Abstract
This paper introduces the concept of ‘resourcing’ to describe the fundamental activity of negotiating the use of what is available for co-design. Even though resourcing is an ever-present undertaking in all co-designing, no theoretical concept has thus far addressed the constitutive practices in collaborative design processes. We define the concept of resourcing on the basis of pragmatist process theories and complexity theory perspectives of social life, which enable us to explicate the gap between managerial thinking that understands resources as objective entities to be planned and controlled, and the actual unfolding of co-design in complex responsive conversation. Through the analysis of three co-design events we illustrate how the different response sensitivities of co-designers can diversify and enrich resourcing. The analyses also reveal that resourcing is a dynamically evolving process that changes in response to what emerges in the complex interplay of intentions between people involved in co-design.
Keywords
resourcing; co-design; design facilitation; complex responsive processes
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2016.342
Citation
Ylirisku, S., Buur, J., and Revsbæk, L. (2016) Resourcing in Co - Design, in Lloyd, P. and Bohemia, E. (eds.), Future Focused Thinking - DRS International Conference 2016, 27 - 30 June, Brighton, United Kingdom. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2016.342
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Resourcing in Co - Design
This paper introduces the concept of ‘resourcing’ to describe the fundamental activity of negotiating the use of what is available for co-design. Even though resourcing is an ever-present undertaking in all co-designing, no theoretical concept has thus far addressed the constitutive practices in collaborative design processes. We define the concept of resourcing on the basis of pragmatist process theories and complexity theory perspectives of social life, which enable us to explicate the gap between managerial thinking that understands resources as objective entities to be planned and controlled, and the actual unfolding of co-design in complex responsive conversation. Through the analysis of three co-design events we illustrate how the different response sensitivities of co-designers can diversify and enrich resourcing. The analyses also reveal that resourcing is a dynamically evolving process that changes in response to what emerges in the complex interplay of intentions between people involved in co-design.