Codesign for the Public Interest

Abstract

The aim of this final chapter is to present a more detailed picture of several characteristics of codesign for the public-interest. In describing the infrastructuring process in ten steps, we have already stressed the importance of codesign as way to enhance public imagination, especially in a hybrid area between public and private, profit and not-for-profit, amateur and professional, market and society. This is the area of public-interest, in which a configuration of diverse actors (coming from citizen activism, and the public, private and third sectors) undertake an unprecedented collaboration to reach a common purpose, i.e. to design services together. In this chapter, we analyse the codesign process for the public interest, not only as it relates to the creation of new services, but also in connection with the codesign of other ‘items’ in a multi-level perspective (including services, policies and innovation processes etc.). Therefore, we will present several features that highlight the complexity and possible extension of the value of the codesign process, ranging from considering it as a form of citizen empowerment, to regarding it as an important pre-condition to service co-production, or as a key-competence for the public sector. The chapter (and thus the whole book) concludes by focusing its attention on the prominent position that codesign processes (especially when devoted to supporting the public interest) are reaching in the current, more general, discussion on design and innovation. The popular design thinking approach is de facto a codesign approach; many (social) innovation processes are de facto codesign processes (for the public interest): • Codesign as a form of citizen empowerment; • Codesign as a collective and active reflection; • Codesign as a precondition to co-production; • Codesign as a public service (and key competence for the public sector); • Codesign as a form of citizen participation and democracy; • Codesign process as (social) innovation process.