Introduction - Informing Digital Futures: Strategies for Citizen Engagement - page 3

appeal of the appearance and form of products with their necessary func-
tion. Mechanical, electronic and software engineers on the other hand tend
to be focused primarily on the often very complex and detailed design
of the functionality of products or systems, and that is what they mean by
design. We also share the perspective of Iversen and Baur (2002) that
“ design is a social activity that takes place among people that negotiate.
The design process is an ecology of participation, communicating both inter-
nally and with the rest of the world, depending upon the socially con-
structed values participants assign each other .” We realize that there are
some situations, e.g. technical design, where this definition does not fit and
will certainly not resonate with the individuals involved. For instance,
many engineers and programmers frequently work in comparative isola-
tion in research and development laboratories. The context of design activ-
ity is therefore, clearly crucial. Design with a particular focus or goal
which relates to people, can be defined more specifically. Thus, inclusive
design means designing products which as many people as possible can
use (Disability Rights Commission 2001).
Defining designers proved particularly tricky. We generally refer to de-
signers as those who have some professional training or skill in design.
But, as Norman (2000) points out, most of those who have a hand in de-
sign are not professional designers - they are engineers, programmers or
managers. Furthermore, as Seely Brown and Duguid (2002) note, “ in the
digital world many of the distinctions between designers and users are be-
coming blurred. We are all, to some extent, designers now ”. This diversity
among designers creates its own issues: “ designers are not users, users are
not designers, and designers come from many different backgrounds, the
inevitable result of the equation is that communication problems start to
arise ” (Media Lab 2004). For the purposes of this topic, however, the aim
is that its contents have relevance to designers in all these contexts where
the design outcome is intended for use by the public.
In the past, the all-important users of digital technologies were rela-
tively easy to define as a group. As computers proliferated in the work-
place, it was still relatively simple to distinguish users as those who operated
them directly. But in the 21 st century, as digital technologies become more
and more pervasive, the user is of course, now potentially anybody and
everybody - and herein lies one of the most significant challenges for the
design of digital technologies. Each and every one of us is an individual,
with our own different characteristics, skills and aspirations, and at differ-
ent times and in different contexts, we may have different relationships to
technology. All of these differences mean we have varied and changing
needs and requirements of technology. The challenge for the design of
truly effective technologies is to ensure that these differences are identified