New Book on CoDesign available in open access!

A brand new book on CoDesign was published in March. Massive Codesign. A Proposal for a Collaborative Design Framework focuses on “massive codesign”: the idea that multiple and/or numerous participants having different voices collaborate in a design process broken down into different steps and formats and resulting in a relevant and diversified amount of data. The book was released with the Creative Commons License Attribution-NoDerivatives 3.0. Italia in the peer reviewed series Design International and it can be downloaded here.

 The book presents services, strategies and scenarios as the main field of application of massive codesign: these are complex items that demand complex processes be tackled, processes in which it is necessary to involve a variety of players who are largely interdependent and therefore who must collaborate in order to achieve any goal.

The book essentially makes two main contributions: a “Collaborative Design Framework” to identify and structure codesign activities, methods and tools within massive creative processes; a “set of quick lessons learnt” to provide guidance to the conception and organisation of other massive creative processes.

The whole book is oriented at practice: it discusses codesign activities from the designer’s point of view, detailing issues such as process from beginning to end, activity flow, manipulability of tools, roles and rules for participants and many others. It is intended as a support for designers dealing in massive codesign processes and aims towards improved results.

About the authors

Anna Meroni is an architect, Ph.D in Design and Associate Professor of Design in the Department of Design at the Politecnico di Milano. Her research focus is on service and strategic design for sustainability to foster social innovation, participation and local development. Specific expertise has been developed in codesign methods and tools. She is the head of the international MSc program in Product Service System Design and coordinator of the POLIMI-DESIS Lab, the Milan based research lab of the DESIS-Design for Social Innovation and Sustainability Network.

Daniela Selloni is a Service Designer, Ph.D in Design, Research Fellow and Adjunct Professor in the Department of Design at the Politecnico di Milano. Her research interests cover service design and social innovation, focusing on citizen activism, sharing economy, methods and tools for codesign. She also acts in an advisory capacity for start-up incubation programmes and organisations from the private and third sectors. She is part of the POLIMI-DESIS Lab.

Martina Rossi is a Service Designer, Ph.D candidate and teaching assistant in the Department of Design at the Politecnico di Milano. Her research interests and professional activity deal with codesign processes, service design and design thinking, with a specific focus on the private sector. She is also active in engaging the service design community in a discussion about the discipline, therefore, she co-organizes the Service Design Drinks Milan. She is part of the POLIMI-DESIS Lab.​

Massive Codesign. A Proposal for a Collaborative Design Framework

By Anna Meroni, Daniela Selloni and Martina Rossi​

March 2018, 182 pages

Free download