# Participatory & Co-Design

**Track:** Human-Centered & Inclusive Design — Design & Human-Centered Design — proposed (25)
**Framework / surface:** design
**Level:** Advanced
**Prerequisites:** Human-Centered Design Foundations

**In one line:** Design with people, not just for them — sharing power with those affected.

## Theory, aesthetics & inspiration

Participatory design began as politics, not method: in 1970s–80s Scandinavia, the cooperative or "collective resource" tradition asked who holds power when technology reshapes labor. Pelle Ehn's UTOPIA project (1981–1985) put typographers beside designers, treating workers as co-authors of the systems imposed on them rather than mere users. Liz Sanders and Pieter Jan Stappers later reframed this as co-design, supplying generative tools — making, telling, enacting — so non-designers could express tacit needs; their "Convivial Toolbox" (2012) codified a front-end practice now standard in civic and service design. Sasha Costanza-Chock's "Design Justice" (2020) sharpens the stakes: participation without shared agency is merely consultation.

## References

- [Participatory design — Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participatory_design)
- [Participatory Design — Interaction Design Foundation](https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/topics/participatory-design)
- [Design justice — Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_justice)