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Hoftijzer, JanWillem; Keyson, David

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Today’s global context of mass-produced items has resulted in an increasing ‘distance’, or alienation, between people and the origins of the items they buy and use: an unhealthy human-product relationship.

This observation permits the search for an alternative interpretation of well-being: a transformation that would support resilience and self sufficiency, and a better human product relationship or ‘a new partnership’, as advocated by various scholars.

In this paper, this new partnership is considered through supporting ‘Do-It-Yourself’ (DIY) product design: a scenario in which professional designers facilitate laypersons to design for themselves. Anticipating (1) the designer’s responsibility, and (2) the layperson’s innate desire to create, this paper introduces a ‘Design for DIY’ framework method to help bridge the knowledge gap between the product designer and the layperson.

The initial starting points of this study, complemented by a range of ‘Design for DIY’ studies, and an exploration of existing design frameworks and design models, resulted in the design of a ‘Design-for-DIY’ framework. This paper concludes with recommendations for the testing and further development of the Design-for-DIY framework.

Keywords:

Do-It-Yourself, Collaborative design, Design methodology, Participatory design, human-product-relationship