Helen Adams

An Exploration into the Design Possibilities of Probology as an Accessible Tool for Inclusive Co-design 

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Co-design, collective thinking and collaboration can all be seen as variations for the act of participation within design research, which in a time of significant environmental, social and cultural challenges is crucial to innovation and change ‘but only if we open up the design process to everyone’. We can only begin to achieve this by making research methodologies more accessible and inclusive for wider, minority or marginalized communities that have in the past been side lined or excluded for whatever reason from contributing. 

Throughout this work I address the criticism of ‘constrained roles attributed to researchers and participants’ and follow more the notion of users as experts, equal and present at all stages of the process. For this reason, I chose fashion as the context, as it is a subject that everyone is an expert in, after all, most of the population wear their cultural clothing all day, every day, and so are we not each an expert through experience in this subject as it relates to us? I then chose paper as my material, a versatile, accessible, inexpensive material that takes little to no experience or trained skill to utilise. 

This study was motivated by my experience in Studio Module of the designing, creating, executing and analysis of research probes, along with the extensive reading of existing literature surrounding the subject. Collectively, this inspired me to explore the possibilities of design probes as an accessible tool for inclusive co-design and their ability to be uniquely positioned and targeted to specific needs, which could open up the design space to minority or marginalized communities. The focus within this project therefor shifts from equality in design research methodologies to equity, exploring how we can adapt the design of our tools to give everyone an equal opportunity to achieve the same result, a place and voice at the codesign table.