The politics of co-design in ICT for sustainable development

ABSTRACT

In this paper, we discuss an approach to co-design in ICT for sustainable development. We first set out to consider sustainable development as incorporate a concern for resilience, adaptability, and autonomy. We then draw on an ongoing participatory design project to illustrate how co-design projects can be configured, along with the political choices that this entails, to support such development.

KEYWORDS:

• Sustainability
• participatory design
• technology stewardship
• ICT for development

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. We prefer to use the term participatory design (PD) to describe our own work, although a discussion of the specific characteristics distinguishing PD from other co-design approaches is beyond the scope of this paper.

2. http://drcsc.org/aboutus.html.

3. Idle or ‘useless’ chatter.