Learning Design from Emergent Co-Design: Observed Practices and Future Directions

In everyday work environments, systems for work evolve constantly in response to changing environments, the need to overcome technical and social obstacles, or out of the desire by individuals to try something new or satisfy their curiosity. This proposal briefly reviews some emergent design activities, namely patchwork prototyping and a recent trend in academic computing for adopting and modifying open-source software. On the basis of this past work, the authors provide suggestions for future research on how design activity by both professional and amateur designers can be studied to inform both the design of systems to support co-design, and to learn better about how to do intentional design.