Panel: Design for agency : creating systems that inspire action in anyone.
Channel: Ouishare TV
Date: 2017-09-21

And what if the human is not the problem?

The design approach has transitioned from the industrial design for mass production and the functional modernism to the often marketing driven user-centred design of the 90’. But nowadays, the role of designers is evolving once again.  We are moving from “use” to “agency” and contribution.

 So we need to develop the ability to engage with the people as participants, to see their desires and fears, and then to build contexts and systems to address those. As opposed to the “individual user” who is interacting with a smart product, the participants are engaged with one another and with their environment (or their context).

Today the methodologies of design and science affect one another, however, the design is not just a framework for participants, but something that is also, itself, participating.

This is a design that doesn't place the designer or the user in the centre. A new approach has to emerge, one which optimizes for a different type of growth, concerned with designing strategies in which each person doesn’t just see themselves at the centre of the world but helps to understand the impacts and consequences on our collective world.

Why should we move away from the user-centred design and what is the difference?
What would it mean to design for participants instead? For all the participants?
What is the role of technology for participants’ agency?
How are we gonna design the city, mobility, automation, power, ownership, economy?

*Panel*

Justyna Swat
Co-founder, POC21 / WIKIHOUSE

Alastair Parvin
Co-founder, WikiHouse Foundation

Selena Savic
Co-founder, Unpleasant Design team