic sets of resources and
we have tried to make such new potentials visible conditions for constructing solid design spaces.
The expansion of the design space has also wid- Botero, A., Vihavainen, S., & Karku, K. (2009).
er societal significance. If the design capacity of From closed to open to what? An exploration
free and collaborative actors that operate in the on community innovation principles. In Proc.
various levels of design-in-use activities we outline, of MindTrek Conference: Everyday Life in the Ubi-
is grown through open strategies as we propose in quitous Era (pp. 198–202). Tampere, Finland:
this paper, and they are linked together in a well acm / MindTrek.
functioning and dynamically self-organizing eco- Brandes, U., Stich, S., & Wender, M. (2009). Design
system, the collaborative design space is expanded by Use: The Everyday Metamorphosis of Things
and made more persistent for all – in effect increas- (Board of International Research in Design).
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This is a very powerful strategy to increase the ca- De Certau, M. (1984). The Practice of Everyday Life.
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our work is a contribution in this direction. Introduction. In R. Eglash, J. L. Croissant, G.
Di Chiro, & R. Fouché (Eds.), Appropriating
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The author disassembles the language of design to realise broader
conceptions of temporality, design spaces, roles, and entities im-
plicated in design processes. Based on two case studies of fledgling
communities (seniors aging together) and emergent collectives
(citizens and city officials sharing locative media), the thesis shows
how continuities and collaboration can be achieved between de-
sign and life-practices more generally. A significant move is the re-
conception of ‘design space’ to capture the wider interplay of pos
sibilities, practices, partly assembled technologies; as well as devel-
oping competencies and social arrangements that are the basis
for ongoing design choices. Design space(s) presents us with a col
lection of principles and practices, to design within and for com-
munal endeavours.
Andrea Botero (BA Universidad Nacional de Colombia and MA
University of Art and Design Helsinki) is a researcher and designer
exploring services, media, and technologies for communities.

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Expanding

Aalto arts Books

Graphic design: Nina Kajavo

Paper: Munken Pure 120g and Munken Pure 300g

My understanding of the joys and perils of design through a communal

Saad-Sulonen, Sanna Marttila, and Mariana Salgado. They have worked

a very similar effect. Bo Westerlund’s research has been a good stepping-

Andrea, Kallio, May 3rd 2013

II Botero, A., & Saad-Sulonen, J. (2008). Co-designing for New City-citizen

IV Botero, A., & Saad-Sulonen, J. (2010). Enhancing Citizenship: the Role of

“… Design is not creation of discrete, intrinsically meaningful objects, but

Historically, design methods and models of design processes assume that

design methods movement contributed to identifying new forms of prac-

1 Chapter 2 situates ucd and pd movements and literature more precisely.

mantic stance of the lonely designer or the design movement’s over-ra-

2 Away from only role-based accounts and prescriptions. Current research

3 Lack of frameworks to guide interventions that are not constrained to a

4 Towards a nuanced understanding of the distributed nature of design

1.1. Design-in-use, progress made

1.2. From workplaces to communal endeavours

Figure 1 Snapshots from the seniors’ case (A):

Figure 2 User Interface of Miina – Calendar view

The second engagement looks at forms of active citizenship in the in-

Figure 4 User Interface of um – Map view

for the people involved, certain practices can be small-scale enterprises

Figure 5 Communal endeavours embrace issues shared

Thus, focusing on communal endeavours allows one to use similar entry

1.3. Focus of the research

How to design and develop it together Which are relevant stakeholders?

articles I, III & V (+VI) II & IV (+VI)

Table 1 Entry points, setting and frameworks for each engagement

III) Botero, A., & Kommonen, K.-H. (2009). Coordinating everyday

III) Botero, A., & Kommonen, K.-H. (2009). Coordinating everyday

IV) Botero, A., & Saad-Sulonen, J. (2010). Enhancing Citizen-

V) Botero, A., & Hyysalo S (2013) Aging Together: Steps Towards

V) Botero, A., & Hyysalo S (2013) Aging Together: Steps Towards

Table 2 Articles and their grouping

presenting the articles

Miina). More importantly, at this point it became possible to apply simi-

nuanced repertoire of resources to guide reflexive co-design work. De-

18 This became particularly acute when we participated in a larger national project

the inescapable extension of design activities into design-in-use, as we

this as a way to move beyond salient gaps I identified in extant research.

outline of main contributions

1 The design engagements reported here confirm that collaborative design

Implication: the current situation in design research of mostly focusing ef-

2 The notion of ‘design space’ is re-conceptualized to capture the wider inter-

ongoing design choices. This helped to identify a variety of crucial activities

Implication: Design research and practice needs to engage more seriously

Implication: Besides developing new techniques and methods for collabora-

19 There is an intentional reference here to “Situated Knowledges: The Science Ques-

2.1. Use before use

Figure 6 Situating design practice

such as information systems design. In doing this, ucd practitioners have

customization have become much more critical to business practices as

such as designer or user are not stable or separate; rather, as Suchman

2.2. Design after design

Gap 2: Away from strictly role-based accounts and prescriptions: Be-

Gap 3: Lack of frameworks to guide interventions not constrained by a

38 See (Aanestad 2002) for a discussion on cultivating as a metaphor for infrastruc