Participatory Design and the Collective Designer

Authors

  • Pelle Ehn
  • Richard Badham

Keywords:

Bauhaus, collaboration, design, participation, phronesis, power, Nordic design, ethics, politics, Scandinavian collective systems design, utopia, virtue.

Abstract

Is and should there be a place for the Aristotelian virtue of phronesis in contemporary participatory design practice and for design as an act of anxious love? In this paper we take a critical look at participatory design and reflect upon the virtues of the collective designer. Towards a background of the dreams and lost utopias of some related collective designers of the past: the Bauhaus, Nordic design and Scandinavian collective systems design, we suggest that our attention should not be on the great espoused design ideals but on the politics-in-practice of the collective designer. The really interesting collective designer in practice might very well be much more of a "machiavellian" reflective practitioner than an objective scientist or politically correct utopist.

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Published

2002-01-01

Issue

Section

Plenary Papers