Empowering Users through Design: Interdisciplinary Studies and Combined Approaches for Technological Products and Services

At the crossroads of various disciplines, this collective work examines the possibility of a new end-user “engagement” in ongoing digital/technological products and services development. It provides an overview of recent research specifically focused on the user’s democratic participation and empowerment. It also enables readers to better identify the main opportunities of participatory design, a concept which encourages the blurring of the role between user and designer. This allows people to escape their status as “end-user” and to elevate themselves to the level of creator.

This book explores new avenues for rethinking the processes and practices of corporate innovation in order to cope with current socio-economic and technological changes. In so doing, it aims to help companies renew industrial models that allow them to design and produce new ranges of technological products and services by giving the user an active role in the development process, far beyond the basic role of consumer.

Intended for designers, design researchers and scientists interested in innovation and technology management, this book also provides a valuable resource for professionals involved in technology-based innovation processes.

Designer and founder of the FXDESIGNSTUDIO digital design agency, and also Associate Professor at the University of Valenciennes and Hainaut-Cambresis (FRANCE), Dr. David Bihanic is of the rising generation of design professionals for whom originality refers specifically to their (learning and professional) transversal path. Dr. D. Bihanic is presently Head of the Master’s degree in Digital Design and Vice-Director of the laboratory CALHISTE (Culture, Arts/Design, Literature, History of Societies and Foreign Territories).

Dr. D. Bihanic examines the new paradigms of information visualization and manipulation of large and complex rich databases – it deals with recent design attempts in order to present multi-dimensional data graphically by mapping data and properties to different visual shapes, colors, and positions (e.g. experimental works which investigate novel ways of exploring information).

Dr. D. Bihanic have been working as information designer at Thomson France R&D center. Through this experience, he received the expert status for his studies of systems dealing with the handling and processing of media covered information. Today, his research is mainly on data design, data visualization aesthetics, and creative informatics. His work spans the whole spectrum, from theory to implementation techniques and applications. Author of several papers relating to the new stakes of design, Dr D. Bihanic takes an active part in the evolution and transformations occurring in this field.