The Quality of Design Participation: Intersubjectivity in Design Practice

IntroductionThe objective of this paper is to present the results of the application of the concept of intersubjectivity to the process of design participation. We believe that design participation is not a political stance but a methodological necessity. User participation must also be highlighted, as the outcomes of design will be utilised by target users and their concerns are of utmost importance. Users' views and knowledge should play a critical role in the design process (Ho, Lee, & Cassim, 2009). Moreover, as suggested by action research advocates like Reason (2004), participation requires the formation of communicative space. This raises the question of what circumstances render open communicative space possible.We focused on how to integrate the knowledge of users into the whole design process. As informed by Cross's (2006) analysis of the nature of design practice, we concede that the design process must be characterised by the components of (a) "design with" and (b) co-design throughout the whole design process, as well as (c) solution-focused strategies and abductive logic, and (d) the opening up of communicative space. In light of this conceptual formulation, we organised our training labs in a specific format. With a specific operational arrangement, our input focuses on the application of the concepts of empathy/intersubjectivity and re-description. In the following sections, we argue first for the methodological necessity of forming a communicative space for design practice, and secondly we illustrate the promising aspect of the concept of intersubjectivity. We draw on our findings from the Design.Lives Labs, our training labs, to examine our design of the training process and the concept of intersubjectivity. We expand the concept of intersubjectivity from a twofold model of I-It and It-Thou relations into a threefold typology with a new dimension termed "I-Thou". The I-It relation can be used as an indicator of the existence of an instrumental relationship and a subsequent deterioration of the quality of human interaction, whereas the It-Thou relation is an indicator of the formation of an empathic act, which would certainly help open communicative space. The I-Thou relation would engage each of the members in an entity as a whole and accomplish equal dialogues. We propose this threefold typology of intersubjectivity as a conceptual guide for designers so that they can construct communicative spaces in which equal dialogues are possible and can, as a result, extend the impact of design participation on social development.The Design.Lives Labs were organised by our team, which is composed of a design researcher and a sociologist. In 2009 we were invited by a design education organisation to conduct a three-day workshop for 120 teenagers in Hong Kong as part of their design introduction summer programme. The penultimate section of this study is on the outcomes of our reflection gained through the skill of re-description, which led us to refine the concept of intersubjectivity into a threefold typology.Design is an Emergent Social ProcessIn order to map our position regarding design research, we begin by presenting the underlying tenets of our Design.Lives Labs in relation to the opening up of the inclusive design process to users. We argue that "designing with people" should be the necessary platform of design participation projects because this concept offers a "midway" between the traditional mode of the designer-user relationship, i.e. design for people, and the future mode, i.e. design by people. We perceived that design "with" people links both sides, i.e. it links up the "for" and "by" approaches, throughout the whole design process, into a community which allows designers and intended users to experience design practice and develop their own appropriate agendas and approaches. Moreover, because of the specific nature of design, the use of solution-focused and abductive logic are appropriate, which necessitates the opening up of communicative space. …