Managing resistance and negotiating co-design: Reflections on troublesome and elusive moments

Research output: Book / Anthology / Report / Ph.D. thesisPh.D. thesis

Abstract

This dissertation is a retrospective reflection on a user-driven innovation project, Senior Interaktion. The project was a three-year long project with focus on how to design services for senior citizens and to do that with a co-design approach involving citizens and private partners in the design work. The aim was to design services for senior citizens with the focus on social interaction – and with technology as a way to support the interaction among communities of elderlies.

The dissertation is a retrospective reflection of the author’s experience with taking part and being heavily involved as participant in this project. This is done through a series of selected “moments” from the project and beyond, which in various ways are significant for what is happening in the project – and how the project is enacted.

The dissertation contains of two research aims. The first is concerned with resistance as part of co-design and citizen involvement with the aim to reflect upon something that is rarely described or discussed within co-design and participatory design. The question is here how resistance is performed in practice, especially in the meetings between citizens and the project, and how resistance is handled in the project, or not handled. One of the arguments here is that the project overlooks the resistance toward the project itself, which means it doesn’t get to challenge the overall frame. The second part is concerned with the complexities of the ‘what’ and ‘where’ of living labs. The aim is here to describe and reflect upon what is being performed in the living lab, as this rather new practice within co-design and participatory design lacks empirical descriptions – but also with the intention to contribute to the discussion of co-design in “new” constellations of multiple partners and multiple organizations. The loose set-up of the living lab and these project constellations raise questions of who is working for whom, who owns it, who is responsible - but also questions of who knows the rules and terms of conditions.

The dissertation ends with a discussion of the issues raised throughout the dissertation and a suggestion of an alternative that is about wanting something with each other.
Original languageEnglish
PublisherIT-Universitetet i København
Number of pages207
ISBN (Print)978-87-7949-339-1
Publication statusPublished - 2016
SeriesITU-DS
Number120
ISSN1602-3536

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