Making and negotiating value: design and collaboration with community led groups

Abstract

ABSTRACTValue in collaborative design research and practice can be understood fundamentally as relationships, materials, processes, contexts, and outcomes that are subjects of and for negotiation. We argue for conceptions of value that move beyond traditional ‘outcomes’ based measurements to reimagine and rearticulate value itself as co-created, emerging from negotiation, relationality and immersion in specific contexts. These understandings of value, we argue, are not rooted in or always knowable through designers’ experiences, even as designers participate in creating them. Using case studies from our research we suggest that value in design collaboration emerges as a question: value to whom, and to what end? We propose that addressing these questions ethically through co-design requires actively engaged, grounded work with collaborators based in three principles: being present for the work, participant making, and co-creating capacity for collaborators to ‘go off and do their thing’.