Becoming Response-able Stakeholders : Participatory Design in Times of Uncertainties

This paper connects with recent movements within participatory design that move beyond democracy at work and into public engagements with matters where stakes and stakeholders are uncertain. This is thus a shift from earlier participatory design projects where identifiable stakeholders were a pre-condition. To enable the becoming of stakes and stakeholders that are responsible, this paper argues for a new design space within participatory design: to enable material participation in yet unarticulated issues connected to socio-material entanglements. This becoming of stakeholder is not necessarily about solving a problem but to sensitize oneself to one’s entanglements, response-ability and agency in relation to potential issues. The proposal is discussed through a design experiment centred on co-living and the messy practices of composting plastic waste in domestic settings