Deaf telephony: community-based co-design

Abstract

The process of community-based co-design is one that explores various solution configurations in a multi-dimensional design space whose axes are the different dimensions of requirements and the various dimensions of designer skills and technological capabilities. The bits of this space that one can ‘see’ are determined by one's knowledge of the user needs and one's own skills. Co-design is a way of exploring that space in a way that alleviates the myopia of one's own viewpoint and bias. As one traverses this space one traces a trajectory according to one’s skills and learning and according to the users’ expressed requirements and their learning.