Understanding, capturing, and assessing value in collaborative design research

Whitham, Roger; Moreton, Simon; Bowen, Simon; Speed, Chris; Durrant, Abigail

Abstract

The collection of papers in this special issue respond to a tension between the broadening scope, scale and heterogeneity of collaborative design research, and an ever-growing demand from funders and regulatory organisations for the measurement and benchmarking of the work researchers do (Wilsdon, 2016). Participatory design and co-design practice produce value in diverse forms, over multiple timescales, captured by different groups against different agendas. In this special issue, we seek to explore how value of, and in, participatory and co-design practices could be understood and captured not only to serve the needs of research assessment - where the mechanisms and regimes of research impact and value tend towards highly defined, contained conceptions of value - but also to enhance the scale, scope and resourcing of collaborative design. To this end, the authors collected here offer perspectives on emerging ethical and political engagements with ‘value’ as a contested terrain. In differing ways, they offer accounts of how we guide, and are guided by, practices of valuation in the complexities of collaborative design situations.

• Journal Article Type: Editorial
• Acceptance Date: Dec 18, 2018
• Online Publication Date: Mar 14, 2019
• Publication Date: Mar 14, 2019
• Deposit Date: Jan 16, 2019
• Publicly Available Date: Mar 15, 2020
• Journal: CoDesign
• Print ISSN: 1571-0882
• Electronic ISSN: 1745-3755
• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Peer Reviewed: Not Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 15
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 1-7
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/15710882.2018.1563194
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/855065
• Publisher URL: https://doi.org/10.1080/15710882.2018.1563194
• Additional Information: Additional Information : This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in CoDesignon 14th March 2019, available online: https://doi.org/10.1080/15710882.2018.1563194.
• Contract Date: Jan 16, 2019