This full day workshop intends to explore approaches,methods and techniques that can be used in participatoryprototyping of services. The participants will contributewith their experiences of different ways of working withparticipatory prototyping. During the workshop theparticipants will share, explore and give feedback on themethod or case that they present. By engaging in othermethods there will also be a learning activity. Anotheraim of the workshop is to initiate research anddevelopment of knowledge within the emerging field ofparticipatory prototyping of services and product servicesystems. One particular interest regards the relationbetween details and “the whole”. The emphasis of theworkshop is to have creative learning experiences.

The concept of design space has been useful to designers in supporting the act of designing and for reflecting on the activity of designing. With the increase in cooperative design practices, it is time to consider the concept of co-design space. Co-design spaces differ from design spaces in that they tend to be situated in the early front end of the design process (also referred to as pre-design), they rely on the collective creativity of designers working together with non-designers, they deal with very complex challenges such as social change and organizational transformation, and they often point to embodiments in the immaterial domains such as experiences and services. We will argue that we can add greatly to our understanding of design by experiencing, exploring and experimenting in and with co-design spaces. 

This paper explores how the two concepts of representing and constituting are used in relation to design practice. The terms representing and representation are often used to describe the relation a model or prototype has to the end result. In this exploratory paper we investigate the potential impact of a change in terms, from represent to constitute. One inspiration is the writing of John Stewart on the post-semiotic approach to communication. The examples used in the paper are from practice rooted in both traditional industrial design and co-design. I argue that it is important to see design work as a constituting practice rather than a representative one. Supporting this standpoint are both the fact that the future does not yet exist and therefore is difficult to represent, and the strong argument that knowledge is created in dialogue and constituted in action. Thus, when we stop interpreting design matter as representations, design can matter to the world.