Design for e-very-one: exploring the possibilities of open-ended innovation focused on individual diversity

Deep user and stakeholder involvement is becoming the norm when designing systems, while the design process of durable goods remains relatively secretive, aiming a single, well-balanced design solution to a well-defined problem for a generalized user group. Nonetheless, ever since industrial design became a widely recognized, formalized profession in the modernist era, its attention is turning gradually from mass products for the general public towards niche products for sub-cultures, and towards specific solutions (either products or systems) for communities. Could the next step be turning to individuals? Practices such as mass customization have already started to expand single solutions into wider solutions spaces to accommodate better the diversity of potential users, but the possibilities remain limited; conversely, designing ad hoc for individuals is prohibitively expensive for widespread diffusion. One emerging opportunity for opening the design process towards users is using Digital Fabrication with parametric/generative design (computer algorithms), which makes it possible to define an unforeseeable multitude of products in collaboration with the end users, according to their needs, desires, identities. The proposed workshop aims to map user diversities that are deep enough to benefit from the engagement of every single user in a collaborative design process, thus identifying possible points of intervention and raising new opportunities for developing authentically personal artefacts in the contemporary creative and productive environment. This activity will build on (and contribute to) an ongoing research project that aims to elaborate design strategies and workflows for design practitioners in search for serving better ‘e-very-one’.