Design Handbook: Concepts. Materials

Practical understanding and family resemblance between language-games were presented as fundamental concepts for work-oriented design. The concept of language-games is associated with playful activity, but what practical conditions are needed for such pleasurable engagement in design? Is the right to democratic participation enough? In fact, the experiences from the work-oriented design projects indicates that most users find design work boring, sometimes to the point where they stop participating. This problem is not unique to the Scandinavian work-oriented design tradition. It has, for example, been addressed by Russell Ackoff (1974), who concluded that participation in design can be only successful if it meets three conditions: (1) it makes a difference for the participants, (2) implementation of the results is likely, and (3) it is fun. The first two points concern the political side of participation in design. Users must have a guarantee that their design efforts are taken seriously. The last point concerns the design process ...»