Co-reflection: user involvement for highly dynamic design processes.

User involvement in systems, products and related services design has increased considerably in relevance. The way user involvement actually progresses depends on how the users are situated in relation to the design process. Their influence may extend from the results of the design project to planning and managing the course of the design project. Sequential techniques developed for the rational problem solving or reflective process have a limited application in highly dynamic design processes. More precisely, in sequential design processes validation steers reflection into a single direction. For this reason, a methodological approach not based on the sequential (hypothetical-deductive) paradigm but on the dialectical inquiry (inductive paradigm) between designers and users is considered. The versatile and holistic nature of this co-reflective process makes it suitable for dynamic and unstructured design processes based on different streams of reflection.