Urban labs are arenas for fostering urban sustainable transitions, where different actors experiment and learn together how to create inclusive and sustainable cities. A key aspect of these processes is social learning, which is the collaborative learning process through which new understandings and practices emerge from the activities of urban labs. Social learning also includes the process through which these understandings and practices are further anchored and can transform the organizations participating in urban labs. Social learning is seen as key to tackling polarization and creating transformational capacity at different levels. This article explores how social learning can strengthen urban labs’ democratic ambitions. Building on the insights emerging from a collaborative learning process with civil servants within an urban lab, it highlights the need for ensuring plurality and challenging privilege in social learning. It also emphasizes the importance of nurturing a listening capacity within urban labs and municipal organizations.

This document is a guide for the development of local co-design activities, produced within the project Bauhaus of the Seas Sails (Project ID: 101079995). It aims to provide indications and support for howto conduct codesign locally, addressing the important aspects to consider and questions to reflectabout. It starts by identifying and defining four core principles for the development of thedemonstrators (sustainable, inclusive, aesthetic, and locally grounded) and then introduces how co -design engages with these four principles. It overviews the different actors involved and a generaltimeline for the co-design process. Further, it provides specific suggestions on how to develop thecodesign practice locally and with relevance to the area in which you are introducing it.

It has been highlighted how design engagement with the public sector risks being either irrelevant or instrumental to technocratic agendas due to a lack of understanding of the public sector’s nature. Based on the idea of public sector innovation as a matter of learning and adaptation for continuous improvement, this article looks at how participatory design approaches can be used to drive co-learning processes within the public sector, namely, collaborative learning processes about institutional aspects. It reflects on the authors’ engagement within a Swedish public organisation that relied on traditional design processes and co-learning processes. By analysing these processes, the article highlights how design as problem framing, by supporting collaborative reflexivity, can be a fruitful way to engage with institutional aspect.

This workshop explores learning in Participatory Design (PD). We invite the PD community to reflect on the multiple ways learning can strengthen and expand how we frame and drive participatory design to reflect on how we can expand learning in PD to gain an understanding for the complex system we are all part of, for the interdependence of social, ecological and economic systems. Through this workshop, we will invite participants to address questions such as: What theories and concepts can be used to understand learning in PD? What kind of approaches are used to foster learning in PD? How is learning evaluated in PD? The workshop will bring together members of the PD community interested in these questions, and serve as the basis for developing ongoing and new collaborations around the topic of learning in PD.    

Rising societal polarisations around health and climate crises have brought more attention to the close relations between social and environmental challenges. These polarisations triggered an interest in the participatory design (PD) field in developing approaches that enhance connections between diverse actors operating across societal and environmental sectors. However, the capabilities needed for these approaches have not been sufficiently articulated in PD research and education. To fill in this gap, we define ‘reworlding’ as an operation of self-critique within PD that engages with capabilities needed to reveal and articulate radical interdependencies between humans and more-than-humans, across social and environmental worlds, and within situated contexts. We propose both the redefinition of the design capabilities needed for (re)connecting these worlds (retracing, reconnecting, reimagining and reinstitutioning), as well as a reconsideration of learning environments where these capabilities can be tested and enhanced.  

Public organizations are increasing their engagement with innovation as they respond to the imminent environmental social and economic challenges. These responses are often achieved by replicating ideas and processes from the private sector without adapting them to the unique specificities and characteristics of the public sector. 

In our work we observed how this translation (private to public sector innovation) is not easy to accomplish however, it is important in terms of creating a grounded understanding of innovation that can be shared among public organizations as well as with external actors, politicians and citizens.

In this short booklet, we provide some suggestions for how to reflect on public sector innovation. We mostly highligh the differences with private sector innovation and touch upon the role of innovation labs and leadership for public sector innovation. 

The aim of this booklet is to provide inspiration and starting points for discussions rather than definitive answers. 

We ourselves are also on this journey to better understand this question and welcome any comments and/or suggestions on this material. Please feel free to reach out to us!

Public Innovation Labs are rapidly spreading with the aim of improving public sector responses to societal issues. However, labs are often struggling to embed their outcomes in ordinary activities. The article builds on the notions of organizational learning and translation and on the case of an innovation lab at the municipal level to articulate some of the challenges and limits of labs in relating to public organizations institutional dimension. It also describes possible formats and approaches to meaningfully engage with ordinary activities, structures and power dynamics within the public sector.

This article contributes to the further understanding of how (service) design can engage with organisational change. It does so by applying translation theory and building on the insights from a 7-year-long collaboration with a public agency, during which three attempts at introducing new ways of working were carried out. Translation theory understands organisational change as an intentional and contingent process through which ideas are materialised in possible translation objects that intervene in organisational practices, structures, and assumptions. The longitudinal study highlights how to bring about change, translation processes, and the objects needed to balance the reproduction and challenging of existing practices, structures, and assumptions within organisations. Moreover, translation processes interact with existing power dynamics, which cause reactions to change interventions by, among other things, influencing the legitimacy and mandate of the processes. Therefore, in addition to the mobilisation of internal organisational knowledge, (service) design that engages with organisational change needs to be aware of both power dynamics and to develop approaches and sensibilities to be able to listen and respond to the consequences that interventions in these dynamics might create. 

This workshop explores the relevance of the notion of commons as an objective, and commoning as a way of doing and being for design. We invite the PD community to reflect on ways in which these concepts help us critically protect and support sustainable futures for communities of humans and non-humans. How can participatory design remain open to multiple ways of sharing and different worldviews? What would it mean for the participatory design community in terms of challenging established notions such as participation, facilitation, empowerment, to name but a few? How can participatory design contribute further to theoretical elaboration and activist practices?

Mutual learning and infrastructuring are two core concepts in Participatory Design (PD), but the relation between them has yet to be explored. In this article, we foreground learning in infrastructuring processes aimed at change in the public sector. Star and Ruhleder’s (1996) framework for first, second, and third level issues is applied as a fruitful way to stage and analyze learning in such processes. The argument is developed through the insights that arose from a 4-year-long infrastructuring process about future library practices. Framed as Co-Labs this process was organized by researchers and officers from the local regional office. This led to adjusted roles for both PD researchers and civil servants working with materials at the operational and strategic levels. The case shows how learning led to profound changes in the regional public sector in the form of less bureaucratic and more participatory experimental and learning-focused worldviews and practices.

This guide provides a theoretical grounding for the understanding of the role of societal actors in Challenge-based learning and how it can be assessed. This grounding is used to formulate an assessment for the involvement of societal actors in Challenge-based learning

Den föreliggande rapporten beskriver ett förslag som främjar en förståelse, ett organiserande och drivandet av utökade delaktighetsprocesser i hållbar stadsutveckling. Den förser tjänstepersoner som är verksamma inom stadsutveckling med en uppfattning av och vägledning om hur man kan organisera och driva utökade delaktighetsprocesser.

Förslaget har som mål att inspirera och ge konkret vägledning till tjänstepersoner och stadsförvaltningar som är intresserade av att förbättra deras arbetssätt inom delaktighet för att utveckla mer hållbara och demokratiska städer.

Mot denna bakgrund fokuserar förslaget på fördelarna med att utöka den nuvarande delaktighetspraxis i stadsutveckling. Framförallt förstärker utökad delaktighet synergierna mellan olika kunskapsformer och perspektiv och detta är nödvändigt om man vill uppnå hållbarhet. Dessutom förstorar utökad delaktighet möjligheterna för en bredare och mera mångfaldig delaktighet, och därmed främjar en mer demokratisk och inkluderande stadsutveckling.

Rapporten presenterar de underliggande skälen som motiverar verkställandet av delaktighet under planeringen, utvecklingen och förvaltningen av den byggda miljön och för att gå över från konsultativa till mer samarbetsbaserade tillvägagångssätt. Den lyfter vikten i att fokusera på mångfald i delaktighet, vilket innebär att man ser närmare på frågan om och hur olika grupper, kunskapsformer och perspektiv tas upp (eller ej) inom den hållbara stadsutvecklingen.

Den konkreta vägledningen presenterar ett övergripande ramverk och möjliga organisatoriska upplägg för utökad delaktighet. Ramverket syftar till att förse vägledning i förberedningen, drivandet och utvärderingen av utökade delaktighetsprocesser där olika metoder kan tillämpas. De organisatoriska uppläggen utgör exempel för hur man organiserar utökade delaktighetsprocesser inom förvaltningars ordinarie aktiviteter.

Vägledningen i detta dokument bygger på lärdomar från olika tidsbegränsade projekt, förvaltningars ordinarie aktiviteter och kommunala utredningar i Malmö samt samtida teoretiska perspektiv på delaktighet. Förhoppningen är att den utgör en grundlig bas för praktisk tillämpning och vidare diskussioner och forskning i framtiden.

VA SYDs ambition är minimera mängden hushållsavfall I samhället. Ett sätt att åstadkomma detta är att bli bättre på att jobba nära samhällsaktörer och öka organisationens förmåga att skapa nya lösningar och tjänster som bidrar till mer hållbara beteenden. För att kunna åstadkomma detta krävs det nya arbetssätt, metoder och kunskapsmiljöer som möjliggör utveckling, test och lärande. Projektet har haft som ambition att utveckla en organisatorisk modell och arbetsprinciper för en tjänsteutvecklingsprocess. Under hösten har medarbetare och ledning involverats i ett gemensamt arbete för att utforska behov, utmaningar och på vilket sätt organisationen skulle kunna jobba med utveckling och implementering. Förslaget har mynnat ut i en tjänsteutvecklingsprocess som beskrivs genom fyra avgränsade, men överlappande underprocesser: inlyssnande, initiering, experimenterande och implementering. Dessa faser bygger på ständig återkoppling och anpassning. Vi kallar arbetssättet och miljön för avfallslabbet. Tjänsteutvecklingsprocessen upprätthålls och stöds av chefer, lednings- och organisationskultur och lärande. Hinder och problem löses efter hand. Fungerande förslag, tjänster och teknologier implementeras i organisationen och får en varaktig funktion. Vi föreslår också att arbetet organiseras på ett systematiskt sätt och att relevanta grupper som ansvarar för labbet och tjänsteutvecklingsprocessen tillsätts.

Amiralsstadens Kunskapsallians (KA) kring Barnets rättigheter i stadsutveckling [KA #6] har under hösten 2018 undersökt inkluderingen av barnrättsperspektivet in i stadsplaneringen. En av de två frågeställningar som drev arbetet var hur man främjar en givande dialog mellan Stadsbyggnadskontoret och Förskoleförvaltningen. KA #6 är därmed ett initiativ för att skapa nya kontaktytor och fostra lärande, inte bara längs med den överbryggande (vertikala) dimensionen, utan även längs den sammanbindande (horisontella). Denna reflektion fokuserar främst på den sammanbindande dimensionen, nämligen mötet mellan representanter från olika grupper av yrkesverksamma (s.k. professional communities, eller yrkesgrupper) och från olika kommunala förvaltningar. Reflektionen lyfter fram möjligheter och utmaningar som uppstod i processen. Den lägger även fram förslag om hur dessa identifierade utmaningar kan hanteras framöver. Utmaningarna berör: (1) svårigheter som uppstår när olika yrkesgrupper träffas p.g.a. av deras olika arbetssätt och värderingar; (2) vikten att ta hänsyn i både sätt att jobba och organisatoriska strukturer när det gäller att integrera barnrättsperspektivet in i stadsutveckling.

If municipalities were the caring platforms of the 19-20th century sharing economy, how does care manifest in civic structures of the current period? We consider how platforms – from the local initiatives of communities transforming neighbourhoods, to the city, in the form of the local authority – are involved, trusted and/or relied on the design of shared services and amenities for the public good. We use contrasting cases of interaction between local government and civil society organisations in Sweden and the UK to explore trends in public service provision. We look at how care can manifest between state and citizens and at the roles that co-design and co-learning play in developing contextually sensitive opportunities for caring platforms. In this way, we seek to learn from platforms in transition about the importance of co-learning in political and structural contexts and make recommendations for the co-design of (digital) platforms to care with and for civil society.

When addressing societal change and civic engagement, the idea of participatory culture as a cultivator of issue formation and collaborative engagement has, for a long time, been a foundational aspect of participatory design (henceforth co-design). It has also been a vivid and dynamic topic of discussion in this Interactions forum. We have observed the ways in which the problems and issues that design aims to address are becoming increasingly challenging to formulate in projects. This is because the participating sets of stakeholders most often are quite diverse and have conflicting agendas and interests. To address this complexity, participation is becoming a widespread approach in traditional innovation processes and in processes aiming for societal change. The era of participation carries both promises of empowerment as well as risks of exploitation. We argue that co-designers engaging with participatory processes need to pay particular attention to ethical concerns regarding representation, accountability, tradition and transcendence, and mutual learning.

This paper contributes to the understanding of urban commons and how they might be (co)-designed. Insights from two cases are used to articulate how urban commons develop over time and to discuss how the approach of infrastructuring can enable urban commoning on a long-term basis. First, an overview of commons and urban commons is provided with a special focus on communing, as in, the understanding of commons as an ongoing process rather than a stable arrangement. Thereafter, the paper gives an overview of the participatory design community's findings about co-designing commons, with infrastructuring proposed as a possible approach. By looking at the development of two urban commons over time, the paper tentatively presents an understanding of urban commoning. This emerges as a process that entails the exploration, reification, and reworking of collaborative arrangements over time. It is a process that requires transparency and accountability, and its transformative potential in relation to urban governance should be carefully considered. From these findings, the paper suggests that prolonged infrastructuring efforts for urban commons need to: (1) foster the understanding of the temporal and fallible nature of arrangements; (2) support accountability and transparency over time; (3) recognize and address the installed base; and (4) articulate democratic and governance aspects in commoning.

This paper introduces the track on co-created and/or co-produced collaborative services within different types of organisations, from the public realm, to the private and third sector. We navigate this wide field in the wake of three main interpretations of what collaboration may entail: collaboration as an approach to conceive services, ie co-design, collaboration as way in which services are implemented and delivered, ie co-production, and collaboration as a way to raise awareness about issues of public interest, ie participation and democracy. The various papers submitted to this track are clustered according to these three domains: the part on co-design explores the development of tools and the inclusion of stakeholders, the issue of co-production mainly refers to the empowerment of individuals within professional networks and local communities, while questions of democracy and power relationships highlight the importance to address in future how service design practice for sharing and collaboration intersects and contributes to a larger societal development.

The notion of collaborative service was firstly used by Jegou and Manzini in 2008 to discuss how services based on a tight collaboration between providers and users and based on the sharing of material resources, knowledge and competences, could support the transition towards more environmental and social sustainable ways of living. Since then the attention towards services characterized by sharing and collaboration has been growing quite quickly in the (service) design field. Yet, they entail a number of questions in relation to how to design for them, as well as in relation to the collaboration between the designer and various other stakeholders. To navigate this rich complexity we propose the two notions of commons and infrastructuring, and we do that by reflecting on the case of designing a makerspace, Fabriken, a sharing-based collaborative service. We use the notion of commons as a framework to articulate the organizational forms and decision-making structures of these services as well as highlight some of the challenges they entail. Particularly, we focus on the challenge of openness, and how this might be addressed through the presence of a “partner”- a mediator that supports sharing and collaboration when participation is transient and participants have diverse interests. With infrastructuring, we want to provide instead a particular understanding of how these services may be designed highlighting how they require the alignment of both human and non-human actors, and an long-term effort that goes beyond the “design-time”, in the “use-time”. Infrastructuring is not solely driven by the designer but yet, the nature of these services require to carefully consider designer’s agenda.

The public sector, increasingly acknowledging a need for change but strongly influenced by market logics, is experimenting with new forms of co-production of public services based on collaborations between public providers, citizens and societal actors. At the same time, Co-design researchers, are using approaches of infrastructuring and commoning to navigate questions of participation and collaboration in co-production. By discussing the case of ReTuren, a co-produced service for waste handling and prevention, this article presents how infrastructuring and commoning can offer guidance to civil servants engaging in co-production. In the case, civil servants on an operational level and an ‘embedded’ Co-Design researcher worked side-by-side in the co-production of the service, jointly articulating and appropriating approaches of infrastructuring and commoning. The case reveals that the joint appropriation and articulation of these Co-Design approaches can lead to the development of new ways of operating and perspectives in the public sector. However, it also highlights that this joint effort needs to involve people across organisational levels in order to minimise possible contextual and worldview breakdowns within public organisations.

This report aims at evaluating the Co-Lab about circular economy and reuse, organized within the frame of Social Innovation Skåne project between March and June 2016.

These guidelines are intended for team members and managers of urban labs and, more generally, for civil servants and facilitators in cities working with experimental processes to tackle complex challenges. They aim to support the everyday practice of collaboratively experimenting and learning how to create more sustainable and inclusive cities.

This report is part of the evaluation of ReTuren, the near community upcycling (kvartersnära återbrukscentral), a pilot project for a new service for sustainable waste handling driven by Malmö municipal waste department between November 2015 and September 2016. The report evaluates the process of establishing ReTuren. Such process used participatory design approaches and makers’ culture to establish and develop a co-produced service. The process has been based on the close collaboration between a design researcher (who has been working embedded in ReTuren), the coordinator and the project leader of the centre. The design researcher has been supporting the use of participatory approaches through a process that combined practical activities with ongoing evaluation. The report evaluates the process within the centre. It looks also at how findings emerging from there have been travelling and getting anchored within the waste department and VA SYD.

Increasingly many Participatory Design (PD) researchers and practitioners engage in urban and public contexts, which surely are about participation and democracy, but not necessarily with a main focus on technology development. These engagements are often a part of dealing with complex societal challenges such as sustainability. Today, many different but partly overlapping denominations are used to capture these participatory practices such as: community-based PD, emerging publics, design for sharing, commons and commoning, transition and transformation design, public and social innovation, PD and urban living labs, etc. As a group of PD researchers, the "Boundary Brigade", we have engaged in this kind of work for soon a decade. At this dialogue-based hands-on workshop, we invite others with similar interests in further articulating: (1) what characterizes applying a PD approach in urban and public contexts, (2) how to understand "urban" + PD, (3) lastly, whether it is fruitful to articulate, as a more overarching concept, the (sub)domain of Urban Participatory Design. Practically we will do this through collaborative mappings with cut-ups of "personal positions", discussions and by co-producing arguments as video stories.  

Today we can see new policies that suggest more participatory models to address societal challenges. The interest in design and different forms of urban labs is also increasing. This includes participatory design (PD) that has moved out of the workplace into the urban territory. In this paper we will argue that the main contribution from PD is to set up processes that can support and critically reflect on local democracy in relation to these challenges. We will look closer into the notions of commoning and agonism, two concepts that both contest the concept of participation and expand what could be required to constitute local democracy. Through a project journey spanning over seven years, we will discuss how these concepts could be used to guide processes of infrastructuring in democratic urban development processes. However, working with them poses several obstacles, including tensions between them as well as with the notion of strategic design. We will argue that in order to introduce them in a strategic design perspective, you need to consider long-term interventions and diverse levels of engagement as well as different phases where agonistic and commoning approaches are alternated with more strategic engagements of developing networks with powerful alliances.

This guide summarizes some of the learnings emerged from the setting up of ReTuren the first Swedish upcycling station (återbrukstationen) in Malmö. The focus is on the role that makers’ activities, cross-sector collaboration and citizens’ participation can have in the setting up of an upcycling station and more in general in addressing sustainable city development out from a holistic perspective. Makers’ culture describes activities where non-professionals engage in repairing and making things by collaborating and sharing information and knowledge. This guide highlights how these activities might be used not only to inspire about waste reduction practices and behaviours, but also to foster new social connections, manage conflicts and intervene in the urban context out from an holistic sustainability perspective. Cross-sector collaborations are seen as a key approach in dealing with urban challenges, such as sustainability. Such collaborations allow to address challenges out from a holistic perspective, since they bring together different kinds of knowledge and experiences. In such a perspective, citizens’ contribution is also understood as playing an important role. This guide exemplifies how cross-sector collaborations and citizens’ participation might be at play in an upcycling station. What kind of opportunities but also challenges they entail.

Purpose This paper compares two boundary organizations situated in Malmö (Sweden) and oriented towards opening production. Particularly, it looks at how the two organizations tried to establish and communicate their boundaries during their official opening events, which were structured according to the format of Hackathon. Design/methodology/approach The authors adopted an ethnographic approach and followed the two events, observing and interacting with organizers and participants. The findings reported here draw upon data collected through direct observation, the authors’ experience as participants, unstructured conversations, email exchanges. Findings This paper analyses the two events in order to show how different cultures of opening production lead to different ways of performing Hackathons and, consequently, how these events affect the process of establishing and communicating the organizational boundaries. Originality/value The paper looks at the potential of events structured according to the format of Hackathon as a way for boundary organizations to position themselves

This paper aims at contributing to the discussion of how to design collaborative forms for urban commons. It does so by bridging the commons field with the participatory design tradition, which has almost 40 years of experiences in exploring and reflecting on the practicalities as well as the political aspects of collaboration among actors with diverse interest. In the growing discussion about urban commons, it has been pointed out how in designing collaborative forms for their management Ostrom’s design principles might not hold, due to the difference between urban commons and traditional commons (Foster 2011, Harvey 2011). Urban commons entail an active role of public authorities and they gather participants who have different understandings and perspectives over the commons. Diversity in participants’ interests entails a higher risk for ossification, meaning that a stable management form might hinder rather than support collaboration (Daniels 2007, Foster 2011). By building on Participatory Design theory and reflecting on three cases of collaborative management forms in Malmö (Sweden), the paper discusses how the notions of commoning and agonism might be at play in the design of collaborative forms for urban commons. The notion of commoning entails to understand collective use and management of commons as a located and ongoing socio-material practice that requires the creation of management forms able to change and evolve in time in relation to the diversity of interests. The notion of agonism, on the other hand, focuses on articulating the political dimension of commoning, that entails to consider to which extent diversity is present in the collaboration and how it could be further nurtured. The paper does not provide a definitive answer to how these collaborative forms are to be designed but it stresses the importance of considering both the practicalities as well as the political aspects of collaboration.

This thesis accounts for a designerly inquiry into the swamp of the opening of production. The “opening of production” refers to the rising of openness, collaboration and sharing in processes through which things are made and service delivered. It is defined as a swamp, because it represents a complex landscape where theory and practice meet and where diverse views and understanding of what openness, collaboration and sharing may entail are intertwined. The interest in exploring such a swamp stems from two concerns. The first is understanding the nature of open, collaborative, sharing production practices and to what extent they can lead to more environmentally and socially sustainable ways of producing things and delivering services. The second concern is how, as a designer, it might be possible to engage in not only envisioning and prototyping, but also in constructing open, collaborative, sharing-production practices. In methodological terms, this thesis uses a programmatic approach, which means the way knowledge is produced is in the interaction between the practice and the program that defines the focus of the inquiry; also, in what is to be explored and how to explore it. In regard to practical work, this thesis is based on two long-term engagements: the setting up and running of a makerspace, Fabriken, and the long-term collaboration with an NGO of immigrant women, Herrgårds Women Association (HWA). The program aims at exploring making commons and does so out of an interest in composing prospects. The notion of making commons brings into the work theories and frames from the academic discourses around commons (i.e. collective and collaborative organizational forms) in order to articulate the nature of open, collaborative and sharing practices; it allows for discussion of the engagements, what they produce, and how they do it. It also allows for consideration into how these practices have been initiated, implemented, and carried out over time. Composing prospects entails a particular way of exploring alternative futures by engaging in collective and located attempts at constructing them. Thus, it defines a possible way for designers to engage in the making. Further, it provides the possibility to relate the engagements to the expectations and broader scenarios emerging in the opening of production and to articulate what kind of making may be at play in acknowledging hypothetical futures as possible presents. This inquiry builds on and addresses the fields of design for social innovation, participatory design, and commons

This paper aims at contributing to the emerging field of design for social innovation (D4SI) discussing the insights from the author’s long-term involvement as a design researcher in a social innovation project. In order to discuss this experience a particular perspective is introduced, according to which D4SI can be considered an attempt of design to go beyond critique, and, specifically, of composing together (Latour 2010). In this understanding D4SI can be considered as a collective effort towards the construction and exploration of alternative ways of living and working. In deepening how D4SI can be understood as composing together, some reflections are made on the author’s involvement in the maker-space STPLN, a platform where production processes are opened and attempts of composing new ways of making things and delivering services are carried out. By highlighting some of the challenges emerged from being a designer in STPLN, the paper develops two reflections. The first one is related to togetherness and it argues that, in dealing with collective compositionist processes, designers need to acquire skills and look for a possible role that is different from the one of the enabler. The second reflection deals with how to assess composing together. From the experience with STPLN, it emerges how compositions need to be accountable in diverse discourses in order to travel further and, hopefully, generate future prospects.

This paper aims at exploring different ways in which cultures of opening production can be performed by comparing two events (two Hackathons) organized by two Swedish labs oriented towards opening production.

Open and collaborative processes are assuming a growing role in the generation of goods and services. There is an increasing number of examples where production processes are opened, relationships between producers and final users become blurred and where making together represents a central strategy in generating value. Design is increasingly involved in supporting opening production both in terms of developing technical infrastructures and in facilitating and nourishing processes of making together trying to understand how design can boost collaboration and openness in diverse fields. In trying to contribute to the discussion about how to design for making together, this paper reflects on the experiences made in the establishment and running of the maker- space Fabriken in the city of Malmö, a research project where the author is involved. The focus is on prototyping and how it has been used to foster collaboration and openness in the making of Fabriken. From these experiences it emerges how prototyping (the design approach), has been a fruitful way for experimenting, learning by doing and conducting small-scale interventions. Moreover, in order to account for togetherness, prototyping has also been used as a way of infrastructuring and thinging. In conclusion it emerges how prototyping in Fabriken has become a composionist tactic that can be appropriated by participants to drive their own making activities and shaping the space according to their needs. From this understanding a new role for the designer involved in processes of making together starts to appear and also issues about how to support them. From the experiences of Fabriken it emerges how design for opening production should be concerned with how to design in the making together rather than how to design for making together.

Recently, there has been a growing attention to innovation processes based on the involvement of diverse actors in co-creation activities. A new innovation model is evolving, relying on collaboration, openness and participation as drivers for the development of novelty in diverse fields. This model has a central role in social innovation, which is claimed to arise from collaborations across various sectors and social structures. In trying to understand how innovation arises in co-creation processes, this paper relies on the idea of socially shaped innovation, according to which novelty emerges from local interactions through tensions and argumentation. In exploring how design could support socially shaped innovation, the paper discusses the experience of designing Fabriken, a socially shaped infrastructure for socially shaped innovation. Particularly, the focus is on the design process and on the shift from a design-in the-studio strategy, based on a funnel model, to a design-in-use strategy, where some participatory tactics such as prototyping, small-scale interventions and long-term engagement are used by diverse stakeholders to explore the design space.

Fabriken is a makerspace, a public workshop equipped with tools and machines that can be used to make (almost) anything: from fixing a flat tire to build a robot, from backing to meet new people. This space has been set up with the aim of opening production, to investigate what happens when means of production are made public and when people make things together by sharing facilities and skills.

From a participatory design perspective the making of Fabriken can be understood as process of design-for-design and infrastructuring. The paper discusses how Fabriken came to be and how, in looking for a strategy to design-for-design and infrastructuring, there has been a shift from a design-before-use to a design-in-use approach, where the tactics of events, small-scale interventions and long-term engagement have been used to foster a process of participatory making of the space.  

In recent years, design for social innovation has emerged as a new research field. Design has been acknowledged by public agencies and NGOs as one of the tools to tackle the complexity of social issues. However, critical voices have also been raised about the limits and gaps of design applied in this field, emphasizing the need for connections with other disciplines involved in social innovation. These critiques stress that designers engaged with social issues need to reflect on their weaknesses in order to avoid to ‘reinvent the wheel’ and being naive. With a background in participatory design we have developed some practical approaches that we present in this article as a possible way for dealing with the weaknesses of design when applied in social innovation.

In the social innovation field it has been recognized the need for infrastructures to support the flourishing of social innovation: intermediaries that should facilitate the connections between diverse stakeholders and resources. Design research has contributed to the idea of intermediaries by developing the concept of enabling platforms. These are situated systems of human and non-human actors, which should support bottom-up initiatives and cross-sector networks by responding to the meta-technological demands of social innovation activities. In order to fulfil this scope they should be deeply rooted in the specific context where they are operating, valuing local stakeholders and resources. Furthermore they should be characterized by a certain degree of indeterminacy, which leaves to the involved stakeholders the possibility to initiate their own activities by performing design actions after the design of the platform is concluded, the so called design-after-design. This article would like to discuss the nature of enabling platforms and how they could be designed referring to a concrete case: the establishment of the fabrication space Fabriken in Malmö, Sweden. First some reflections will be made about why fabrication spaces can be considered enabling platforms and which specific challenges they pose in supporting social innovation. Further on, the strategy of design-in-use will be presented highlighting the role that prototyping, individual involvement and long-term perspective can play in designing enabling platforms.

During the past five years design has been recognised as a powerful innovation driver. Design methods and tools have also been applied in new fields. One of them is social innovation, which is aimed at developing new ideas and solutions in response to social needs. While different initiatives have demonstrated how design can be a powerful approach in social innovation, especially when it comes to systemic thinking, prototyping and visualising, some concerns have been raised regarding the limitations of applying design in this field. Through a specific case, this paper will discuss and suggest some approaches and concepts related to design for social innovation. Coming from a participatory design tradition, we focus on the idea of infrastructuring as a way to approach social innovation that differs from project-based design. The activities that are carried out are aimed at building long-term relationships with stakeholders in order to create networks from which design opportunities can emerge. We also discuss the role of prototyping as a way to explore opportunities but we also highlight dilemmas.