A Mass Custom Design Tool for User Participatory Approaches to Housing

Mass customisation of housing may hardly be achieved without homebuyers’ involvement in the design decision-making process. In fact, user participation in the design of housing has been examined for several decades. This emerged as a result of a worldwide increase in the number of inadequate housing forms for all sections of society. More efforts are needed to involve future users in the design decision-making process. The use of information and communication technologies may facilitate the user participation and thus, it should be explored. As well, the emergent notion of mass customisation may have great potential to tackle issues arising in the delivery of affordable, sustainable homes, so that it should be incorporated into the participatory approaches to housing for people and society. Accordingly, this paper initially discusses the meaning of user participation for housing design and provision and identifies the significance of participatory approaches. Secondly, it examines an interactive mass custom design communication tool with a view to enhancing conventional user participation processes. The authors found that the design quality of housing that should reflect the buyers’ wants and needs for housing to be purchased can be improved through the user participation, in which the digitalised design communication tool is brought in play