Design-led approach to co-production of values for collective decision-making

Experience Labs are design-led spaces for co-creating preferable futures
by bringing academic, business and civic stakeholders to work together with citizens
using a participatory design approach. Differing value systems of stakeholders,
however, can pose challenges when working collaboratively. Experience Labs
support exchange and co-production of values among diverse stakeholders by
making them articulate and visible through design, to resolve conflict and to
support meaningful decision-making towards progressing ideas whilst integrating a
multiplicity of perspectives. In this paper, we discuss the creation of an ‘ethical
imagination space’ to explore preferable futures with diverse stakeholders; the core
values of the Experience Labs which support the creation of this space; and the key
qualities that support the exchange and co-production of shared values to enable
collective decision-making. We propose that the ‘next thinking’ for design involves
consideration of the ways in which we engage with values in cross-sectoral
collaborations to enable collective decision-making.