In this special issue a selection of recent articles is presented that report on improving and/or facilitating collaboration in product design and development by deploying technologies. The article...

How to generate business is at play in most innovation projects today. Not only Internet-based businesses, but also traditional manufacturing companies with conventional product sales are currently challenged to consider alternative business models: service design, project sales, direct sales, etc. In participatory innovation the core assumption is that a broad spectrum of people, including users, can contribute to innovation. But is it possible to open up the process of business model innovation to participation from a wider circle than those marketing managers who typically devise new business schemes? In this article we discuss two participatory approaches to business modelling that move beyond spreadsheets and Post-it® Notes: one of using tangible objects to redefine business elements, and another of people themselves role-playing how an organisation can create, deliver and capture value. These approaches were developed in companies and educational settings and have proven extraordinarily successful in initiating conversations about how to innovate business in cross-disciplinary and cross-functional groups of participants. Relying on design theory, we study the ‘moves’ that participants make towards a new network configuration; in particular as such conceptual ‘moves’ are likely to be associated with the concrete, physical movements of people and objects. We claim that these approaches prove very engaging because business model innovation needs a focus on redefining the concepts we use and the roles that actors play in relation to each other.

Collaboration has become more important owing to the challenges designers face to compete in fast-paced global markets. Designers need to capitalise on the strengths of different stakeholders to develop shared knowledge and practices to better deal with the complexity of problems facing society today. This study builds on research concerning social processes in design activity through exploring professional designers' perspectives on the significance of collaboration in their work. Twenty-three semi-structured in-context interviews were conducted with professional designers from 13 different professional specialisations. The interview data were analysed using a grounded theory interpretive approach. The insights developed from the analysis suggest that the development of support for collaborative design should target not only methods of solving design problems, but also informal and social interactions that bring together different stakeholders while respecting their differences. Further research in this area would enhance the effectiveness of collaboration and increase designers' ability to participate in the early stages of product development for complex problems.

This paper describes a comparative study, which explores the influence of different sources of information on design sessions aiming for product concepts for children with autism. Six design teams were informed about children with autism under three conditions: A teams had only background information, B teams had background information and direct contact, and C teams had background information plus a video. Each team conducted a design session resulting in one product concept. These sessions were videotaped, transcribed and analysed for signs of empathy. The proposed product concepts were evaluated by parents and teachers of the children. Results show that the two B teams discussed the user group most intensively, and produced concepts that fitted the user group best. The two A teams made many false assumptions about the user group. One C team discussed the user group intensively and produced a product concept appreciated by caregivers, while the other C team did the opposite. The latter team was not motivated for the session. The results indicate that, and show examples of how, direct contact brings empathy with users to design teams and positively influences the quality of the product concepts they produce. Willingness and motivation of designers are key factors in empathic design.

In co-design there seems to be a widespread understanding that innovation is a planned, goal-oriented activity that can be propelled forward through well-facilitated events in which company employees collaborate with external parties (users in particular) and the conversations aim at consensus about new product and service ideas. Conflict belonged to the ‘old days’ when participatory design played a part in the struggle between workers and management. Based on the theory of complex responsive processes of relating, we suggest a new way of understanding innovation as the emergence of new meaning in – often conflictual – conversations. We argue that the meeting of participants with different stakes is crucial precisely because crossing intentions can create new insight and movement of thought and action. We use improvised theatre to investigate what happens in industrial (and other) organisations that embark on participatory activities, and the barriers that prevent them. By analysing improvised scenes and the way the audience reacts, we characterise the quality of conversations that seems to allow new meaning to emerge and thus stimulates innovation. We suggest that we need to develop new formats of collaboration for large, complex contingents of stakeholders, where conflicting intentions are encouraged.

This paper outlines the issues in effective utilisation of digital resources in conceptual design. Access to appropriate information acts as a stimulus and can lead to better substantiated concepts. The issues of presenting such information in a digital form for effective use are addressed in a review of digital libraries and groupware, with improved integration of these two technologies advocated to better support the concept generation task. The development of the LauLima learning environment and digital library is consequently outlined. Despite its attempts to integrate the designers' working space and digital resources, continuing issues in library utilisation and the migration of information to design concepts are highlighted through a project study. In light of this, new approaches to interaction for increased information use are outlined.

In this paper we argue that it is not self-evident how ‘requirements’ are defined, but that ‘requirements’ are enacted differently by differently situated actors, and that this has consequences in design practices. The purpose of the paper is to explore the consequences of prototyping practices in a local IT design project. The empirical material was gathered through the use of ethnographic methods, and analysed diffractively. Graphical user interface prototypes were tools for formulating business requirements in a business process analysis. Through a reading of a discussion which took place in a work meeting about the prototypes, we discuss how business requirements were enacted. This is discussed in relation to divergent and convergent approaches in IT design. One consequence was a risk that the prototyping process moved too fast to solutions, and another was the risk that the business process analysis method reproduced the dominant story of women's absence in IT design.